Reproductive Ethics

Thinking with Cases is an open, case-based introduction to bioethics designed for undergraduate and pre-professional courses—particularly in nursing and the health sciences, though accessible to any reader coming to the field for the first time. An opening chapter develops the conceptual toolkit such courses require: the four principles of biomedical ethics (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice), the major moral theories that stand behind them, the history of informed consent and human-subjects protection from Nuremberg through the Belmont Report, and the practical (...) skill of reconstructing an argument to locate the single premise in dispute. Twelve true case studies then put those tools to work, ranging across the field's classic and contemporary controversies: Dax Cowart's demand to refuse life-saving burn treatment; the Tuskegee and Guatemala syphilis studies; the He Jiankui CRISPR twins; conscientious refusal and provision in post-Dobbs medicine; racial bias in a widely used medical algorithm; the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Skrmetti; and the first transplant of a genetically modified pig heart into a living human. Each case presents opposing positions in their strongest form, reconstructs the central arguments in standard form, and closes on an open question rather than a verdict—inviting students to reach and defend their own judgments. The book is released as an open educational resource under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license, free to read, adapt, and teach from. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between existence, economic conditioning, and reproductive responsibility. It argues that the obligation to earn, compete, produce, and survive within economic systems is not an intrinsic feature of existence itself but a consequence of historically developed social arrangements. Human beings enter a world whose economic, political, cultural, and institutional structures predate their birth and were not chosen by them. Consequently, many burdens commonly regarded as personal responsibilities originate in inherited systems rather than in existence itself. The (...) paper further argues that reproduction entails ethical responsibility because it introduces a new consciousness into pre-existing conditions that the future individual neither chooses nor consents to. Through a phenomenological and existential analysis, the study explores how economic conditioning, parental projection, and inherited social structures transform existence into an obligation imposed upon individuals after birth. (shrink)

此論文主要目標是探索若望保祿教宗婚姻哲學。婚姻哲學是對婚姻本質及其終極原則的批判性反思。從我們人類的經歷來看，只有人才結婚。 為什麼？如果人類區別於其他生物的是理性，那麼婚姻與人類的理性有關係嗎？是否可推論婚姻是理性現象，而不僅是一種社會習俗還是法律的製定？為此，在於此論文重要的是要探索什麼可以說是婚姻哲學。.

If parents are choosing their children’s genes, there is a chance that they will all try to have healthy, long-lived, handsome, and intelligent children. While many have advertised a world of “perfect babies” as a utopia, to some critics the loss of diversity involved would be a disaster. This chapter distinguishes between different sorts of diversity, different putative beneficiaries of the existence of diversity, and different reasons for believing diversity to be valuable. Sparrow argues that the threat posed to valuable (...) kinds of diversity by gene editing is less than critics often fear. He suggests that, where gene editing _does_ pose a plausible threat to a valuable kind of diversity, it _might_ be reasonable to limit the use of gene editing as long as conserving or securing diversity does not require sacrificing the welfare of any individual too much. (shrink)

Genetic enhancement technologies are rapidly evolving, but discussions about their use for human enhancement are largely abstract and removed from the socioeconomic environments in which they would be administered. While some scholars engage in discussions about the fairness of distributing genetic enhancements, I argue that the oppressive social structures in which genetic enhancements will be administered categorically undermine our capacities to autonomously value and pursue such technologies. I will draw on long-standing feminist debates around the oppressive and empowering uses of (...) cosmetic enhancements by women to argue that the oppressive nature of patriarchal beauty norms creates a social environment in which women are generally not free to autonomously evaluate their desires for and values of cosmetic enhancements. I then address the concern that declaring such a proposition is itself an unethical restriction on women’s autonomy and that cosmetic enhancements are generally, or presumptively, empowering. I conclude that, like cosmetic enhancements, genetic enhancements are morally harmful insofar as they are not categorically autonomously valued by people. (shrink)

