This falls in the category of bioethical fantasy rather than bioethical argument, but it was published in the respected Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. Libertarian academic Walter Block, of Loyola University, in  New Orleans, has a radical solution to the stalemate over human embryonic stem cell research. On one side, he says, pro-choice activists argue that embryos are just biological material. On the other, pro-life activists regard it as fully human.

Dr Block cuts the Gordian knot with libertarian reasoning which draws upon the work of Murray Rothbard. Yes, the foetus is indisputably a child, he says, but children are the quasi-property of their parents, who are responsible for a valuable asset which they should not mistreat, but they can dispose of.

Hence the solution: foetuses belong to the researchers provided that no one else wants to claim them as their own and raise them:

“Will the demand on the part of potential adoptive parents outstrip the supply of fetuses that can be created in the laboratory? If so, then not a single one of them will be killed, and no research will take licitly place, under the legal regime we are now considering. Or, will the ability of the medical technicians to create fetuses in this way overwhelm the willingness of adoptive parents to bring them up? If so, then some fetuses will be saved, those who are adopted, and others will be used and/or destroyed in medical research, the ones that exceed the demand of adoptive parents.” 

Dr Block acknowledges that his solution is unlikely to be very popular. ~ Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, July 11