Ethics, Sexual Orientation, and Choices About Children

Parents routinely turn to prenatal testing to screen for genetic or chromosomaldisorders or to learn their child's sex. What if they could use similar prenatal interventions tolearn (or change) their child's sexual orientation? Bioethicists have debated the moral implicationsof this still-hypothetical possibility for several decades. Some commentators fear that anyscientific efforts to understand the origins of homosexuality could mean the end of gay and lesbianpeople, if parents shy away from having homosexual children. Others defend parents' rights to choosethe traits of their children in general and see no reason to treat sexual orientation differently.In this book, Timothy Murphy traces the controversy over prenatal selection of sexual orientation,offering a critical review of the literature and presenting his own argument in favor of parents'reproductive liberty. Arguing against commentators who want to restrict the scientific study ofsexual orientation or technologies that emerge from that study, Murphy proposes a defense ofparents' right to choose. This, he argues, is the only view that helps protect children from hurtfulfamily environments, that is consistent with the increasing powers of prenatal interventions, andthat respects human futures as something other than accidents of the genetic lottery.