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Carriers of Genetic Disorder and the Right to Have Children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

D. Dickenson
D. Dickenson*
Affiliation:
The School of Health and Social Welfare, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England

Extract

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The are two common replies to the question of whether carriers of genetic disorder should have children. The first simply ends any argument by claiming that everyone has an inalienable right to have children. In many ways this view is quite attractive. The right is said to be universal as well as inalienable. It avoids odious comparisons and applies to everyone, including those whom society has deemed unfit for the flimsiest reasons.

In the United Kingdom, for example, a High Court judge recently upheld the decision by Sheffield Health Authority to refuse IVF treatment to Julie Seale, who was then 36, on the grounds of her advanced age. This latest salvo in what one writer has called “the fertility war” follows on from the Grand Peninsular Campaign against IVF treatment for post-menopausal women and the recurrent guerilla battle over enforced sterilisation. As this author remarks, “What has happened without our really noticing it is that, with every new skirmish in the fertility war, we are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea that some people deserve to be parents more than others” [1]. And in an age of what is essentially payment by results, there is a great temptation for healthcare providers to think that those who deserve to be parents are those with the best clinical chances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Acta geneticae medicae et gemellologiae: twin research , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 75 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Twin Studies 1995

Footnotes

*

Paper delivered at the Symposium “Who Should Have Children and Who Should be Born”, Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, London, 31 October, 1994.

References

REFERENCES

1.Freely, M (1994): “Out for the count”. Guardian, 20 10, p. 11.Google Scholar
2.Brandt, R (1979): Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 10 ff., 153.Google Scholar
3.The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (1993): Genetic Screening, Ethical Issues. London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics, p. 3, 49.Google Scholar