In this paper I argue that some human reproductive genome editing interventions can be therapeutic in nature, and thus that it is false that all such interventions just create healthy individuals. I do this by showing that the conditions established by a therapy definition are met by certain reproductive genome editing interventions. I then defend this position against two objections: (a) reproductive genome editing interventions do not attain one of the two conditions for something to be a therapy, and (b) (...) some reproductive genome editing interventions are therapeutic but in a nonstandard way. In the Conclusion I call for a more nuanced discussion of the nature of reproductive genome editing interventions. (shrink)

The authors develop an analysis of education. They show how education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme which is actually based on power. More widely, the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the whole social system.

The predominant position in the reproductive rights literature argues that access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) forms part of an individual’s right to reproduce. On this reasoning, refusal of treatment by clinicians (via provision) violates a hopeful parent’s reproductive right and discriminates against the infertile. I reject these views and suggest they wrongly contort what reproductive freedom entitles individuals to do and demand of others. I suggest these views find their origin, at least in part, in the way we define (...) “reproduction” itself. This paper critically analyses two widely accepted definitions of human reproduction and demonstrates that both are fundamentally flawed. While the process of reproduction includes the biological acts of begetting and bearing a child, I argue that it does not extend to include rearing. This reworked definition has little impact in the realm of sexual reproduction. However, it has significant ethical implications for the formulation and assignment of reproductive rights and responsibilities in the non-sexual realm in two important ways. First, a claim to access ART where one has an intention to rear a child (but does not beget or bear) cannot be grounded in reproductive rights. Second, lacking an intention to rear does not extinguish the reproductive rights and responsibilities for those who collaborate in the process. I conclude that clinicians collaborate in non-sexual reproduction at the point of triggering conception (begetting) and therefore have the right to refuse to be involved in non-sexual reproduction, in some instances, as do all reproductive collaborators. (shrink)

The reproductive justice movement started by black women’s rights activists made its way into the academic literature as an intersectional approach to women’s reproductive autonomy. While there are many scholars who now employ the term ‘reproductive justice’ in their research, few have taken up the task of explaining what ‘justice’ entails in reproductive justice. In this paper I take up part of this work and attempt to clarify the relevant kind of freedom an adequate theory of reproductive justice would postulate. (...) To do so, I compare two approaches to reproductive freedom: an approach based on freedom as non‐interference and an approach based on freedom as non‐domination. I then argue that the non‐domination approach better fits the ideals of the reproductive justice movement as set forth by its founders and should be treated as one of the necessary conditions in any non‐ideal account of reproductive justice. Towards the end, I single out epistemic non‐domination as crucial in shaping the narrative around reproductive justice. (shrink)

The concept of reproductive health promises to play a crucial role in improving health care provision and legal protection for women around the world. This is an authoritative and much-needed introduction to and defence of the concept of reproductive health, which though internationally endorsed, is still contested. The authors are leading authorities on reproductive medicine, women's health, human rights, medical law, and bioethics. They integrate their disciplines to provide an accessible but comprehensive picture. They analyse 15 cases from different countries (...) and cultures, and explore options for resolution. The aim is to equip readers to fashion solutions in their own health care circumstances, compatibly with ethical, legal and human rights principles. (shrink)

The use of genome embryo editing tools in reproduction is often touted as a way to ensure the birth of healthy and genetically related children. Many would agree that this is a worthy goal. The purpose of this paper is to argue that, if we are concerned with justice, accepting such goal as morally appropriate commits one to rejecting the development of embryo editing for reproductive purposes. This is so because safer and more effective means exist that can allow (...) many more prospective parents to achieve the same valued goal and that offer additional benefits. (shrink)

: This article critically examines the constitution of impairment in prenatal testing and screening practices and various discourses that surround these technologies. While technologies to test and screen prenatally are claimed to enhance women's capacity to be self-determining, make informed reproductive choices, and, in effect, wrest control of their bodies from a patriarchal medical establishment, I contend that this emerging relation between pregnant women and reproductive technologies is a new strategy of a form of power that began to emerge in (...) the late eighteenth century. Indeed, my argument is that the constitution of prenatal impairment, by and through these practices and procedures, is a widening form of modern government that increasingly limits the field of possible conduct in response to pregnancy. Hence, the government of impairment in utero is inextricably intertwined with the government of the maternal body. (shrink)

