PHIL20401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Sperm Donation, Fetus
Document Summary
But the simple act of procreating does not worsen the fetus"s position: without procreation, the fetus wouldn"t exist at all; and the mere fact of being brought into existence is not a bad thing. To be sure, creating a human is creating someone who comes with needs. But this, crucially, is not the same as inflicting a need onto someone (see silverstein, 1987). The woman is (partially) responsible for creating a life, and it"s a life that necessarily includes needs, but that is not the same as being responsible for the person being needy rather than not. The pregnant woman has not made the fetus more vulnerable than it would otherwise have been: absent her procreative actions, it wouldn"t have existed at all. According to this view, the special responsibilities of parenthood are grounded in biological progenitorship.
