By Marco Tang. What is mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT)? It involves obtaining a donor egg, removing the nDNA from the donor egg, transferring the legal mother’s nDNA into the donor egg and fertilizing it with the legal father’s sperm. This procedure enables women with mitochondrial disease to have children without it. What is unique is […]
Category: Reproduction
Ethics is the key to demographic change
By J.Y. Lee In the Global North, the fact that aging populations are increasing while birth rates are decreasing has become a point of great alarm in recent years. The average total fertility rate (TFR) across the globe stands at 2.3 births per woman today, compared to 4.9 back in 1950. However, some countries are […]
What is the ground of the moral right to parent our biological children?
By Benjamin Lange. In my recent JME paper, Moral Parenthood: Not Gestational, I challenge the idea that the moral right to parent our biological children should be grounded by appeal to the value of the intimate emotional relationship that gestation facilitates between a newborn and a gestational procreator. This issue is important because it addresses one […]
If Marc is Suzanne’s father, does it follow that Suzanne is his child?
By Daniela Cutas, Anna Smajdor, Kristien Hens, and Emma Moormann According to the respondents in our study, the short answer is: not necessarily. We drafted a series of vignettes in which we explored the relationships between reproduction, genes, and parenthood. We wanted to understand the impact that the degree of genetic relatedness might have on […]
Mothers of today, mothers of tomorrow
By Emanuele Mangione Who are the “mothers” of today? It is common opinion that assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) changed motherhood forever, especially biological motherhood. Nowadays a child can have a single biological mother, that is someone who contributes both genetically and gestationally to their creation; two biological mothers, that is a genetic mother who […]
Pronatalism gone wrong? Cash rewards, state-sponsored dating, and exemption from military conscription
By J. Y. Lee. “A South Korean firm is offering to pay its workers $75,000 each time they have a baby,” a recent news headline reads. Pronatalist incentives are not new in South Korea; the South Korean government has spent 270 billion dollars since 2006 in effort to promote childbirth and reverse declining fertility rates. […]
Medical authority and expectations of conformity: undermining person-centred maternity care
By Anna Nelson. There is an ongoing ‘maternity crisis’ in the UK, and too many women and birthing people face barriers to accessing respectful, person-centred maternity care. Charities, campaigners and journalists continue to emphasise the consequences of this state of affairs, both for individuals and for society more widely. Individuals may experience harm to their […]
Terms of cervix: IUD trials as a condition of elective sterilisation
By Teresa Baron. Getting your tubes tied is no easy feat. Plenty has been said in recent years about barriers to elective sterilisation, and persuading a doctor to do the deed is a particularly difficult for young, child-free women. If a woman has a long-term partner, her practitioner will often encourage her to see if […]
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 […]
Meet the elite couples who miss the point entirely!
By Richard B. Gibson. As many may have seen, the Telegraph recently featured an article on pronatalism. Simply put, pronatalism is the idea that our future – family groups, specific sectors of society, iterations of our global civilisation, or our very species – depends on people having enough children to ensure a growing population. Without […]