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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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 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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

This review essay critically examines Catherine Mills’s Biopolitics and Camisha Russell’s The Assisted Reproduction of Race. Although distinct works, the centrality of race and reproduction provides a point of connection and an opening into reframing contemporary debates within bioethics and biopolitics. In reviewing these books together I hope to show how biopolitical theory and critical philosophy of race can be useful in looking at bioethical problems from a new perspective that open up different kinds of analyses, especially around (...) historically embedded problems like institutional racism and the legacies of colonialism in healthcare. (shrink)

The power of new medical technologies, the cultural authority of physicians, and the gendered power dynamics of many patient-physician relationships can all inhibit women's reproductive freedom. Often these factors interfere with women's ability to trust themselves to choose and act in ways that are consistent with their own goals and values. In this book Carolyn McLeod introduces to the reproductive ethics literature the idea that in reproductive health care women's self-trust can be undermined in ways that threaten their autonomy. Understanding (...) the importance of self-trust for autonomy, McLeod argues, is crucial to understanding the limits on women's reproductive freedom. -/- McLeod brings feminist insights in philosophical moral psychology to reproductive ethics, and to health-care ethics more broadly. She identifies the social environments in which self-trust is formed and encouraged. She also shows how women's experiences of reproductive health care can enrich our understanding of self-trust and autonomy as philosophical concepts. The book's theoretical components are grounded in women's concrete experiences. The cases discussed, which involve miscarriage, infertility treatment, and prenatal diagnosis, show that what many women feel toward themselves in reproductive contexts is analogous to what we feel toward others when we trust or distrust them. -/- McLeod also discusses what health-care providers can do to minimize the barriers to women's self-trust in reproductive health care, and why they have a duty to do so as part of their larger duty to respect patient autonomy. (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 Practicing Safe Sects F. LeRon Shults provides scientific and philosophical resources for having “the talk” about religious reproduction: where do gods come from – and what are the costs of bearing them in our culturally pluralistic, ecologically fragile environment?

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)

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 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.

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)

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)

Reproduction is broadly recognised as fundamental to human flourishing. The presumptive priority of reproductive freedom forms the predominant position in the literature, translating in the non-sexual reproductive realm as an almost inviolable right to access assisted reproductive technology (ART). This position largely condemns refusal or restriction of ART by clinicians or the state as discriminatory. In this paper, I critically analyse the moral rights individuals assert in reproductive pursuit to explore whether reproductive rights entitle hopeful parents to ART. I (...) demonstrate that none of the protected actions performed, or entitlements generated are sui generis ‘reproductive’ rights, leading to the claim that there is no such thing as a right to reproduce. Under scrutiny, the reproductive right is a far narrower and weaker rights assertion than is recognised in the literature. I argue that the predominant position is grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of the scope and strength of reproductive claims.I also highlight a significant conceptual inconsistency in the literature. On one hand, there is broad consensus that reproductive rights are predominantly negative, yet access to fertility treatment is framed as a component of the right. This wrongly contorts the negative nature of reproductive rights into a positive claim-right to ART. I conclude that this mistakenly frames ART access as sitting within the scope of reproductive freedom. I offer a revised conceptual paradigm of reproductive rights that has important clinical and policy implications for the provision and regulation of ART. (shrink)

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

This book review essay discusses Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking Reproduction and the Law (2019), by Dov Fox.

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)

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)

Definition of the problemThe article addresses the relationship between reproduction, time and the good life. Services offered by reproductive medicine and conceptions of the good life in time influence each other reciprocally. This interaction is characterised by implicit and explicit normative settings and expectations of appropriate temporality.ArgumentsWe first discuss the significance of time for the life course and for parenthood from a sociological and social psychological perspective. Reproductive medicine can increase the options for becoming a parent and thus for (...) life-time autonomy. However, in the context of societal imperatives for optimisation and efficiency, it can also have opposite effects and increase heteronomy. Overall, this leads to changed forms of adaptation and self-determination, new dilemmas and ambivalences in the temporal optimisation of parenthood.ConclusionsAgainst this background, we explain how the ethics of reproductive medicine could benefit from interdisciplinary research that focuses on life in its temporal course. (shrink)

Reproductive tourism is the travelling by candidate service recipients from one institution, jurisdiction, or country where treatment is not available to another institution, jurisdiction, or country where they can obtain the kind of medically assisted reproduction they desire. The more widespread this phenomenon, the louder the call for international measures to stop these movements. Three possible solutions are discussed: internal moral pluralism, coerced conformity, and international harmonisation. The position is defended that allowing reproductive tourism is a form of tolerance (...) that prevents the frontal clash between the majority who imposes its view and the minority who claim to have a moral right to some medical service. Reproductive tourism is moral pluralism realised by moving across legal borders. As such, this pragmatic solution presupposes legal diversity. (shrink)

Enhancement of autonomous choice may be considered as an important reason for facilitating the use of genetic tests such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The principle of respect for autonomy is a crucial component not only of Western liberal traditions but also of Western bioethics. This is especially so in bioethical discussions and analyses of clinical encounters within medicine. On the basis of an analysis of qualitative research interviews performed with British, Italian and Swedish geneticists and gynaecologists on ethical aspects of (...) preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the plausibility of the notion of autonomy within reproductive medicine is discussed. The analysis of interviews indicates not only that there is a gap between theoretical discussions and concrete practice, but also that an increase in choice — paradoxically — can hamper couples' choice. (shrink)

Metaphysik i 100 [reproduction of Norwegian symbol for paragraphs], av J. S. Welhaven.--Innholdsgjennomgåelse, av E. A. Wyller.--Welhaven og filosofien, av A. H. Winsnes.--Welhavens estetikk, av A. Aarnes.--Welhaven-litteratur (p. 175-[176]).

