Justifiable Parents

Justifiable Parents

An organ transplant is the moving of a whole or partial organ from one body to another, for the purpose of replacing the recipient's damaged or failing organ with a working one from the donor site. Organ donors can be living or deceased. Because it can save one who otherwise has little possibility of living, it is regarded as a matter of course that an organ transplant is helpful for either an individual or a society. However, because it is illicit to get compensated in exchange for organs in most countries, the supply of the organs that can be transplanted depends on donors’ favor while the demand of the organs depends on ultimate hope for living. Needless to say, the demand of the organs far outweighs the supply: the number of organs is extremely insufficient. Therefore it is difficult for patients to find matching organs that is on the donating lists. These days, in a bid to find matching organs, some parents whose child is invalid for life try new way of getting matching organs; conceiving a new child to save the old one. The endeavor is condemned by some people for a few reasons, but it is truly justifiable for parents to conceive a baby in order to save another child’s life for three reasons: the individual right of procreation, positive effects on a society, and the significance of human life. More details are as follows.

First of all, procreation is an extremely personal matter so that no one has a right to interfere in it. This is obviously guaranteed by international documents. The first international document to mention reproductive rights as a subset of human rights was the Teheran Declaration, the Final Act of the UN's international rights conference. The Proclamation states: "Parents have a basic right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and a right to adequate education and information in this respect". This right was also adopted by the UN General Assembly in the Declaration on...