A team of experts explore the ethics of making families through adoption or technologically assisted reproduction. They examine the moral choices involved, and the social norms that can distort decision-making, such as the norm in favour of having biologically related children, or the privileging of a traditional understanding of family.

• Introduction


• Families: Of Parents and Children 15


• 1: Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift: The Goods of Parenting


• 2: Samantha Brennan: The Goods of Childhood and Children's Rights


• Bionormativity: Philosophical and Empirical Perspectives


• 3: Charlotte Witt: A Critique of the Bionormative Concept of the Family


• 4: Lucy Blake, Martin Richards, and Susan Golombok: The Families of Assisted Reproduction and Adoption


• Becoming a Parent: Personal Choices


• 5: Christine Overall: What is the Value of Procreation?


• 6: Tina Rulli: The Unique Value of Adoption


• Becoming a Parent: State Interests


• 7: Jurgen De Wispelaere and Daniel Weinstock: State Regulation and Assisted Reproduction: Balancing the Interests of Parents and Children


• 8: Carolyn McLeod and Andrew Botterell: 'Not for the Faint of Heart': Assessing the Status Quo on Adoption and Parental Licensing


• 9: Julie Crawford: On Non-Biological Maternity, or 'My Daughter is Going to be a Father!'


• Special Responsibilities of Parents


• 10: James Lindemann Nelson: Special Responsibilities of Parents Using Technologically Assisted Reproduction


• 11: Mianna Lotz: Adoptee Vulnerability and Post-Adoptive Parental Obligation


• 12: Heath Fogg Davis: The Political Geography of Whites Adopting Black Children in the United States


• Contested Practices


• 13: Kimberly Leighton: Geneticizing the Desire to Know: Analogies to Adoption in Arguments Against Anonymous Gamete Donation


• 14: Françoise Baylis: Transnational Commercial Contract Pregnancy in India


• 15: Jennifer A. Parks: Aged Parenting Through ART and Other Means

Françoise Baylis is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University, Canada, and founder of the NovelTechEthics research team. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Her research interests are many and varied, and she has a love of thought-provoking questions. Her publications on the ethics of assisted human reproduction and human embryo research span more than thirty years. In addition to her academic research on reproductive ethics, she contributes to national policy via government research contracts, membership on national committees, and public education. This work--all of which is informed by a strong commitment to the common good--focuses largely on issues of social justice. Her website is http://noveltechethics.ca. Her blog is http://impactethics.ca.
Carolyn McLeod is Associate Professor of Philosophy, an Affiliate Member of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, and a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. Her research interests lie at the intersection of health care ethics, feminist theory, and moral theory. She has had a long-standing interest in reproductive ethics, beginning with her book, Self-Trust and Reproductive Autonomy (MIT Press, 2002). She has published on various topics in this area, including reproductive autonomy, the commodification of womens reproductive labour, and conscientious refusals by health care professionals to provide reproductive health services such as abortions. Recently, her knowledge of the ethics of having children has broadened to include issues that concern adoption. Her website is http://carolynmcleod.com.