ABSTRACT
For the last several decades, we have had a technology to dramatically reshape the genetics of future children in ways that have significant implications for their future welfare and life options – sex selection. This chapter investigates what thinking about human enhancement through the lens of sex selection can teach us about the debate about the ethics of human enhancement. Should we consider the use of sex selection to select embryos of one sex or the other to be “human enhancement”? If not, why not? What role do intuitions about sexed bodies and normal bodies play in thinking about enhancement? What can we learn from people's intuitive resistance to the idea that we might have reasons to sex select for enhancement when it comes to the debate about the ethics of enhancement?
