CHAPTER 11

The Assisted Reproduction Debate I:

Principled Considerations
 Test-Tube Babies?
• Louise Joy Brown (Oldham, England) 1978
• ‘Product’ of in vitro – Lat., “in glass” - fertilization (IVF)
• Currently has a child of her own, naturally conceived
• Account for over 5,000 Canadian pregnancies yearly (CMA).
• Now considered relatively unremarkable.
• Formerly considered with suspicion –
• “Unnatural”
• A violation of God’s plan
• Could hand down congenital disorders
 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)
• Involves procedures which remove eggs, combine them with
sperm and return them to the (or another) women’s body.
• Uses nondonor (woman’s own) eggs or those of from a donor (another),
later accounts for 12% of IVF attempts.
• Embryo typically grows in a petri dish for three to five days before re-
implantation.

• Does NOT include procedures which handle only sperm (e.g.,

IUF/I) or fertility medications
 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)
• Surrogacy
• Involves an agreement in which a woman becomes pregnant for the purpose
of gestating and giving birth to a child for others to raise.
• Commercial surrogacy
• As above but the agreement is paid.
• “Booming in Canada”
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/09/18/canadas-vague-surrogacy-l
aws-may-be-doing-more-harm-than-good.html
• Surrogacies can lead to unconventional parent relationships
• A surrogate mother can use donor eggs with donor sperm (or donor embryo)
for the child rearing parents. In this case, the born child could be thought of
as having five different parents (2 donors, 2 child rearers + surrogate mother)
 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)
• Ethical Debates
• Group 1 = Conservative, oppose all ARTs
• Fear human life will be commoditized.
• Women seen as birthing vessels
• Social coercion for the infertile to have kids
• Group 2 = Liberal, embrace ARTs
• Empowers women in the control of their bodies
• Ends “suffering” of infertility
• Procreative liberty argument, autonomy meets reproduction
• Group 3 = Moderate between groups 1 and 2
• Individuals have a “right” to ARTs but other factors can outweigh that right.
• Limiting factors could be paid surrogacy, age of the mother, etc.
 Rights
• Procreative Liberty
• Autonomy suggests that individuals have full control of their destinies, in
this case, a future with or without children.
• Generally, Kantian argument that assails interference with the choice of a rational
being, which does not harm the autonomy of others.
• Supported by the Harm Principle
• We are only justified in interfering in others decision if those decisions
overtly harm someone else.
 Rights
• Life
• Addresses the rights of the to-be-born.
• Warns that the procreative liberty argument can harm others, specifically the
foetus.
• The rights of the unborn have a claim on the autonomy of the mother (parents)
• Embryonic freezing, stem cell harvesting is a “grave risk” (Vatican).
• 400.000 to 500.000 frozen embryos now in the US alone.
• Bioethicist Maurizio Mori
• If human zygotes or early embryos are accepted as persons, then the destruction of
them may rise to level of genocide performed by nature, given the numbers that parish
naturally. So, he writes to highlight the absurdity of the foetal rights at conception
position, “We should immediately invest the resources to rescue all naturally aborted
early embryos in order to show that we take equality [of life] seriously.”
 Respect for Human Life
• Slippery Slope Argument
• Occurs when there is a failure to recognize that when very similar points on a line are
added together, their end is much different.
• Abortion at the early stage is no different than late stage one since it ends a fetal life,
which is really no different at the early “steps” or the later ones.
• Foetal rights (Group 1)
• Abortion at any stage is permissible since the early stage is no different than late stage
when considering the mother’s choice.
• Procreative Liberty (Group 2)
• Analogy of nature
• Bioethicist Leon Kass (Group 3) has suggested that ARTs are permissible even if
embryos parish because a similar loss routinely occurs in natural reproduction.
 Unity of Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction
• Religious Views
• ´All three Abrahamic religions observe that, in Genesis, God created woman because
“it is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18) and God’s command to “be fertile and
multiply; fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28).’ And that procreation gives marriage purpose.
• Orthodox religious tend to believe that the exclusivity of the martial relationship is
threatened by ARTs.
• Inseparability Principle (Catholic) to retain the “dignity of the person.”
• Reproduction must be the product of martial sex
• Reproductive substitute for marital intercourse is immoral.
• Jewish and Islamic Law have no comparable proscriptions against ARTs
• Islam permits artificial insemination as long as it is the husband’s sperm and the marriage is
intact.
• See p. 212
 Unity of Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction
• Secular Views – responsibility question
• Daniel Callahan has suggested that anonymous sperm donations
downgrade fatherhood and violate “a basic moral principle” that a man
should be responsible for the child he fathers
• Bonnie Steinbock replies that the sperm donor has not abandoned his child, he
has only provided genetic material so that another may act as father or
responsible parent.
• Why is that irresponsible?
 Gender Liberation and Self-Determination
• Feminist argument for:
• As equal citizens, women should be allowed the fullest autonomy and self-determination of their bodies. Men would
demand this.
• This would imply the whole range of ARTs, not to mention the pro-choice abortion position.
• Radical feminist argument against:
• The context moving forward with ARTs is that these inventions have been largely controlled and designed by men
and, thus, that their implementation will extend the patriarchy. Because men have attempted to dominate women in
the past, this new technology will likely do the same by marginalizing their role in reproduction.
• A Genetic Fallacy - conclusion is suggested based solely on someone's or something's history, origin, or source rather than its
current meaning or context.
• Could turn women into breeding machines
• The Handmaid’s Tale,1985
• Oddly, perhaps, the radical feminist positions aligns closely with the Vatican, which opposes all ARTs
• India
• Resource Group for Woman and Health, 2007, a New Delhi volunteer organization released a study showing that ARTs in India
have had a negative impact on women by increasing already high pressure on women to have children. As a result, childless
women are further blamed, ridiculed, abused, and socially isolated. Adoption is generally not seen as an option.