Public defenses of abortion rights frequently rely on characterising early embryos as “just clumps of cells,” invoking a notion of moral thinness to reject compelled gestation and protect bodily autonomy. This abstraction, however, has been quietly repurposed within assisted reproductive technologies — especially in vitro fertilisation (IVF) — to morally sanitise the bulk production, selection, cryogenic storage, and routine destruction of embryos. -/- This paper argues that moral thinness, originally deployed to resist bodily conscription, has been illicitly converted into a (...) permissive solvent for reproductive industrialisation. By examining the telos of blastocyst creation in IVF, I distinguish between permissibility grounded in non-coercion and permissibility grounded in instrumentalisation. Drawing on feminist bioethics, Kantian anti-instrumentalisation ethics, and social theories of stratified reproduction, I contend that IVF is not merely an extension of natural conception but a biotechnical production system whose normalisation embeds an entitlement-based grammar of reproduction. -/- I conclude that opposition to compelled gestation does not entail a moral right to the industrial manufacture of genetically specific offspring, and that reproductive freedom can be coherently defended while remaining critical of reproductive bioproduction systems that convert human generation into inventory management. (shrink)

Reprogenetic technologies, which combine the power of reproductive techniques with the tools of genetic science and technology, promise prospective parents a remarkable degree of control to pick and choose the likely characteristics of their offspring. Not only can they select embryos with or without particular genetically-related diseases and disabilities but also choose embryos with non-disease related traits such as sex. -/- Prominent authors such as Agar, Buchanan, DeGrazia, Green, Harris, Robertson, Savulescu, and Silver have flocked to the banner of reprogenetics. (...) For them, increased reproductive choice and reduced suffering through the elimination of genetic disease and disability are just the first step. They advocate use of these technologies to create beings who enjoy longer and healthier lives, possess greater intellectual capacities, and are capable of more refined emotional experiences. Indeed, Harris and Savulescu in particular take reprogenetic technologies to be so valuable to human beings that they have insisted that their use is not only morally permissible but morally required. -/- Rethinking Reprogenetics challenges this mainstream view with a contextualised, gender-attentive philosophical perspective. De Melo-Martín demonstrates that you do not have to be a Luddite, social conservative, or religious zealot to resist the siren song of reprogenetics. Pointing out the flawed nature of the arguments put forward by the technologies' proponents, Rethinking Reprogenetics reveals the problematic nature of the assumptions underpinning current evaluations of these technologies and offers a framework for a more critical and sceptical assessment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe and Casey, in conjunction with multiple states’ decisions to ban abortion, reflects an implicit view of moral responsibility for fetal welfare. Utilizing Rivka Weinberg’s Hazmat Theory of parental responsibility, along with Daniel Groll’s principled defense of sperm donation, I explain why appeals to bodily autonomy don’t provide refuge for sperm donors seeking to avoid moral or legal liability for abortions and that the overturning of pro-choice precedents (...) like Roe and Casey enhances the moral and legal responsibilities and liabilities not only of persons with uteruses, but also persons with sperm. (shrink)