Much more than their machinic reality, current iterations of AI rely on imagined divisions of human and non-human properties and skills that have genealogical ties to colonization. For this reason, research efforts have recently been made to historicize these imaginaries, connecting them to colonial ideals that delegate black and brown colonized people into the realm of the non-human. Atanasoski and Vora (Surrogate humanity. Race, robots and the politics of technological futures, Duke, Durham and London, 2019) have called this a “surrogate (...) humanity”, where narratives of autonomous technologies function to disappear precisely the formerly colonized peoples that are enveloped in its production process. At the same time, the gendered and racialized roots of this maternal figure represents an opportunity to uncover and critique the invisibilization of embodied resources necessary to produce AI, precarious bodies labouring to produce algorithmic infrastructures in a manner that can be considered in a genealogy of carework and reproduction. These genealogies complicate the detachment suggested by the surrogate figure and go beyond it to proclaim a more generative function of the relationship between the black maternal figure and AI. The article analyses Tabita Rezaire’s multi-media artwork Sugar Walls Teardom to think through decolonial and queer renderings of the black female bodies upon which technological imaginaries rest, to extend beyond AI surrogacy and towards notions of kinship, care and world-making by producing an AI aesthetics that is relational, embodied, and celebratory of other ways of liveness. (shrink)

It is now possible to have a child without sexual intercourse. The history of this apparently new statement has been breefly synthetised.The new perspectives open ethical problems for the scientific community and a new social context for single women.

Reproductive tourism is a manifestation of a larger, more inclusive trend toward globalization of capitalist cultural and material economies. This paper discusses the development of cross-border assisted reproduction within the globalized economy, transnational and local structural processes that influence the trade, social relations intersecting it, and implications for the healthcare systems affected. I focus on prevailing gender structures embedded in the cross-border trade and their intersection with other social and economic structures that reflect and impact globalization. I apply a (...) social connection model of responsibility for unjust outcomes and consider strategies to counter structural injustices embedded in this industry. The concluding section discusses policy reforms and proposals for collaborative action to preclude further injustices and extend full human rights to all. (shrink)

The global impact of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the backlash towards reproductive justice that it represents warrant a global feminist response informed by broad theoretical and geopolitical lenses. We consider how a solidaristic, transnational feminist movement might learn from Latin American feminist movements that have been successful in uniting broad coalitions in the fight for reproductive justice as situated within far-reaching political goals. The success of such a global movement must be decolonial and must contend with the (...) fact that overlapping realities of global inequality, severe poverty, extractivism, and western-backed violence are fundamentally implicated in reproductive justice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Reproductive Liberty Strong Libertarianism Reproductive Liberty in the Balance Conclusion.

The reproductive justice framework shifted understandings and analyses of reproductive oppression beyond individual ‘choice’ by incorporating analyses of structural injustice, racism, and social and economic concerns. In this article, we build on understandings of the reproductive justice framework by integrating a postcolonial lens and bring the powerful conceptual tools of postcolonial feminist theory to bear on issues of reproductive oppression in India. We articulate the elements of such a postcolonial lens—the transnational operation of race, Orientalism, the subjective experience of colonialism (...) as well as the role of the nation-state and nationalism in shaping reproductive lives—and demonstrate how these elements, along with religion, caste, and right-wing Hindu fundamentalism, structure reproductive oppression in India. Through our discussion of the issues of sterilization, sex-selective abortion, and commercial surrogacy in India we reveal how the underlying coloniality of Malthusian ideas of controlling population to reduce poverty, Orientalist and racist tropes of moral and intellectual inferiority and sexual licentiousness, and the Orientalist and colonial framing of the “East” as backward, uncivilized, and dependent clearly shape reproductive issues in India. Offering a nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of reproductive oppression within India, our discussion brings reproductive justice into conversation with a feminist postcolonial perspective to foreground the continued impact of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and settler colonialism on reproductive oppression. (shrink)

Advances in assisted reproductive technologies can give rise to several ethical challenges. One of these challenges occurs when the reproductive desires of two individuals become incompatible and conflict. To address such conflicts, it is important to unbundle different aspects of (non)parenthood and to recognize the corresponding reproductive rights. This article starts on the premise that the six reproductive rights—the right (not) to be a gestational, genetic, and social parent—are negative rights that do not entail a right to assistance. Since terminating (...) or continuing a pregnancy is a form of assistance, the right (not) to be a gestational parent should enjoy primacy in conflicts. However, while refusing assistance may hinder the reproductive project of another person, “prior assistance” does not entitle someone to violate a reproductive right. Therefore, our analysis provides reasons to argue that someone has a right to unilaterally use cryopreserved embryos or continue the development of an entity in an extracorporeal gestative environment (i.e., ectogestation). Although this could lead to a violation of the right not to be a genetic parent, it does not necessarily entail a violation of the right not to be a social parent. (shrink)

This paper comes out of a panel honoring the work of Anne Donchin (1940-2014), which took place at the 2016 Congress of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) in Edinburgh. My general aim is to highlight the contributions Anne made to feminist bioethics, and to feminist reproductive ethics in particular. My more specific aim, however, is to have a kind of conversation with Anne, through her work, about whether reproductive justice could demand insurance coverage for in vitro (...) fertilization. I quote liberally from Anne’s work for this purpose, but also to shower the reader with her words, reminding those of us who knew her well what a wonderful colleague she was. (shrink)

New parents suddenly come face to face with myriad issues that demand careful attention but appear in a context unlikely to provide opportunities for extended or clear-headed critical reflection, whether at home with a new baby or in the neonatal intensive care unit. As such, their capacity for autonomy may be compromised. Attending to new parental autonomy as an extension of reproductive autonomy, and as a complicated phenomenon in its own right rather than simply as a matter to be balanced (...) against other autonomy rights, can help us to see how new parents might be aided in their quest for competency and good decision making. In this paper I show how a relational view of autonomy – attentive to the coercive effects of oppressive social norms and to the importance of developing autonomy competency, especially as related to self-trust – can improve our understanding of the situation of new parents and signal ways to cultivate and to better respect their autonomy. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Reproductive Choice and Reproductive Autonomy The Limits of Reproductive Autonomy The Right to Reproduce? Who Should Be Provided with Assistance to Reproduce? Reproductive Choices in Pregnancy Future Reproductive Choices Conclusions Notes References.

Reproductive gift relationships must be seen in their totality, not just as helping someone have a child. Noncommercial surrogacy cannot be treated as a mere act of altruism—any valorizing of altruistic surrogacy and reproductive gift‐giving must be assessed within the wider context of women's political inequality.

Biological reproduction is a material process of intertwined, recursive propagule generation and development, assuming that development produces simple life cycles. Most organisms, however, have more or less complex life cycles. Here, I attempt to reconcile recent articulations of a reproducer account with traditional approaches to complex life cycles by generalizing genetic demarcation criteria for life cycle generations in terms of the “scaffolded” development of hybrid reproducers. I argue that scaffolding provides a general method for identifying developmental bottlenecks and suggests (...) in turn a new way of understanding developmental reaction norms. (shrink)

Reproduction is central to biology and evolution. Standard concepts of reproduction are drawn from animals. Nonstandard examples of reproduction can be found in unicellular eukaryotes that distribute their reproductive strategies across multiple generations, and in mutualistic systems that combine different modes of reproduction across multiple lineages. Examining multigenerational and multilineal reproducers and how they align fitness has implications for conceptualizing units of evolution.

As a neo-liberal economy, India has become one of the new health tourism destinations, with commercial gestational surrogacy as an expanding market. Yet the Indian Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill has been pending for five years, and the guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research are somewhat vague and contradictory, resulting in self-regulated practices of fertility clinics. This paper broadly looks at clinical ethics in reproduction in the practice of surrogacy and decision-making in various procedures. Through empirical research (...) in New Delhi, the capital of India, from December 2011 to November 2012, issues of decision-making on embryo transfer, fetal reduction, and mode of delivery were identified. Interviews were carried out with doctors in eighteen ART clinics, agents from four agencies, and fourteen surrogates. In aiming to fulfil the commissioning parents’ demands, doctors were willing to go to the greatest extent possible in their medical practice. Autonomy and decision-making regarding choice of the number of embryos to transfer and the mode of delivery lay neither with commissioning parents nor surrogate mothers but mostly with doctors. In order to ensure higher success rates, surrogates faced the risk of multiple pregnancy and fetal reduction with little information regarding the risks involved. In the globalized market of commercial surrogacy in India, and with clinics compromising on ethics, there is an urgent need for formulation of regulative law for the clinical practice and maintenance of principles of reproductive ethics in order to ensure that the interests of surrogate mothers are safeguarded. (shrink)

This paper presents a relational account of autonomy showing that a technological imperative impedes autonomy through undermining women’s capacity to resist use of technology in the context of labor and birth. A technological imperative encourages dependence on technology for reassurance whenever possible through creating a (i) separation of maternal and fetal interests; and (ii) perceived need to use technology whenever possible. In response I offer an account of how women might promote autonomy through cultivating self-trust and self-confidence. Autonomy is not (...) simply a matter of choosing freely and acting on our choices, it is also a matter of possessing the ability to resist social contexts undermining choice and action. An important implication of this view is that respecting autonomy requires more than simply respecting persons’ ability to make and act on choices. Respecting patient autonomy requires a recognition of patients’ need to resist factors impeding autonomy and support for that resistance. (shrink)

Cet article, en contrepoint de la discussion des nouvelles théories de la « reproduction sociale » et de leur confrontation avec la critique marxiste de l’économie politique, esquisse une généalogie historique et sémantique du concept même de « reproduction ». Celle-ci croise l’histoire des disciplines (notamment l’histoire naturelle et l’économie politique) et montre la persistance, mais aussi les déplacements, de trois registres de signification qu’on peut rattacher aux catégories de mimèsis, de genesis et de poièsis : reproduction (...) d’un modèle, engendrement d’une lignée, renouvellement d’un stock. Elle permet de confronter les attitudes en face de la crise et de problématiser à nouveau les questions de la mutabilité et de l’interruption, qui sous-tendent l’imaginaire de la révolution. (shrink)

On occasion, British in vitro fertilization practitioners look over the ocean to the practice of IVF and embryo research in the United States, wonder why these areas are subject to less regulation than in the United Kingdom, and ask how much less risky and more progressive IVF and embryo research might be if subject to additional federal, or at least state, regulation. To an American audience, imbued with the centuries‐old spirit of independence, regulation and autonomy can seem in tension. From (...) a British perspective, there is no necessary conflict. There is no dissent in the United Kingdom from the proposition that individual activities, services, and industries can be regulated and, at the same time, retain and exercise such autonomy as is their right within a safe sphere. From 1994 to 2002, I was the chair of the United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates the practice of IVF and embryo research. The existence of the HFEA assures patients that safety and aspects of the practice of assisted reproduction are monitored, leaving them free to choose without worrying about danger, in the same way that the public may take only those drugs that have passed health and safety tests. I would propose that anxious and vulnerable patients do not have more autonomy in a less regulated, market‐driven field. (shrink)

The past few years has seen a resurgence in the public interest in space flight and travel. Spurred mainly by the likes of technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the topic poses both unique scientific as well as ethical challenges. This paper looks at the concept of generation ships, conceptual behemoth ships whose goal is to bring a group of human settlers to distant exoplanets. These ships are designed to host multiple generations of people who will be born, (...) live, and die on these ships long before it reaches its destination. This paper takes reproductive ethics as its lens to look at how genetic enhancement interventions can and should be used not only to ensure that future generations of offspring on the ships, and eventual exoplanet colonies, live a minimally good life but that their births are contingent on them living genuinely good and fulfilling lives. The paper makes the further claim that if such a thesis holds, it also does so for human enhancement on Earth. (shrink)

Given recent advancements in CRISPR‐Cas9 powered genetic modification of gametes and embryos, both popular media and scientific articles are hailing CRISPR’s life‐saving, curative potential for people with serious monogenic diseases. But claims that CRISPR modification of gametes or embryos, a form of germline engineering, has therapeutic value are deeply mistaken. This article explains why reproductive uses of CRISPR, and germline engineering more generally, do not treat or save lives that would otherwise have a genetic disease. Reproductive uses of CRISPR create (...) healthy people whose existence is not inevitable in the first place. Creating healthy lives has distinct and lesser moral value from saving or curing lives that would otherwise have genetic disease. The real value in reproductive uses of CRISPR is in helping a very limited population of people have healthy, genetically related children. This diminished value cannot compete with the concerns in opposition to germline engineering, nor is it worth the investment of research money. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: General Assessments of Assisted Reproduction Pre‐birth Testing Conclusion References Further reading.

We present a dynamical model of a multi-site fishery. The fish stock is located on a discrete set of fish habitats where it is catched by the fishing fleet. We assume that fishes remain on fishing habitats while the fishing vessels can move at a fast time scale to visit the different fishing sites. We use the existence of two time scales to reduce the dimension of the model : we build an aggregated model considering the habitat fish densities and (...) the total fishing effort. We explore a regulation procedure, which imposes an average residence time in patches. Several equilibria exist, a Fishery Free Equilibria as well as a Sustainable Fishery Equilibria . We show that the dynamics depends on a threshold which is similar to a basic reproduction ratio for the fishery. When the basic reproduction ratio is less or equal to 1, one of the FFEs is globally asymptotically stable , otherwise one of the SFEs is GAS. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many people now believe that human reproductive cloning – once sufficiently safe and effective – should be permitted on the grounds that it will allow the otherwise infertile to have children that are biologically closely related to them. However, though it is widely believed that the possession of a close genetic link to our children is morally significant and valuable, we argue that such a view is erroneous. Moreover, the claim that the genetic link is valuable is pernicious; it (...) tends to give rise to highly undesirable consequences, and therefore should be combated rather than pandered to. The emphasis on the genetic is unwarranted and unfortunate; rather than giving us moral reason to support reproductive cloning in the case of infertility, the fact that cloning requests are likely to be motivated by the genetic argument gives us reason to oppose its availability. (shrink)

The emergence of new forms of reproductive technology raise an increasingly complex array of social and ethical issues. Nevertheless, this paper focuses on commonplace reproductive technologies used during labor and birth such as ultrasound, fetal monitoring, episiotomy, epidurals, labor induction, amniotomy, and cesarean section. This paper maintains that social pressures increase women’s perceived need to such reproductive technologies and thus undermine women’s capacity to choose an elective cesarean or avoid an emergency cesarean. Routine, normalized use of technology interferes with the (...) possibility of choosing use of technology where best suited through misdirecting laboring women to use technological resources whenever possible. This normalized use of technology decreases risk tolerance and increases dependence on technology for reassurance, which bears significant implications for self-trust and self-confidence. My account encourages women’s cultivation of autonomy as a capacity interconnected with our own attitudes and those of other persons; and as a function of cultivating trust and confidence in one’s body. (shrink)

It has been argued that the most impactful choice an individual could make, with respect to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, is to have fewer children. This paper brings up a related aspect of individuals’ reproductive choices that has been neglected in the climate ethics literature: the timing aspect. It is argued that, from a climate change perspective, it does not matter only how many children people bring into existence, but also when they are brought into existence. The reason is that (...) the age at which parents choose to procreate affects the number of people that will live simultaneously on the planet, which is in turn relevant for climate change. This provides individuals another means by which they can decrease their emissions. (shrink)

Gender-based forms of administrative violence, such as reproductive violence, are the result of systems designed to enact population-level harms through the production and forcible imposition of colonial systems of gender. Settler statecraft has long relied on the strategic promotion of sexual and reproductive violence. Patterns of reproductive violence adapt and change to align with the enduring goals and evolving needs of settler colonial occupation, dispossession, and containment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end the constitutional right to abortion in (...) Dobbs v Jackson is but one instance of this larger pattern. We analyze reproductive and obstetric violence and the structural trauma they produce through the lenses of i) historical continuity and ii) the global architectures of neoliberal settler capitalism in order to connect reproductive rights rollbacks in the U.S. with the expansion of reproductive violence across a world connected by colonial globalization. (shrink)

Dana S. Belu combines Heidegger's phenomenology of technology with feminist phenomenology in order to make sense of the increased technicization of women's reproductive bodies during conception, pregnancy, and birth.

From what race is to what race does -- Reproductive technologies are not "post-racial" -- Race isn't just made, it's used -- A technological history of race -- "I just want children like me" -- Race and choice in the era of liberal eugenics.

