Parental Obligations and Bioethics

Bernard G. Prusak is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at King’s College, USA.

• Introduction 1. What Are Parents For? A Thought Experiment 2. The Costs of Procreation 3. Abortion and the Grounds of Parental Obligations 4. Whose Child? 5. Good Enough Parenting? The Child’s Right to an Open Future and the Ethics of Prenatal Genetic Enhancement 6. Back from the Future: Paying for the Priceless Child

"This book is a valuable addition to what is already a rich philosophical literature on the question of what we owe to those we create. Throughout Prusak's style is direct, honest, engaging, and forthright."-David Archard in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "[Prusak’s] book is educational, easy to read, and gets to the heart of many very important issues in reproductive ethics."-Jake Earl’s in Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal"Prusak’s project is fundamentally philosophical in nature and will thereby enjoy wide-ranging applicability to a host of ethical issues concerning the parent-child relationship. Furthermore, in debating the particular bioethical issues Prusak discusses, scholars often presume certain parental obligations without the benefit of a cohesive theoretical framework that grounds various putative obligations. This volume thus offers a valuable contribution to bioethical debate on these and other issues that will invalidate certain argumentative strategies while affirming others."-Jason Eberl in Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities