Parental Responsibility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Abstract

Common approaches to the ethics of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) are based on the examination of whether the technology used is a help or a substitution of the conjugal act; whether it is licit or illicit. This paper instead attempts to develop a bioethical solution based on the obligations and moral responsibilities that potential and prospective parents assume when procreating; obligations to procreate and not to create; to “beget” and not to “make” children. After having discussed the principle of parental responsibility, it is contrasted with procreative liberty and procreative beneficence in prevision of any ambiguities. On the basis of the many present and future bioethical dilemmas of ARTs, I argue for the need to implement the principle of parental responsibility as a moral imperative. The main intention of the paper is to show that a principle based on moral responsibility is the only one that can save humanity from self destruction. I therefore argue for an ethics of parental responsibility in bioethics.