Giulia Cavaliere disagrees with claims that ectogenesis will increase equality and freedom for women, arguing that they often ignore social context and consequently fail to recognise that ectogenesis may not benefit women or it may only benefit a small subset of already privileged women. In this commentary, I will contextualise her argument within the broader cultural milieu to highlight the pattern of reproductive advancements and technologies, such as egg freezing and birth control, being presented as the panacea for women’s inequality. (...) While these advancements and technologies can benefit women, I argue medicine is not the best tool to ‘cure’ social problems and should not be co-opted as an agent of social change. Systemic social changes, not just technomedical approaches, are needed to address the root of gender inequality, which is social in nature, not medical. (shrink)

In much of the discourse of evolutionary theory, reproduction is treated as an autonomous function of the individual organism — even in discussions of sexually reproducing organisms. In this paper, I examine some of the functions and consequences of such manifestly peculiar language. In particular, I suggest that it provides crucial support for the central project of evolutionary theory — namely that of locating causal efficacy in intrinsic properties of the individual organism. Furthermore, I argue that the language of (...) individual reproduction is maintained by certain methodological conventions that both obscure many of the problems it generates and serve to actively impede attempts to redress those difficulties that can be identified. Finally, I suggest that inclusion of the complexities introduced by sexual reproduction — in both language and methodology — may radically undermine the individualist focus of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Reproduction, a basic property of biological life, entails costs for an organism, ultimately detectable as reduction in survival prospects. Telomeres are an excellent candidate biomarker for explaining these reproductive costs, because their shortening correlates with increased mortality risk. For similar reasons, telomeres are perceived as biomarkers of individual “quality.” The relationship between reproduction and telomere dynamics is reviewed, emphasizing that cost and quality perspectives, commonly presented in isolation, should be integrated. While a majority of correlative studies have confirmed (...) the relationship between telomere dynamics and various reproductive outputs, only limited experimental support exists showing that reproduction causes telomeres to shorten. A shift of focus to experimental manipulations of reproductive effort/telomere dynamics is crucial. However, the observation of survival reduction in response to these manipulations is essential for establishing telomeres as genuine biomarkers, allowing to unravel trade‐offs related to reproduction. (shrink)

In China, neither reproduction and parenthood by lesbian couples nor their marital status are regulated or protected by law. In 2020, the first legal dispute in China involving a lesbian couple over custody of their joint baby was heard in court. This study examines the legal and ethical issues that lesbian couples confront when they decide to give birth to a child of their own. These challenges begin with regulatory restrictions on their lawful access to assisted reproductive technology and (...) extend to gaps in the legal establishment of parenthood. We found that the lack of access to legitimate reproductive assistance for lesbian couples in China has caused them to make efforts to circumvent laws and regulations to have a child. However, the legislative gaps later led to ethical dilemmas when resolving disputes over parenthood. This study discusses different accounts of establishing and determining natural parenthood in China and concludes by pointing out the urgent need for change in legislative and sociocultural attitudes toward both assisted reproductive technology and same‐sex relationships, mapping the way forward for lesbian couples to obtain better protection of procreation and parenthood before their marriage is culturally accepted and finally legalized. (shrink)

The deceased's prior consent to posthumous reproduction is a common requirement in many common law jurisdictions. This paper critically evaluates four arguments advanced to justify the presumption against consent. It is argued that, in situations where death is caused by sudden trauma, not only is there inadequate justification for the presumption against consent, but there are good reasons to reverse the presumption. The article concludes that the precondition of prior consent may be inappropriate in these situations.

Assisted reproduction (ART), particularly that performed using donated gametes, increases the prospect of healthy babies being delivered to increasing numbers of people striving for parenthood. The psychosocial, ethical and legislative issues related both to the donation and receipt of gametes are perceived as extraordinarily complicated. In 2009, a research project aimed at mapping the issues was drawn up and implemented in the Czech Republic. The project should have provided material for consultation purposes, for the work of ethical and legislative (...) bodies, and for better interdisciplinary and international communication in reproductive medicine. Work on the project was affected by several unforeseen events, particularly by the drafting and adoption of a new law on ART (to which the project was initially to have contributed material once concluded). The article describes the dynamic and structural changes occurring within the project due to drafting of the bill as well as the changes and consequences resulting from other circumstances related to the topic researched. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that reproductive genetic manipulation technologies like mitochondrial replacement and germline CRISPR modifications cannot be said to save anyone’s life because, counterfactually, no one would suffer more or die sooner absent the intervention. The present article argues that, on the contrary, reproductive genetic manipulations may be life-saving (and, from this, have therapeutic value) under an appropriate population health perspective. As such, popular reports of reproductive genetic manipulations potentially saving lives or preventing disease are not necessarily mistaken, (...) though such terminology still requires further empirical validation. (shrink)

