Are some controversial views in bioethics Juvenalian satire without irony?

Abstract

The article examines five controversial views, expressed in Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer's Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva's "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?", Julian Savulescu's "Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best children", and the author's "A rational cure for prereproductive stress syndrome". These views have similarities and differences on five levels: the grievances they raise, the proposals they make, the justifications they explicitly use, the justifications they implicitly rely on, and the criticisms that they have encountered. A comparison of these similarities and differences produces two findings. First, some controversial views based on utilitarian considerations would probably fare better flipped upside down and presented as Juvenalian satires. Secondly, a modicum of humor or modesty could help presenters of controversial views to stir polite critical discussion on the themes that they put forward.