STUDY QUESTION: Can large language models (LLMs) effectively and safely perform ethical counseling on human reproduction in a manner consistent with local regulations? -/- SUMMARY ANSWER: While leading LLMs demonstrate foundational knowledge of ethical regulations, they exhibit critical and systemic deficiencies in safety, logical consistency, and humanistic aspects of counseling, making them unreliable for autonomous use in this high-stakes domain. -/- WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: The application of LLMs in medicine is rapidly expanding, with studies evaluating their capabilities in answering (...) general reproductive health questions. However, there is a lack of research assessing their performance on the nuanced and culturally specific challenges of reproductive ethics counseling, particularly concerning their safety and reliability under a given national regulatory framework. -/- STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: This was a comparative observational study evaluating the performance of eight prominent LLMs on a custom-designed test set. The evaluation was based on 986 questions (906 subjective, 80 objective) generated from 168 specific articles within Chinese reproductive ethics regulations. -/- PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: We evaluated eight LLMs, including both general-purpose models (e.g., GPT-4, Claude-3.7) and specialized domestic models. The test questions were systematically generated based on articles from six official Chinese ethical and regulatory documents covering assisted reproductive technologies. Objective questions were multiple-response items requiring the selection of all correct options. Subjective responses were evaluated using a novel six-dimensional scoring rubric that assessed safety (Normative Compliance, Guidance Safety) and counseling quality (Ethical Issue Identification, Citation of Ethical Guidelines, Provision of Actionable Suggestions, and Empathetic Engagement). -/- MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: The LLMs exhibited a clear performance hierarchy, with larger models generally achieving higher accuracy on objective questions (highest: 71.25%, lowest: 22.5%). However, significant safety issues were prevalent; the risk rate of providing unsafe or misleading advice in subjective questions was substantial for several models, reaching as high as 29.91%. Across all eight models, a systemic weakness was observed: performance in citing normative sources and expressing empathy was universally poor, even among the top-scoring models. Furthermore, the evaluation revealed instances of anomalous moral reasoning, including logical self-contradictions and responses that violated fundamental moral intuitions, indicating a superficial, pattern-based understanding rather than robust ethical reasoning. -/- LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: This study's evaluation is based on Chinese ethical regulations, which may not fully reflect the training data distribution of non-domestic LLMs. The quality of the LLM-generated test questions, while systematically controlled, may have inherent limitations. The automated scoring model for subjective responses, despite its high accuracy (88.5%), is not a perfect substitute for human expert evaluation. -/- WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: The findings serve as a critical cautionary note against the premature deployment of LLMs for autonomous ethical counseling in reproductive medicine. The study highlights that current models, despite their knowledge recall capabilities, lack the safety, consistency, and humanistic skills essential for this sensitive task. Future development must prioritize not only knowledge accuracy but also robust logical reasoning, the integration of regulatory justification, and the ability for empathetic engagement to build trustworthy and effective AI counseling tools. -/- STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S): This study was supported by the Young Scholars Program of the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 22CZX019) and the China NSFC Projects (No. 62572320 & No. U23B2018). -/- TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: N/A. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the philosophical consistency of the term “three-parent babies,” which is often used to describe children born through mitochondrial replacement therapy. I will argue that two primary arguments, based respec-tively on identity and causality, fail to excludeegg donors as candidates as mor-al parents due to their essential contribution to the child’s existence (moral parenthood encompasses a set of rights and responsibilities that are not direct-ly regulated by a legal system). Finally, I shall show how the potential (...) extension of parental status to donors is conceivable, relying on the concept of “investment” in the procreative dynamic, and a conventional and institutional conception of parenthood. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time. By Kathy Charmaz.

Assisted reproductive technologies have greatly increased our control over reproductive choices, leading some bioethicists to argue that we face unprecedented moral obligations towards progeny. Several models attempting to balance the principle of procreative autonomy with these obligations have been proposed. The least demanding is the minimal threshold model (MTM), according to which every reproductive choice is permissible, except creating children whose lives will not be worth living. Hence, as long as the future child is likely to have a life worth (...) living, prospective parents may be allowed to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select embryos with genetic diseases or disabilities. Assuming a consequentialist person‐affecting view of morality, this paper investigates whether the MTM is an appropriate tool to guide procreative decisions given the continuous development of reproductive genetic technologies. In particular, I consider germline genome editing (GGE) and I argue that its application in human reproduction, unlike PGD, should be conceived as person‐affecting towards future progeny. I claim that even if we assume the plausibility of the MTM within PGD, we are committed to accepting that a greater moral obligation towards progeny should guide procreative decisions if GGE were available. In this case, the MTM should no longer be considered an appropriate instrument to guide procreative choices. Finally, I investigate when we face this greater moral obligation, concluding that it applies only when prospective parents have already engaged in the in vitro fertilization process. (shrink)

This book presents a groundbreaking analysis of the anticipatory ethical issues associated with human genetic enhancement. It provides instructive clarifications for understanding the philosophy and science behind this long-standing bioethical debate, and identifies how genetic enhancement may impact the moral codes of future societies. Part 1 examines the historical, conceptual, scientific, and ethical challenges related to human genetic enhancement. The Interlude introduces the emerging philosophical debate on technomoral change. Part 2 addresses reproductive choice, genetic justice, and equal treatment to illustrate (...) how enhancement technologies may alter future social morality. Finally, the book explores the anticipatory governance of genetic enhancement, qualifying the necessity and limitations of public engagement, identifying different types of epistemic and moral uncertainties, and offering meta-normative recommendations for public policy. Genetic Enhancement and Technomoral Change will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in bioethics, philosophy of technology, and anticipation studies of science and technology. (shrink)

