On medicine, culture, and children's basic interests: a reply to three critics

Margaret Mohrmann, Paul Lauritzen, and Sumner Twiss raise questions about my account of basic interests, liberal theory, and the challenges of multiculturalism as developed in Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine. Their questions point to foundational issues regarding the justification and limitation of parental authority to make decisions on behalf of children in medical and other contexts. One of the central questions in that regard is whether adults' decisions deserve to be respected, especially when they seem contrary to a child's or adolescent's basic interests. Questions about respect, in turn, focus attention on other's decisions about what seems good for families and children, decisions that may be paternalistic or utilitarian. Such decisions are further complicated by a child's or adolescent's budding autonomy and need for respect and recognition. Pediatric bioethics grounded in an account of a child's basic interests produces a theory of negative and positive rights for assessing adults' actions in relation to children, especially (but not only) when adults demand respect in their expressions of care.