If the safety and efficacy issues relating to heritable genome editing can be resolved, how should liberal democratic societies regulate the use of this technology by prospective parents who wish to effect edits to the genomes of their prospective children? We suggest that recent developments in South African law can be useful in this regard. The country's apex court recently recognized as a legal principle that the scope of possible reproductive decisions that parents may make when using new reproductive technologies excludes decisions that will cause harm to the prospective child-the principle of procreative non-maleficence. We suggest that the principle of procreative non-maleficence provides a mechanism for striking an equitable balance between two competing interests that are given legal recognition in most liberal democracies: the reproductive rights of prospective parents and the state's duty to protect child welfare.

中文翻译：

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生殖性非犯罪行为：南非关于遗传性人类基因组编辑的人权观点。

如果可以解决与可遗传基因组编辑有关的安全性和有效性问题，那么自由民主社会应如何规范希望对其准孩子的基因组进行编辑的准父母对这种技术的使用？我们建议南非法律的最新发展在这方面可能是有用的。该国最高法院最近确认了一项法律原则，即父母在使用新的生殖技术时可能做出的可能的生殖决定的范围，不包括可能对预期子女造成伤害的决定，即生殖性非恶意行为的原则。我们建议，生产性非恶意行为的原则提供了一种机制，可以在大多数自由民主国家得到法律承认的两个相互竞争的利益之间取得公平的平衡：