Reason, judgement and rationality in the embryo debate

• Main Author: Mcguinness, Sheelagh
• Published: University of Manchester 2009
• Subjects: 340
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.509721

The embryo has become much more important as a concept than as the physical matter of which it is made. It is a tricky subject for discussion. It is a vague and in many ways ambiguous entity. In my analysis, rather than taking this as the conclusion for how it is we understand embryos, I have taken it as the starting point. I take a 'constructionist' approach to the embryo and tease out the ways in which the embryo can be important. The analysis focuses on two specific ways in which the embryo can be understood. The first of these is the moral significance attached to the embryo as it exists within the broader category of 'the unborn'. The second is the relationship between embryos and future people. In considering these two issues I have provided an account of how we might evaluate regulation for the 'reproductive' embryo, and provided a theoretical framework within which future analysis can take place. Any regulation of what we can do to the human embryo will often find itself based on shaky and uncertain moral and legal ground. The aim here is to take different concepts that are used in both law and ethics and seek to tie these concepts into a whole-scale picture of the embryo.