In this short paper, I detail a case against Dr Guido Pennings’s latest publication in the Journal of Medical Ethics, titled ’The moral obligation to have genetically related children”. I argue that Pennings, despite raising awareness of issues of bioethical and scientific import, fatally neglects to interact with a central debate in reproductive ethics: the non-identity problem (NIP). Taking the NIP seriously, we can see that the moral obligation that Pennings argues for falls victim to the same kinds of issues (...) as the principle of procreative beneficence, which Pennings also cites. This response then considers the possibility of damaging upshots if Pennings’s arguments were read uncritically. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the psychological development of deaf children. Because the majority of young deaf children (especially those with non-signing parents) are reared in language-impoverished environments, their social and cognitive development may differ markedly from hearing children. The author here details those potential differences, giving special attention to how the psychological development of deaf children is affected by their interpersonal communication with parents, peers, and teachers. This careful and balanced consideration of existing evidence and research (...) provides a new psychological perspective on deaf children and deafness while debunking a number of popular notions about the hearing impaired. In light of recent findings concerning manual communication, parent-child interactions, and intellectual and academic assessments of hearing-impaired children, the author has forged an integrated understanding of social, language, and cognitive development as they are affected by childhood deafness. Empirical evaluations of deaf children's intellectual and academic abilities are stressed throughout. The Psychological Development of Deaf Children will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers studying deafness and how it relates to speech and hearing; developmental, social, and cognitive psychology; social work; and medicine. (shrink)

Beliefs about the moral status of children have changed significantly in recent decades in the Western world. At the same time, knowledge about likely consequences for children of individual, parental, and societal choices has grown, as has the array of choices that (prospective) parents may have at their disposal. The intersection between these beliefs, this new knowledge, and these new choices has created a minefield of expectations from parents and a seemingly ever-expanding responsibility towards their children. Some of these new (...) challenges have resulted from progress in genetics and neuroscience. It is these challenges that we focus on in this introduction and volume. (shrink)

Some of the most widely accepted arguments in favour of abortion seem to undermine the view that infanticide is impermissible. In this paper, I outline a proposal that addresses this issue, arguing that the impermissibility of infanticide can be defended in a way that is consistent with traditional arguments in favour of abortion. I argue that killing an infant would violate its bodily rights, and so there are strong presumptive reasons against infanticide. I further argue that fetuses do not have (...) bodily rights, and so these same reasons cannot be used to defend the impermissibility of abortion. To support this argument, I first suggest some ways in which killing someone requires violating their bodily rights. I then argue that bodily rights begin at birth, and so infants have bodily rights, but fetuses do not. When taken together with the traditional arguments in favour of abortion, this proposal suggests an important result in the abortion debate: there are philosophical grounds for defending both the permissibility of abortion and the impermissibility of infanticide. (shrink)

The present war in Ukraine has seen millions of women flee as refugees, while martial law forbids adult men under 60 from leaving the country. According to various reports, many and perhaps most women Ukrainian refugees are breaking romantic ties with the men they leave behind, building new lives with men in their countries of refuge, and/or planning never to return. I avoid any comment about the morality of these events and instead take up the general question of whether women (...) war refugees have any obligations of “connubial loyalty” to their menfolk in circumstances where those men are discharging a moral obligation to fight in the war that precipitated their womenfolk's flight in the first place. I answer that they do. (shrink)

Since the early 1990s, one of the most prominent objections to the use of prenatal or pre-implantation testing to prevent the birth of children with disabilities has focused on the negative judgments it expresses to and about existing persons with disabilities. Commonly known as the expressivist objection, it is based on the conjunction of two key claims: (1) the use or provision of tests to select against disability in offspring expresses negative judgments about existing persons with disabilities; and (2) the (...) expression of these judgments itself constitutes a wrong to those persons. Despite depending on both claims, however, philosophical discussion of the expressivist objection has largely centred on the first: while commentators continue to debate whether disability screening does or does not express negative judgments, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining how the expression of those judgements wrongs persons with disabilities. In this paper, I argue both that whether or not the expressivist objection succeeds will ultimately depend on whether a plausible explanation can be supplied for how persons with disabilities are wronged by the expression of negative judgments, and that the existing literature surrounding relational egalitarianism can provide such an explanation, albeit with important limitations. (shrink)

I defend a novel account of the wrong of subjecting people to non-consensual sterilization (NCS), particularly in the context of the state-sponsored eugenics programmes once prevalent in the United States. What makes the eugenic practice of NCS distinctively wrong, I claim, is its dehumanizing core: the fact that it is tantamount to treating people as nonhuman animals, thereby expressing the degrading social meaning that they have the value of animals. The practice of NCS is prima facie seriously wrong partly, but (...) crucially, on these grounds. I consider and reject accounts of the wrong of NCS that make no reference to its animalizing character, such as that it violates victims’ (procreative) autonomy, amounts to treating them merely as a means, inflicts psychological harm on them, or constitutes an affront to their human dignity. My discussion suggests that the critical vocabulary of bioethics should be expanded beyond talk of rights-violations, benefits and harms, and equal treatment—and that the language of dehumanization is indispensable to bioethicists. (shrink)

Preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders (PGT-P) has been commercially available since 2019. PGT-P makes use of polygenic risk scores for conditions which are multifactorial and are significantly influenced by environmental and lifestyle factors. If current predictions are accurate, then absolute risk reductions range from about 0.02% to 10.1%, meaning that between 10 and 5,000 in vitro fertilization patients would need to be tested with PGT-P to prevent one offspring from becoming affected in the future, depending on the condition and (...) the number of embryos available. Survey and interview data reveal that patients and the public have largely favorable views regarding the use of PGT-P for disease prevention; however, clinicians and professional organizations have many reservations. The use of PGT-P raises multiple social and ethical concerns including the need for adequate counseling, the setting of realistic expectations, the application of distributive justice, the impact of environmental and social determinants of health, and the potential exacerbation of health inequities. Clinicians expressed significant concerns relating to the cost of PGT-P, the potential time-consuming counseling for reproductive endocrinologists and genetic counselors, the intentional creation of supernumerary embryos, and patients’ unrealistic expectations regarding “healthiest disease-free” embryos. Furthermore, current evidence lacks long-term outcome data and generalizability. Prior to offering PGT-P to patients, additional clinical validation studies are needed. Also, ethical and social considerations raised by PGT-P should be carefully delineated. Systemic practices to increase equitable access to unbiased genetic counseling and reproductive services would be desirable prior to the ethical implementation of PGT-P. (shrink)

This Open Access book is about the risks and the ethics of human germline gene editing, i.e., the possibility to make heritable changes to the DNA of early human embryos or germ cells. Is there something particularly morally problematic about editing the human germline? Is there something unique about germline editing, and, if so, does this suggest that we ought not to edit the human germline, or only in particular circumstances or for particular purposes? What would be a wise and (...) responsible approach to editing the human germline from a moral perspective? The book has three broad aims. First, to present an inclusive map over the current scholarly debate on the ethics of human germline gene editing. Second, to provide a philosophical and critical guide to the various ideas and arguments in this debate. Third, to apply an ethics of risk perspective and defend a morally cautious position on human germline gene editing. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the ethical concerns that may arise from the synthesis of human DNA. To date, only small stretches of DNA have been constructed, but the prospect of generating human genomes is becoming feasible. At the same time, the significance of genes for identity, health and reproduction is coming under increased scrutiny. We examine the implications of DNA synthesis and its impact on debates over the relationship with our DNA and the ownership of our genes, its potential (...) to disrupt common understandings of reproduction and privacy, and the way in which synthetic DNA challenges traditional associations between genes and identity. We explore the degree to which synthetic DNA may further undermine overgeneticised accounts of identity, health, reproduction, parenthood and privacy that are prevalent in the public domain and in some areas of policy-making. While avoiding making normative claims of our own, we conclude that there is a need for reflection on the ethical implications of these developing technologies before they are on us. (shrink)

A practical guide for fellow lawyers to navigate international ART law.

This paper analyzes and evaluates Benatar's influential thesis on pessimism, which claims that life has no meaning and is one of the premises for anti-natalism. Benatar's main point is that the human condition is, in fact, a tragic predicament. Benatar argues that although limited meaning is attainable, life has no meaning from a cosmic perspective, and our lives do not possess the cosmic significance we seek. He argues that since humans have no purpose for being created and there is no (...) cosmic purpose in the lives of individual humans, human life has no meaning sub specie aeternitatis. Nihilism about cosmic meaning is the bad news. Furthermore, human life is bad because the quality of life is poor, and death is also bad because it annihilates the individual. He argues that most people's subjective assessments of their quality of life are unreliable due to psychological phenomena such as optimism bias, adaptation, and comparison with others. According to him, human life is actually full of bad things, and regardless of which theory of well-being one chooses, even the best quality of life is very poor due to empirical asymmetry. I object to Benetar's argument that life has no meaning from a cosmic perspective. Because, even when interpreted charitably, his argument is invalid, inconsistent, unclear, has odd implications, and is counterintuitive. I argue that evaluating life from a cosmic perspective is irrational. I also contend that there is no evidence that humans desire cosmic meaning, and that the meaning of life does not depend on meaning sub specie aeternitatis. Furthermore, I argue that the three psychological phenomena Benatar mentions do not threaten the reliability of quality of life assessments, and there is no empirical evidence to support his claims. Instead, I provide evidence that subjective assessments of quality of life can be trusted. Additionally, I argue that the claim that life is full of bad things is exaggerated and based on inappropriate evaluation standards. And I argue that empirical asymmetries cannot support the conclusion that human life is actually bad. My conclusion is that Benatar's attempt to explain cosmic insignificance and his claim that life is actually bad both fail. In other words, humans are not in a tragic predicament as Benatar suggests. (shrink)

