Respect, regret, and reproductive choice

Respect for persons is a central element of our ordinary moral views. However, there is a growing demand to include not just normal human adults, but also animals, the environment, and other traditions, etc., and to uphold a unified account of respect that seamlessly includes all of these beings. This chapter argues that this demand is best captured not by a third-person account that grounds the requirement to respect others in an objective value the other possesses, nor in a second-person account, but if one holds that there are internal, first-person reasons to adopt an attitude of respect. This chapter further argues that such reasons can be supported by every major normative outlook, such as Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, and Deontology. The chapter considers which understanding of respect best fits our intuitions, and it then applies this view to the question of respect for intellectually disabled human beings.