Summary Of Failure Of Imagination By Marta Soniewicka

As technology has advanced, so has society’s access to said technology. In turn, ethical dilemmas arise, one of those dilemmas being the ethics of prenatal testing and selective abortion. Author Marta Soniewicka writes her academic journal, “Failure of Imagination: Disability and the Ethics of Selective reproduction,” to examine and dismantle leading arguments in the the discussion. With esteemed credentials, Soniewicka uses pathos and logos to strengthen her position that human life cannot be diminished to utility like facts and that all human nature must be taken into account.

Marta Soniewicka attended the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland where she earned her Doctorate of Laws. As well, she is a PhD candidate in philosophy and assistant

Backed by numerous experiences in the field and high credentials, Soniewicka is well equipped to speak on the subject of the ethics of prenatal testing and selective abortion.

Where Soniewicka spends the majority of her writing is within the use of logos. Within her journal she breaks down four leading arguments in the selective abortion bioethical debate: utilitarian, principle of procreative beneficence, the rights based approach, and the recognition based approach (Soniewicka 2015). She provides clear and concise explanations that make following her line of thought easy. One such example is her refutation of the utilitarian belief that parents owe a moral obligation to ensure the maximum happiness possible for future children. She explains that like the utilitarian name suggests, utilitarians rely on the assumption that human life is a utility, or in other words a tool that either enhances or limits one’s and the population’s position within society (Soniewicka 2015). One way Soniewicka refutes this idea

She does so by using descriptive words as well as metaphors and real life experiences. In one instance she compares the utilitarian mindset that human life is a utility to the conflict of saving a drowning person, a metaphor first suggested by ASSGSSDF. According Soniewicka’s explanation of utilitarian principles, saving a two legged person would be the better option than saving a one legged person as the non-disabled person would have a higher probability of happiness, which of course illustrates the lack of correlation between utilitarian arguments and actual human behavior (Soniewicka 2015) making her argument strong. However, as is the case with any metaphor, a metaphor is never exactly the same as the situation at hand, so one could just as easily point out the distinction between living persons and two potential persons, which instead of strengthening her argument could actually weaken it. Soniewicka also sparingly applies real life experiences into her argument. For example, she quotes akfskfksd and his story of how his mother did not wish for him to be gay because she did not believe that would be the happiest course in life for him, however he also says that just as well she did not want to be the mother of a gay son (Soniewicka 2015). This strengthens her argument of how happiness is not so easily determined and how parents may be thinking more of their