Response

James Rachels' main line of argument seems aimed at responding to the objection that to conceive a child for the purpose of creating a matching bone-marrow donor is to treat a child as a means to our ends rather than as an end in itself, which is morally unacceptable.

To answer this objection, Rachels ultimately tries to show that our reasons for having children are morally irrelevant, and that the Kantian principle invoked to criticize the Ayalas' reason for conceiving their second child should be rejected. ¹ Rachels begins by pointing out that people throughout the ages have had a variety of reasons, many of them less than noble, for having children. His comment: "That's the way life is." He uses no moral terms in his description: "None of this is strange or unusual."

If there is an argument here, it could be read two ways. On the first reading, Rachels' claim would be that because everyone has always had these sorts of (selfish, instrumentalizing) reasons for having children, having children for these reasons is therefore morally acceptable--a non sequitur at worst; an argument for moral acceptability from social consensus at best. Rachels' point might be that the fact that we do not condemn others for having children for instrumentalizing reasons indicates our implicit rejection of the Kantian principle. But it might also indicate our inconsistent application of it, which could in principle be remedied. Thus, the second reading would be that we have not appropriately singled out this case, and this reason, for moral disapprobation, from the many other cases (less public ones perhaps) that resemble it morally.

This second reading might prompt us to go back to response one, and decide not to morally disapprove of anyone's reasons for having children (because those reasons are morally irrelevant, not merely because they are private); this is the option Rachels apparently favors. On the other hand, however, it might prompt us to conclude that many more parenting decisions ought to be examined more closely, and perhaps fall under the same judgment as was given the Ayalas.

Although Rachels does not even countenance this option, much less recommend it, there are reasons to think it might be worth considering, especially now. We live in an age where parenthood is fundamentally understood in terms of parents' choices and is largely assumed to be under our control (we decide whether to have a child, and when, and how many, and whose gametes, and what diseases we will screen for, and even which sex, etc.). The idea that children are a gift to be accepted and received is either dismissed as quaint or forgotten altogether.

As I understand him, Rachels' point is to reject the Kantian principle altogether, for he clearly favors the option mentioned above that we not condemn the Ayalas among the many persons having children for their own purposes, as neither do we pass negative judgments on the others. The difficulty is that he does not give any reason to reject the principle other than pointing out that most people frequently ignore it in practice (or at best inconsistently apply it). But it does not follow from the fact that many people do not obey a rule that the rule is specious or ought not to be a rule (consider how frequently people lie, for example). In fact, using our current practices as the criterion of the acceptability of moral principles seems like a good way to eliminate morality altogether!

But his more fundamental point, I think, is not so much that we are using the wrong moral principle to judge our reasons for having children, but that we should not be judging our reasons for having children at all. This becomes clear when we consider that both of his key rhetorical questions at the end of the selection are meant to sufficiently cover the 'real ethical issues' at stake and that both ignore completely the reason for having...