Utilitarianism And a Right To a Child

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Since 1978 there have been over 30,000 test tube babies. This is because the technology that can read the genetic code of an embryo has become widely available. There are several reasons why this is so useful, an obvious reason is that you can select embryo’s that do not have genetic disorders to implant into the womb, there are several other reasons, medical and non-medical, each with different complications and rarely one case is the same. Jeremy Bentham founded utilitarianism in the enlightenment in the 1800’s, it’s an ethical theory that has changed an adapted over the years, and recent utilitarian’s have named different Utilitarian’s under separate sub-categories. For example Jeremy Bentham is now known as an act utilitarian. The theory of Utilitarianism is Teleogical, the word derives from the Greek word “telos” (the end) hence it being a teleogical theorem implies that it is more bothered with the outcome, or consequence, rather than the action itself. Therefore, this supports the idea of Genetic Modification and IVF, because the end goal is that the chance to a healthy life is better than an unhealthy unhappy life, which may be the case otherwise. Furthermore, this agrees with another strong view Bentham proposed, that Utilitarianism should be Hedonistic. This means that humans are constantly desiring to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This can be taken in two very different ways in terms of IVF. Seeing as the success rate is so low then couples may only have enough money to have three attempts there is a 40% chance that from these attempts they will still not have a child. Imagine the pain and anguish when you have spent all of your earnings and you still do not have a healthy child. Another view is that the child will bring pleasure and should therefore go for it. It all depends on your estimate for whether it will bring pleasure or not. Bentham
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