In 1994, John Robertson coined the phrase “procreative
liberty.” He argued that prospective parents' autonomy should
remain as unconstrained as possible by state interference with one
proviso, namely: “procreative liberty be given presumptive priority
in all conflicts, with the burden on opponents of any particular [new
reproductive] technique to show that harmful effects from
its use justify limiting procreative choice.”1
Robertson JA. Children of Choice: Freedom and the New
Reproductive Technologies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press;
1994:16, my emphasis.
In other words, unless opponents of
procreative liberty can prove harmful effects of the use of new
reproductive technologies, state intervention is unwarranted. Similarly,
John Harris argued that reproductive choices “must be taken
seriously as moral claims.”
2 Harris J.
Sex selection and regulated hatred. Journal of Medical Ethics
2005;31:291–4 at p. 293.
According to Harris, a recent
report by the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology authority (HFEA)
did no such thing. By ruling out sex selection for reasons other than
avoiding serious sex linked disorders, they attempted to “formalise
the tyranny of the majority and to institutionalise contempt for the
principles of liberal democracy.”
3 See
note 2, Harris 2005:294.
In his paper “Parental Love and
the Ethics of Sex Selection” (the first of two on the subject),
Peter Herissone-Kelly takes a standard intuition (“the tyranny of
the majority”) about a clash between parental love and sex selection
to test whether a philosophical argument could be produced in support of
it. Thus, he develops a possible philosophical argument to support the
prescriptions by the HFEA.
