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Reproductive Technologies as Instruments of Meaningful Parenting: Ethics in the Age of ARTs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2002

D. MICAH HESTER
Affiliation:
D. Micah Hester, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Humanities at Mercer University School of Medicine, Macon, Georgia

Extract

Since the decade of the 1970s, and particularly since the first successful test-tube baby in 1978, the development and use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have grown exponentially. Would-be parents—including those in so-called traditional male-female marriages, unmarried adults, postmenopausal women, and same-sex partnerships—who just over 20 years ago had no recourse for their (in)fertility issues can now pursue their desires to have children with at least a partial, if not, total, genetic and/or biological relationship. Ovulation-stimulating medications, artificial insemination using the sperm of a husband or unrelated donor (AIH or AID, respectively), in vitro fertilization with embryo transfer (IVF-ET), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICS), and gamete and zygote intrafallopian transfers (GIFT and ZIFT) are but a few of a host of treatment options ranging in complexity, invasiveness, and expense. And on the horizon are genetic techniques such as cloning—which was once considered “pure” science fiction but in 1997 became what some call an inevitability, with the development of mammalian cloning in the form of the now-famous (if not infamous) Dolly the sheep.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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