Douglas Thomas, Devolder Katrien
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Littlegate House, St Ebbes Street, Oxford OX1 1PT, UK.
J Med Philos. 2013 Aug;38(4):400-19. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jht022.
Existing debate on procreative selection focuses on the well-being of the future child. However, selection decisions can also have significant effects on the well-being of others. Moreover, these effects may run in opposing directions; some traits conducive to the well-being of the selected child may be harmful to others, whereas other traits that limit the child's well-being may preserve or increase that of others. Prominent selection principles defended to date instruct parents to select a child, of the possible children they could have, likely to have a good (or nonbad) life, but they do not instruct parents to independently take the well-being of others into account. We refer to these principles as individualistic selection principles. We propose a new selection principle-Procreative Altruism-according to which parents have significant moral reason to select a child whose existence can be expected to contribute more to (or detract less from) the well-being of others than any alternative child they could have. We present the case for adopting Procreative Altruism alongside any of the major individualistic selection principles proposed to date and defend this two-principle model against a range of objections.
现有的关于生育选择的争论聚焦于未来孩子的福祉。然而，选择决定也可能对他人的福祉产生重大影响。此外，这些影响可能方向相反；一些有利于被选中孩子福祉的特质可能对他人有害，而其他限制孩子福祉的特质可能会维护或增加他人的福祉。迄今为止所捍卫的突出选择原则指导父母在他们可能生育的孩子中选择一个可能拥有美好生活（或非糟糕生活）的孩子，但它们并未指导父母独立考虑他人的福祉。我们将这些原则称为个人主义选择原则。我们提出了一种新的选择原则——生育利他主义——根据这一原则，父母有重要的道德理由选择一个其存在有望比他们可能生育的任何其他孩子对他人的福祉做出更多贡献（或造成更少损害）的孩子。我们阐述了在采用迄今为止提出的任何主要个人主义选择原则的同时采纳生育利他主义的理由，并针对一系列反对意见为这种双原则模式进行辩护。
