Human Cloning and moral status of a child…

Noggle and Brennan in ‘The moral status of children’ suggest that there are three commonsense claims about children’s moral status. These claims are “that children deserve the same moral consideration as adults, that they can nevertheless be treated differently from adults, and that parents have limited authority to direct their upbringing. This and I agree with Noggle and Brennan here does encompass what could be considered to be the commonsense conception of the principles that outline the parent/child relationship, like Noggle and Brennan however, I also acknowledge that there are some problems and inconsistencies with this common sense approach.

Alone the three claims outlined by Noggle and Brennan, appear to be valid, it is only when that are placed together that they become problematic. The first question I want to ask about this commonsense view is can any of the three claims stand alone as workable models for the parent child relationship. The answer in the case of the first claim, the equal consideration thesis is no, as this model is very similar to the ‘miniature adult model’ put forward by Scales. Any model based around this sole claim will fail, because even though the claim itself is indisputable, the breadth of the claim is not. It is implausible to suggest that children have the same rights and same access to those rights that is enjoyed by adults for reasons outlined when the miniature adult model was discussed.