Is creating a baby as a means to saving another human right or wrong? The question of “savior siblings” seems to be a question within the domain of normative ethics. The science around this question might help frame the issue by assessing things like harm, risk, or feasibility, but it does little to adjudicate the “rightness” or “wrongness.” In what follows, I will explicate an argument for the rightness of savior siblings proposed by Michelle Taylor-Sands (Savior Siblings and Collective Family Interests), which might be analyzed further as an argument from “special” obligations. Although I think Taylor-Sands has the right approach by investigating the nature of obligations, I think she comes to the wrong conclusion; in effect, my aim is to argue against the sort of “rightness” of savior sibling proposed by Taylor-Sands.

Let us begin with a (fairly crude) outline of Taylor-Sands’ argument. She pushes back on harm arguments that savior siblings are harmed in one way or another, and that therefore the creation of savior siblings is wrong. develops her argument by basing welfare on human flourishing and drawing a picture of how a child’s welfare is “inextricably connected” (122) to the general welfare of the family unit. With these pieces in place, she can argue that a savior sibling is engaging in a shared familial project to save another family member.

This is all very quick, so let us further dissect what the relevant moral players in Taylor-Sands’ argument. First, there is a dilemma: we have a positive duty to help sick children (especially if it is your child), but we also have a negative duty (ceteris paribus) to not cause harm. Here are the popular ways of dealing with this dilemma: (1) argue that the negative duty (tout court) to cause harm outweighs the positive duty to help (or argue vice versa), (2) argue savior siblings are not harmed and that there is no dilemma, or (3) argue that the consequences of subscribing to one duty permissibly outweigh the other duty (and its consequences). Second, Taylor-Sands argues that the “we” in the dilemma is not restricted to the parents but also includes the savior sibling. This is important because it might dissolve the second horn of the dilemma by shifting the “harm to others” to “harm to oneself”; as such, the issue becomes a matter of self-sacrifice on the part of the savior sibling for the sake of helping a sick sibling. Third, to establish that the “we” in the dilemma includes the savior sibling, Taylor-Sands provides a story about how the welfare (construed as general “flourishing” (126-128)) of the savior sibling is tied to their family.

Grounding duties within the family unit is to say that there are duties which apply to a “special” subset of people, namely, family members. We have duties we owe to all people, say, not to cause harm; however, we often say we have a “special” duty to (say) look after our elderly parents. Taylor-Sands thinks that savior siblings have these sorts of duties to their siblings (and obliquely to their parents). The general content of these duties all relate to promote the flourishing of the family which consequently benefits all family members. Taylor-Sands thinks that since savior siblings are the savior sibling’s welfare is “inextricably connected” to the welfare of the family, the savior sibling would obviously want to further the welfare of the family. There are two questions I would like to raise which point to some problematic areas of this story: first, is the savior sibling’s welfare really inextricably linked to the family’s welfare; and, a second related question, by merely speculating on what the savior sibling would do, is there a worry about the savior sibling’s autonomy?

I am sympathetic to Taylor-Sands’ approach to this topic of savior siblings, but I think she makes a mistake by grounding special obligations in mutual welfare. Barring this issue, we might still have a picture of a savior sibling’s defeasible (or pro tanto) duty to their family, but we need some further motivation or justification for believing that these duties hamper autonomy for the right reasons. Perhaps a better “relational” model might not need to appeal to mutual welfare. It might say that the duties we have to our family members are primary and more familiar to us than natural duties (i.e. duties we owe to everyone and which we have no say in accepting or denying).