A growing number of states have banned abortion after twenty weeks on the grounds that the fetus at that stage experiences pain. Such laws run contrary to current abortion law, and so are almost certain to be challenged in court. In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court said that the constitutional right to abortion extends until the fetus is viable, between twenty-four and twenty-eight weeks. After viability, states may ban abortion entirely except where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the woman’s (...) life or health. The viability threshold was upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Maternal health should be paramount. Why viability? The Roe court said that this is “the ‘compelling’ point..... Read More. (shrink)

The 1960s and 1970s in Britain was a time of revolution in attitudes towards sex, especially in the public education system. The campaign to see sex education established as a subject in primary and secondary schools was gaining traction despite fierce opponents like Mary Whitehouse. This article focuses on the story of a traditionalist Catholic couple named Mr Derrick Taylor and Mrs Irene Taylor who set up a campaign to defend their children against what they saw as the encroachment of (...) immorality, promiscuity and pornography. Mrs Taylor worked to spread the message that sex education was wrong by building a network of mothers who shared her views while Mr Taylor defended in court his decision to remove his children from school altogether. This article gives an account of the lengths Mr and Mrs Taylor went to in order to try to stop sex education and describes the impacts this campaign had on their children. (shrink)

Considering public moral attitudes is a hallmark of the anticipatory governance of emerging biotechnologies, such as heritable human genome editing. However, such anticipatory governance often overlooks that future morality is open to change and that future generations may perform different moral assessments on the very biotechnologies we are trying to govern in the present. In this article, we identify an ’anticipatory gap’ that has not been sufficiently addressed in the discussion on the public governance of heritable genome editing, namely, uncertainty (...) about the moral visions of future generations about the emerging applications that we are currently attempting to govern now. This paper motivates the relevance of this anticipatory gap, identifying the challenges it generates and offering various recommendations so that moral uncertainty does not lead to governance paralysis with regard to human germline genome editing. (shrink)

Andrea Bidoli argues that ectogestation could be seen as an emancipatory intervention for women. Specifically, she claims that ectogestation would create unique conditions to reevaluate one’s reproductive preference, address certain specific negative social implications of gestation and childbirth, and that it is unfair to hold ectogestation to a higher standard than other innovations such as modern contraceptives and non-medical egg freezing. In this commentary, I claim that Bidoli—like so many others—unjustly bypasses men and their reproductive desires. For a long time, (...) the discussion of the ethics of ectogenesis has focused on women and their reproductive liberation. However, since in many countries, an increasing number of men in reproductive age face difficulties in finding a partner and lack access to other forms of assisted reproduction, it is men who need ectogestation the most. (shrink)

The idea of artificial wombs began to be seriously discussed in the West in Britain after WWI, inspired by modern feminism and the invention of neonatal incubators. J. B. S. Haldane’s imagined future use of artificial wombs in his essay Daedalus, or, Science and the Future inspired debate among his contemporaries for a decade, including Aldous Huxley who indelibly cast the technology as dystopian. After WWII bioutopian ideas like artificial wombs were associated with fascism, although socialist feminists briefly renewed the (...) debate over the liberatory potential of artificial wombs in the 1970s. Recent innovations in neonatal intensive care have again generated discussion of the ethical and political impacts of artificial wombs. Again, artificial wombs are seen by some as a way to expand reproductive freedom and gender equality, while critics worry they might have negative impacts on women and abortion access. (shrink)