Proponents of human reproductive cloning do not dispute that cloning may lead to violations of clones' right to self-determination, or that these violations could cause psychological harms. But they proceed with their endorsement of human reproductive cloning by dismissing these psychological harms, mainly in two ways. The first tactic is to point out that to commit the genetic fallacy is indeed a mistake; the second is to invoke Parfit's non-identity problem. The argument of this paper is that neither approach succeeds (...) in removing our moral responsibility to consider and to prevent psychological harms to cloned individuals. In fact, the same commitment to personal liberty that generates the right to reproduce by means of cloning also creates the need to limit that right appropriately. Discussion of human reproductive cloning ought to involve a careful and balanced consideration of both the relevant aspects of personal liberty – the parents' right to reproductive freedom and the cloned child's right to self-determination. (shrink)

The Canadian province of Quebec recently amended its Health Insurance Act to cover the costs of In Vitro Fertilization . The province of Ontario recently de-insured IVF. Both provinces cited cost-effectiveness as their grounds, but the question as to whether a public health insurance system ought to cover IVF raises the deeper question of how we should understand reproduction at the social level, and whether its costs should be a matter of individual or collective responsibility. In this article I (...) examine three strategies for justifying collective provisions in a liberal society and assess whether public reproductive assistance can be defended on any of these accounts. I begin by considering, and rejecting, rights-based and needs-based approaches. I go on to argue that instead we ought to address assisted reproduction from the perspective of the contractarian insurance-based model for public health coverage, according to which we select items for inclusion based on their unpredictability in nature and cost. I argue that infertility qualifies as an unpredictable incident against which rational agents would choose to insure under ideal conditions and that assisted reproduction is thereby a matter of collective responsibility, but only in cases of medical necessity or inability to pay. The policy I endorse by appeal to this approach is a means-tested system of coverage resembling neither Ontario nor Quebec's, and I conclude that it constitutes a promising alternative worthy of serious consideration by bioethicists, political philosophers, and policy-makers alike. (shrink)

The article discusses questions on the significance of blood relatedness in the context of identity arguments about artificial reproduction (AR). Kinship, origins, and biological connections are significant to human beings. The author explains that family relationships bear on the identity of human beings. Moreover, she emphasizes that once these principles are neglected, it is possible to create people in ways that threaten significant human bonds and alienate people who are naturally related spelling loss, confusion and grief for them.

Who owns frozen human embryos? Are "surrogate motherhood" arrangements dangerous for women? Should access to in vitro fertilization be limited or increased? With the development of complex reproductive technologies and the ensuing controversies in reproductive ethics, there is an urgent need for more careful examination of moral principles, current practices, and social policies pertaining to reproduction. The issues examined in this collection of nine papers focusing of the Canadian experience include abortion, the cryopreservation of embryos, the selective termination of (...) fetuses within multiple pregnancies, social policy for gestational "surrogacy," and the regulation of in vitro fertilization. Adopting a feminist perspective, the book places reproductive autonomy at the center of debates about the control of reproduction. (shrink)

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)

The identification and valorization of unacknowledged, feminized forms of economic productivity has been an important task for feminist theory. In this article, we expand and rethink existing definitions of labour, in order to recognize the essential economic role women play in the stem cell and regenerative medicine industries, new fields of biomedical research that are rapidly expanding throughout the world. Women constitute the primary tissue donors in the new stem cell industries, which require high volumes of human embryos, oöcytes, foetal (...) tissue and umbilical cord blood. Such material is generally given for free in the advanced industrial democracies, constituted as a surplus (‘spare’ embryos) or waste (umbilical cord ‘afterbirth’, cadaveric foetuses, poor quality oöcytes) whose generative powers should not be withheld from others. At the same time, among impoverished female populations in developing nations, such biological material is now often procured through frankly transactional relations, where women undertake risky procedures for small fees. In each case, female bodily productivity is mobilized to support bioeconomic research, yet the economic value involved in these relations is largely unacknowledged. In this article, we consider both the gift economy and the transactional economy for reproductive tissues as a form of labour. In order to fully conceptualize the specificities of feminized productivity in the bioeconomy, we distinguish between earlier feminist theories of reproductive labour and the emerging practices generated by stem cell research, which we term regenerative labour. We consider how historical transformations in the regulation of feminized labour and the technical repertoires of stem cell research renegotiate the productivity limits of female reproductive biology, opening it out to novel and profitable forms of surplus value and enrolling women in complex negotiations over their role in bioeconomic activity. (shrink)

In a well known story Derek Parfit describes a disconnection between two entities that normally (in real life) travel together through space and time, namely your personal identity consisting of both mind and body. Realising the possibility of separation, even if it might never happen in real life, new questions arise that cast doubt on old solutions. In human reproduction, in real life, at present the fetus spends approximately nine months inside the pregnant woman. But, we might envisage other (...) possibilities. Historically, the first era is the normal conception inside the woman, the growth of the fetus in the womb and then, after nine months, birth and the appearance of a new individual. The second era is In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). The fetus starts outside the woman as a fertilised egg, moves to the body of the woman and spends nine month there, where the body of the woman and the fetus travel together in space-time to separate at birth. In the third era of reproductive ectogenesis, the two never travel together. The fetus spends its gestational time entirely outside the woman’s body. We have two entities separated in space-time the whole time. The intimate connection consisting in the fetus being a part of the woman’s body is gone. (shrink)