By Nathan Hodson and Joshua Parker Of all the revolutionary advances provided by artificial reproductive techniques, few would have imagined that it would allow men to have their sperm removed after death and used to successfully produce offspring. Yet recent cases show that it is possible and apparently safe. In these cases it is the loved ones of the man […]
Category: Reproduction
Ectogenesis as a Political Perspective
By Giulia Cavaliere I’m at that age. The age where close friends start talking about having babies, are having babies or are thinking about number two. Courtesy of these conversations, and YouTube ads being extremely concerned about my fertility, I too have begun pondering baby-related questions. As a certified nerd, the ‘pondering’ led me to […]
Birth and “Birth”: Why Human Subjects in Artificial Wombs Should be Treated as Neonates
By Nick Colgrove. Recently, I argued that human subjects in artificial wombs are newborns (or, at least, should be treated as newborns). This is because the subject of partial ectogenesis—which has been extracted from a pregnant woman’s body and placed in an artificial womb—is a newborn, full stop. The subject of complete ectogenesis—which is created […]
Is the “serious” factor in germline modification really relevant? A response to Kleiderman, Ravitsky and Knoppers
By Iñigo de Miguel Beriain Is the “serious” factor in germline modification relevant? This seems a relevant question in the germline gene editing debate. Of course, at first glance, one tends to choose an affirmative answer immediately. It seems common sense to think that sophisticated technology should be used only when we are faced with […]
Unravelling the concept of ‘routinization’ in prenatal screening
By Adriana Kater-Kuipers & Eline M. Bunnik. With the introduction of the non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) the ethical debate about prenatal screening is again in full swing. The new technique for the analysis of cell-free foetal DNA for trisomy 21, 18, and 13, and, in the future, possibly for a range of other abnormalities, requires […]
Fetuses, Newborns, and Parental Responsibility
By Prabhpal Singh Does a fetus have the same moral status as a newborn baby? When we compare the two, we see that both lack traditional morally relevant features (a rational capacity, a certain sort of consciousness, a certain sort of first-person experience, autonomy required for personhood, etc.). Accordingly, some philosophers have thought fetuses and […]
Why we should still accommodate conscientious objection for abortion
By Bruce P. Blackshaw and Daniel Rodger. Over the last few years there has been a vigorous and fascinating debate about the use of conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare. CO is when doctors (and other healthcare professionals) opt-out of providing a medical service because they have serious moral objections—abortion is a widely cited example. If […]
‘Was this on the consent form?’ Can you really consent in a one-off conversation to interventions with uncertain and evolving consequences?
By Rachel Horton, Benjamin Bell, Angela Fenwick, Anneke Lucassen A child conceived with a donated egg has multiple health problems but no unifying diagnosis. Given that testing of biological parents may help make a genetic diagnosis in a child, is it OK to contact the child’s anonymous egg donor to ask if they would provide […]
Charging migrant women for pregnancy care is a worrying sign of the times
By Arianne Shahvisi and Fionnuala Finnerty Precious is a 26-year-old Eritrean woman who has recently arrived in the UK. She wishes to apply for asylum but is yet to do so. Precious is destitute and is living in a church and relying on the kindness of the Eritrean community. She sees a GP at an […]
Reimagining Uterus Transplantation
By Amani Sampson, Laura Kimberly, Kara Goldman, David Keefe, and Gwendolyn Quinn. In 1931, a transgender woman named Lili Elbe received the first known uterus transplant in a human. Unfortunately, she died from organ rejection complications three months later. Her story is often missing from the emerging ethical discourse surrounding uterus transplantation. Our interest in exploring how uterus […]