| Abstract |
Nowadays Reprogenetics using the latest technological advancements and making them available to be used by everyone, in the context of the procreative liberty and the right to procreate, has transformed procreation into a matter of choice for those who wish to have a child, offering at the same time the sense of the power to do so.
The use and application of this new genetic knowledge has contributed substantially to the establishment of new and influential ideology of parenthood, rather as a biologically imposed relationship than a social one. Through the technologies it offers, it brings about the foundation for questioning not only the limits, but the context as well, of the procreative liberty or the right to procreate, not only in a narrow legal sense, but from an ethical and especially a bioethical perspective.
Only a few of the decisions that we make, are deeply personal, and to decide to have a child carries family, religious and social weight, which most of the times is subtle and difficult to notice but nevertheless real and complicated. Thus the decision for procreation doesn’t only consist of a negative and a positive component that the law protects as a right, but it also consists of principles used to give ethical weight and foundation to that decision, as it is evaluated in the bioethical context.
Aim of this paper is to set a questioning regarding the prevailing understanding of procreation as a right, and will try to explore whether this notion renders the fact of procreation as a social practice nowadays.
First we try to set the context that this paper will discuss, and then we mention the reasons that make procreation a bioethical issue and are related to bio techonological advancements and reprogenetics.
In the first chapter we discuss the human rights concept from a philosophical perspective and their relation to the human procreation.
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This analysis discusses their function based on the will of the agent and the principles that render them as the basic element for their documentation regarding procreation. Then follows the analysis of the notion of the right to procreate from the legislative perspective, and how this is presented in the international charts that are mentioned and the national legislature, which sets limits between the positive and the negative right to procreate.
The second part of this paper, explores the bioethical weight of autonomy and other principles that are used as the ground for asserting a right to procreate, and the possibility for any decision that can be made to be justified in this context, along with other values. The importance of the non maleficience principle is fundamental to the justification of the procreational liberty, and it is discussed as it poses the limits for the action of procreation using this kind of liberty, as it brings about the factor of parental responsibility, as the catalytic factor which gives procreation the necessary legitimacy in any case.
In conclusion whenever we refer to a moral right in procreation, the fact is that we refer to the desire and the need of man to continue to exist through his descendants. The claim to satisfy such a need as a right or as an unlimited freedom, poses issues of ethical justification regarding the results it can produce, as the minimizing of chance in our life renders the evaluation of the notion of choice more necessary and an imperative, in our decision making process.
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