Summary
Title: Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?
Author: Mary Warnock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192803344
Pro:
• Short book is accessible to most readers
• Introduces many important questions, issues, and themes
Con:
• None
Description:
• Examines the ethical issues behind various fertility treatments
• Explores the nature of rights in relation to morality and law
Book Review
As the power of medical technology advances, more and more difficult questions are raised about what sorts of rights to such technologies people might have. People surely have a right to basic medical care that keeps them healthy, but how far beyond this do or should their rights extend? Does the state have an obligation to pay for any and all fertility treatments? Do doctors have a professional obligation to provide fertility treatments to anyone who asks?
These are the questions addressed in Mary Warnock’s Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children? Warnock chaired the Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology, whose report formed the basis of fertility legislation in the United Kingdom, so she is an expert in the social, legal, and ethical issues behind fertility treatments. Her book, though, is not a dense philosophical or legal treatise — indeed, it’s more of an extended essay than a book, and that makes it relatively easy to read and understand.
It must be accepted at the outset that there cannot be any right for everyone to have children because, quite frankly, not everyone is physically capable of having children — not even with the most advanced fertility treatments available. There can be no “right” to something impossible. People may desperately want children, but we don’t always have a right to what we desperately want. A demand for a right is a demand for an injustice to be made just — but is it a social injustice that some cannot conceive their own children?
At the same time, though, she also argues that there are many people who should be given fertility treatments if they are willing to pay for it. She argues against many of the legal restrictions currently in place that limit who can get fertility treatments, like those against gay couples, and she argues against certain types of fertility assistance, like busy professionals freezing embryos for later implantation. Doctors should have the ability to simply say “no” in cases which they think are inappropriate — but drawing general lines that don’t allow for bigotry and prejudice is a much more difficult issue that she doesn’t entirely resolve.
Why do people get so worked up about fertility treatments? Fear.
- “I believe that we ought to face our fears and recognize them for what they are: the fear of losing our certainty about natural laws by allowing everything that is possible to be tried; and the fear of losing touch with nature as it is, of alienating ourselves from that of which we as human beings form a part. We should not deny or ridicule, or otherwise attempt to dismiss such fears.”
Warnock’s book is about the right to receive help in having children, but she ends on a more general note that should serve as a cautionary warning to anyone who focuses too much on rights:
- “If something is regarded as a right, however strongly you feel that it is something you want or need, as well as something you deserve, you may come to feel less strongly about the thing itself, as you feel more strongly that you must get your due.”
- “I would deplore any tendency for people to become so much obsessed with their right to have a child, and to have it in the way they want, even with the characteristics they would prefer, that they forget the old sense of astonishment and gratitude that came with the birth of a child. Gratitude to whom? Well, to God or nature, or the midwife or the doctor, or the principle of continuity and the renewal of life itself. It does not matter. But, as I have said, gratitude is something you do not feel when all you have got is what is owed.”
The more people are “owed” things as a “right,” the less room there is for helping someone out of altruism, compassion, and love.
Food for thought...