Reproduction is at the core of many aspects of human existence. It is intrinsic in our biology and in the broad social constructs in which we all reside. The introduction to this special issue is designed to reflect on some of the differences between the humanities/arts and the sciences on the subject of Reproduction now and in the past. The intellectual/cultural distance between humanists and reproductive biologists is vast, yet communication between the Two Cultures has much to offer (...) in guiding future research, pedagogy, and social policy. The challenges to communication include differences in methodology, professional protocols, specialization, and the increasing speed with which reproductive technology advances. The solutions require a new kind of student who can learn and adapt the approaches from both sides of the disciplinary divide to create new ways of understanding how our current and future concepts of reproduction may be informed by the past. This co-authored introduction reviews the range of interests represented in the essays and represents first steps of a dialogue between a humanist and a reproductive biologist who chart some of the possibilities on what the future of the subject might hold. (shrink)

Traditionally reproduction, gestation and childbirth have all been regarded as being primarily a woman's domain. As natural reproduction occurs inside a woman's body, respect for autonomy and bodily integrity requires the pregnant woman to have the conclusive say over the fate of the embryo/fetus growing within her. Thus traditionally the ethics and law of reproduction is dominated by the importance of respecting women's reproductive choices. This paper argues that emerging technologies demand a radical rethink of ethics and (...) law in the area of reproduction. The creation and storing of embryos outside of a woman's body and maintaining a pregnancy in a brain dead woman's body and future possibilities such as ectogenesis and male pregnancy raise important issues that cannot simply be answered by appealing to the rights of women to control their bodies. There are those who argue that when reproduction or reproductive products exist outside of a woman's body each gamete donor should have an equal say over the fate of the embryo/fetus. Others, however, argue that giving an equal say to gamete donors in practice usually means allowing the male donor to veto the reproductive enterprise and this is unacceptable. As a result it has been suggested that women should be favoured when it comes to such reproductive choices. This paper examines both sides of this debate in order to answer the fundamental ethical and policy question: 'Is there any reason why women should necessarily retain control over reproduction rather than simply over their own bodies?'. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that society should make available reliable information about parenting to everybody from an early age. The reason why parental education is important (when offered in a comprehensive and systematic way) is that it can help young people understand better the responsibilities associated with reproduction, and the skills required for parenting. This would allow them to make more informed life-choices about reproduction and parenting, and exercise their autonomy with respect to these choices. We do (...) not believe that parental education would constitute a limitation of individual freedom. Rather, the acquisition of relevant information about reproduction and parenting and the acquisition of self-knowledge with respect to reproductive and parenting choices can help give shape to individual life plans. We make a case for compulsory parental education on the basis of the need to respect and enhance individual reproductive and parental autonomy within a culture that presents contradictory attitudes towards reproduction and where decisions about whether to become a parent are subject to significant pressure and scrutiny. (shrink)

We conducted the largest multiple-iteration retelling study to date (12,840 participants and 19,086 retellings) with two different studies that test how emotional appraisals are transmitted across retellings. We use a novel Bayesian model that tracks changes across retellings. Study 1 examines the preservation of appraisals of happy and sad stories and finds that retellings preserve the story’s degree of happiness and sadness even when length shrinks and aspects of story coherence and rationalisation deteriorate. Study 2 compared the transmission of appraisals (...) of happiness and sadness with embarrassment, disgust, and risk. Appraisals of happiness, sadness, and also embarrassment showed high appraisal preservation, while disgust and risk were not well preserved. We conclude that participants in our studies encoded happy and sad stories by encapsulating the events and details into an overall emotional appraisal of the story and that this processing strategy might also apply to stories involving other emotions like embarrassment. The emotional appraisal played a key role in retelling by helping to guide the selection, invention, and ordering of the story elements. Hence, we posit that emotion appraisals can operate as anchors for remembering and retelling stories, thus playing an important role in narrative communication. (shrink)