ORPHANS BY DESIGN: THE FUTURE OF GENETIC PARENTHOOD

Establishing the nature of genetic parenthood is an important task. This is, firstly, because many people desire that relationship and it is in their interest to know what that is, and secondly, because there is a view that it may incur certain moral obligations between the genetic parent and their...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bioethics 2021-01, Vol.35 (1), p.23-30
Main Author: Bowman‐Smart, Hilary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial insemination
assisted reproduction
Bioethics
Cloning
genetic parenthood
Genome editing
Genomes
Genomics
Obligations
Orphans
Parents & parenting
reproduction
Usefulness
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Summary:Establishing the nature of genetic parenthood is an important task. This is, firstly, because many people desire that relationship and it is in their interest to know what that is, and secondly, because there is a view that it may incur certain moral obligations between the genetic parent and their child. Many theorists have made attempts to define exactly what genetic parenthood is. I show that these definitions are deficient if they wish to fully capture all reproductive scenarios in ways that are intuitive and/or meaningful. Through a series of cases involving technologies such as cloning and genome editing, we see that in lieu of the traditional two parents, there are possible beings who have no genetic parents, one genetic parent, or many genetic parents. Establishing these cases complicates our understanding of genetic parenthood. From this, we must reconsider current definitions, as well as the usefulness of defining genetic parenthood in these complex cases. Here I do not aim to establish a new definition, but rather to suggest that this complexity makes it necessary to re‐assess the importance of the connection between genetic parenthood and parental obligations and authorities.
ISSN:0269-9702
1467-8519
DOI:10.1111/bioe.12828