Ethics Essay - Rights to a child. 20th January

AO1: Explain how a follower of Kantian ethics might approach the issues surrounding the right to a child.

Immanuel Kant was a respected ethicist of the 18th Century. He is known mostly for his works on the ‘Groundwork of metaphysics of morals’ and it is within this work Kant proposes the Categorical Imperative, an absolute, deontological, objective and secular approach to making moral decisions. Kant’s theory is based on the principal that the only thing which is truly good is a good will or duty. He continues to say that we must endeavour to use our reason to ensure we have done our duty. This essay will use the principles of Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’ in order to display how a follower of Kantian ethics might approach the issues surrounding the right to a child.

A Kantian ethicist would believe that desiring a child does not make it a right as any moral decision should be made through reason and based on duty alone - not through overwhelming emotion or desire. However, this still means women have negative rights to a child as the removal of the ability to have children cannot be universalised. And so they may therefore not be seen as having natural, human or positive rights to a child.

There are many methods of having children for baron or single women, these methods surrounding a baron or single woman’s right to a child are IVF, AIH and AID.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative maintains three formulations. One of these formulations being “Act so that you treat humanity, both in your own person and that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.” This formulation implies that, one method of acquiring a child - IVF - is not acceptable under his ethical theory as the process involves fertilising many eggs