Department of Bioethics, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-1156, USA.
Bioethics. 2010 Nov;24(9):499-506. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2009.01732.x.
In 'Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions' Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In 'Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,' she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims that couples with an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairment. This claim, she maintains, reveals that the flourishing of a child should be understood as requiring environment-specific characteristics. I argue that McDougall's argument begs the question. More importantly, it does not do justice to virtue ethics. I also question to what extent a virtue ethics framework can be successfully applied to discussions about the moral permissibility of reproductive actions.
在《父母美德：思考生殖行为道德的新方法》一文中，罗莎琳德·麦克杜格尔提出了一个基于美德的框架来评估儿童选择的道德性。根据麦克杜格尔的说法，将基于美德的解释应用于有缺陷的儿童选择，并不会对选择有缺陷的儿童的道德性给出明确的答案。在《缺陷、繁荣和父母身份的道德本质》一文中，她也将基于美德的解释应用于儿童选择的讨论，并声称有缺陷的夫妇在选择有相同缺陷的孩子时在道德上是合理的。她坚持认为，这一说法表明，儿童的繁荣应该被理解为需要特定于环境的特征。我认为，麦克杜格尔的论点是有问题的。更重要的是，它没有公正对待美德伦理学。我也质疑在多大程度上，一个美德伦理框架可以成功地应用于关于生殖行为道德许可性的讨论。