Kyle van Oosterum and Emma Curran have recently argued that the impairment argument against abortion is weak and accomplishes little. They also claim that impairment fails to explain what makes giving a child fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) immoral, which is an important premise of the argument. Here, I explain that the impairment argument is not as weak as they believe. Further, I argue that impairment offers a superior explanation for what makes giving a child FAS immoral than their proposal based (...) on creative beneficence. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen the facilitation of unconventional or even extraordinary reproductive endeavours. Sperm has been harvested from dying or deceased men at the request of their wives; reproductive tissue has been surgically removed from children at the request of their parents; deceased adults’ frozen embryos have been claimed by their parents, in order to create grandchildren; wombs have been transplanted from mothers to their daughters. What is needed for requests to be honoured by healthcare staff is that they align (...) with widely shared expectations about what people’s reproductive potential ought to be, what marital relationships ought to result in, and which kinds of ties are desirable between parents and children. Costly and invasive technologies are not considered excessive when they are used to support the building of appropriate families. However, deviations from dominant reproductive norms, even if technologically simple and convenient to the participants, are unlikely to receive support. In this paper, we offer examples of such deviations and explore their implications. If reproduction is important as a way of creating genetic relationships, should reproductive material in storage be offered to genetic relatives other than the people from whom it originated? And if parents are allowed to have reproductive material collected from their offspring, or even to use it to create babies, should offspring likewise be allowed to use their parents’ reproductive material? We tackle these questions and suggest ways in which interests in genetic ties could be operationalised in a more coherent and less-invasive manner than they currently are. (shrink)

本书以人类辅助生殖法律制度为研究对象,对这一制度在不同国家,我国不同法域的产生,发展及未来方向作了全面分析,以比较分析的视角,从中总结出可为我国借鉴吸收的优秀成果,对于未来法制发展方向与具体制度的建构 提出了可行化的学者建议.

In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a (...) disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease. (shrink)

Is it wrong to create a blind child, for example by in vitro fertilization, if you could create a sighted child instead? Intuitively many people believe it is wrong, but this belief is difficult to justify. When there is a possibility to create and select either ‘blind’ or ‘sighted’ embryos choosing a set of ‘blind’ embryos seems to harm no-one since choosing ‘sighted’ embryos would create a different child altogether. So when the parents choose ‘blind’ embryos, they give some specific (...) individual a life that is the only option for her. Because her life is worth living (as blind peoples’ lives are), the parents have not wronged the child by creating her. This is the reasoning behind the famous non-identity problem. I suggest that the non-identity problem is based on a misunderstanding. I claim that when choosing a ‘blind’ embryo, prospective parents harm ‘their child’, whoever she or he will be. Put another way: parents harm their child in the de dicto sense and that is morally wrong. (shrink)

Introduction: Sexual harassment involves an assortment of coercive behaviors, including physical force, intimidation, and various forms of compulsion, including verbal harassment and forced penetration [1]. Sexual abuse can happen to both men and women. In the United Kingdom(UK), the problem of child sexual abuse (CSA) has epidemic proportions and is a global public health issue [2]. 53,874 incidents were reported under the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act as of 2021 [3]. to their ignorance about puberty, sexuality, and (...) fundamental human biological changes, adolescents have a very difficult time addressing their SRH demands. These underlying causes contribute to high rates of teen pregnancy, STIs, sexual assault, poor negotiating skills, forced marriage, and high fertility rates [4]. Methods: The study used a quantitative technique and a descriptive cross-sectional design. Students at Jahangir Nagar University and the American International University of Bangladesh were the intended target group. Jahangir Nagar University and American International University of Bangladesh served as the study locations. The six-month trial period ran from January 2022 through June 2022. For this investigation, primary sources of data were used. The study unit was the individual student. Non-probability (purposive) sampling techniques were used for the investigation. Results: The majority of survey participants (N=81) 62.2% were aged between 19 and 21 years old, and there was a statistically significant difference in age between students at public and private universities. None of our study participants suffered from any kind of sexual abuse, though they mentioned hearing about it. Regarding the view of sexual abuse, public universities 23% of those polled claimed sexual abuse as a justification for sharing inappropriate photos. At private universities, the response rate for crude jokes is 32.5%. Only the least number of public (2%) and private university (10%) students took part in sexual abuse-related awareness or training programs. Regarding the rights to receive training for prevention and safeguarding from sexual abuse, only 28% of the public and 40% of the private university students replied in affirmative. Conclusion: Sexual harassment is a sensitive issue, though due to various reasons, the rate of reporting and providing justice to the victims is delayed all over the world including Bangladesh. There social, religious, and policy lacking in this context. (shrink)