Is Genetic Engineering emphasis safety of a child…?

The motivation behind Montague’s concern in his paper is one of safety of children, from the obvious possible abuses of parents’, which he believes is or would be more prevalent under systems construing the relationship between parent and child in terms of parental rights. He quotes cases such as the 1982 “baby doe” case, the incident with the Branch Davidians at Waco and the “baby Jessica” adoption case as examples of the sorts of problems that can arise from a system based on parental rights. Montague says with respect to these cases that “if the parents involved in them are exercising parental rights, then it would appear that they have rights to act in ways that are detrimental to their children a result that is problematic at best.” One straightforward answer to the problem Montague raises is that in the cases he has outlined above, and in other cases of abuse and neglect, the parents may have overstepped the boundaries of their rights. Not many people would attempt to elucidate a theory of parental rights, or the parent/child relationship, where their parent had absolute and inviolable rights of the child. This view would be very similar if not identical to the ownership view that was discussed earlier and this view is one that is clearly not an appropriate model of the parent/child relationship.