The Welfare of Future Children

This practical guide to reproductive ethics navigates the complex subject of the policy around IVF treatment and disability screening based on the concerns around the welfare of future children. It focuses on 3 questions in order to examine these often-complex philosophical issues:

· Should we allow prospective parents using IVF to implant an embryo with a condition considered as a ‘disability’, for example, should a deaf person be allowed implant a ‘deaf’ embryo?
· When might it be acceptable to influence women to accept screening for ‘disability’ such as Down’s Syndrome, in pregnancy?
· Is it justifiable to evaluate the potential parenting ability of those attempting to access fertility treatment (e.g., older women, people living with ‘disabling conditions’ or individuals with past criminal convictions)?

Rebecca Bennett walks the reader through different answers to these questions exploring issues such as whether it is ever morally wrong to reproduce, whether we have a moral obligation to try and bring the ‘best’ children we can into existence and how we can assess the quality of future lives when the alternative is non-existence. There is, of course, no consensus about what the ‘right’ answers are to these questions. However answers are needed.

This area of policy and regulation is one that, Bennett argues, is heavily influenced by intuition, social norms and bias. The Welfare of Future Children: Reproductive Ethics and Disability Screening invites us to question these norms to come to a position on these questions that emphasises reason, transparency and accountability. At the end of the book readers will not only have a strong grasp of the issues around the ethics of regulation and policy in this area, but also have at their disposal an ethical toolkit which can be applied to any and all ethical questions that they encounter.