Making Babies Is There a Right to Have Children [Paperback]

Is there a such thing as a universal right to have children? Should medical assistance to have children be available to everyone? Are all methods of assisted reproduction legitimate?
Mary Warnock steers a clear path through the web of complex issues underlying these questions. She analyzes what it means to claim something as a right, examines the ethical problems faced by particular types of assisted reproduction, including artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, and surrogacy, and argues that in the future human cloning may well become a viable and acceptable form of treatment for some types of infertility.

Introduction
Techniques of assisted reproduction
Who pays?
The right that no stone should be left unturned
What constitutes a right?
Do people need to have children?
A further look at the question of whether there can exist a right to do what is morally wrong
The moral status of the human embryo
Back to infertility
2. May doctors refuse treatment?
The slippery slope
Are those who are not infertile entitled to assisted conception?
Openness
Why do homosexuals want children?
The natural and the unnatural
The search for security
Is fear a proper basis for moral judgement?
Conslusions so far
Are all methods of fertility treatment legitimate?
Cloning: 1997-2001

Mary Warnock'swork in academic philosophy includes the booksImagination,Memory, andExistentialism. Much of her career was spent at Oxford University, and she was later Mistress of Girton College Cambridge. She was made a life peer in 1985, and chaired the Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology, whose report formed the basis of legislation in the United Kingdom. Her most recent book is her autobiography,Mary Warnock: A Memoir.