By Adrian Villalba. In the thrilling frontier of reproductive technologies, a ground-breaking approach aims to shake the foundations of conventional norms – it’s called epigenome editing. Imagine a world where same-sex couples can have genetically related children without the traditional genetic hurdles. Welcome to the era of “queering the genome”. This revolutionary technique bypasses the […]
Category: Assisted reproductive technology
Premature endings: Pregnancy loss and artificial placentas
By Victoria Adkins and Elizabeth Chloe Romanis. Our paper Artificial Placentas, Pregnancy Loss & Loss-Sensitive Care discusses the concept of pregnancy loss without procreative loss: this is how we can recognise the experience of loss formerly pregnant individuals may feel when their pregnancy ends prematurely, even if their foetus/premature infant survives. After articulating and exploring […]
China’s National Health Commission bans single women from freezing eggs: with or without legal and ethical justifications?
By Hao Wang. Theresa Xu, ‘the first Chinese single woman to sue for her right to freeze eggs,’ lost her lawsuit last year. In 2020, Xu, then 30, sought to freeze eggs in a hospital in Beijing. Xu was not ready to be a mother then, but thought she might want to be one in the future. Therefore, she […]
Extra-corporeal gestation, or why things still stink
By Giulia Cavaliere. It is once again November and I am once again—three years since writing this piece—thinking about extra-corporeal gestation, the futuristic prospect of supporting foetuses in an artificial uterine environment. Considering that it cannot be the approaching winter months that sparked a wave of fresh thoughts on this technological possibility, what is? A […]
Fetal alcohol syndrome and abortion
By Simon Cushing In several publications, the philosopher Perry Hendricks has pushed an argument that he calls “the impairment argument,” intended to demonstrate that our horror at causing impairments such as fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) to our children in utero should lead us to regard abortion with at least equal horror, as surely death is […]
Egg freezing in the UK: Recent developments in the broader context of reproductive ageing
By Giulia Cavaliere and James Rupert Fletcher. The UK government has just amended the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 and extended the limit for storing gametes (eggs and sperm) and embryos from 10 to 55 years. Previously, only people with a medical reason, such as infertility caused by cancer treatment, could store their gametes […]
The new UK storage limit for gametes and embryos: are we ready?
By Ilaria Bertini On 1 July 2022 the UK Government announced a change in the law on frozen storage of gametes and embryos, with the full support of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). According to the Health and Care Act 2022, fertility patients will now be able to store both embryos and gametes […]
Neonatology’s brave new world
By Phillip Wozniak, Ashley Fernandes Could a live baby outside its mother’s womb remain “unborn?” On its face, it seems like an absurd question, but scientific advancement in the field of neonatology has made answering this question a priority. In 2017, Dr. Emily Partridge and her colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published the […]
Eugenics and reproductive carrier screening: why would you go there?
By Lisa Dive & Ainsley J Newson. It seems that one of the best ways a bioethics academic can attract an avalanche of very strong opinions is to publish a paper with the word “eugenics” in the title. Why then would we do so? In short, because we consider it important to pay attention to […]
Why ‘gestaticide’ is morally equivalent to infanticide
By Daniel Rodger, Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce P. Blackshaw Artificial womb technology may one day permit a fetus to be surgically removed from its mother’s body and placed into an artificial environment, mimicking life in utero. Following Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, let’s call the subjects living inside artificial wombs ‘gestatelings.’ An important question that arises is how […]