Whose Ethics? Making Reproductive Ethics More Inclusive and Just

Abstract

As the field of assisted-reproductive technology progresses, bioethicists continue to debate whether and how the availability of this technology creates new moral duties for parents-to-be. It is rare for these debates to seriously engage with questions related to race and class. Camisha Russell asks us to move race from the margins to the center of our discussions of reproductive ethics. She argues that this shift can work as a kind of corrective that will lead to better theory. In this paper, I build on Russell’s work by considering two proposals related to prenatal genetic diagnosis [PGD] that received a lot of attention and debate—Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane’s argument in favor of a “principle of procreative beneficence” and Janet Malak and Judith Daar’s argument in favor of a legal duty, in certain cases, to use PGD. My analysis of each of these arguments shows how a lack of diverse viewpoints leads to bad theory. I end the paper by showing how including a diversity of perspectives shifts our focus from rights to justice.