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Infertility, Ethics, and the Future: An Exploration

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The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History

Abstract

This chapter explores current and prospective reproductive technologies and some of their likely implications for reproductive and family ethics and policymaking. The technologies discussed include uterus transplants, mitochondrial transfer, ectogenesis, the development of in vitro gametes, and solo reproduction. The chapter considers the impact of these developments on the content of concepts such as ‘infertility’, ‘mother’, or ‘father’. Another layer to this process of redefinition originates in ongoing socio-cultural changes that shift the focus in parenting from the way in which children have come into the world, to relationships within the family. Considering these scenarios beforehand can help to clarify some of the current challenges in defining and regulating infertility. The chapter therefore aims to raise a number of questions rather than provide answers.

I wish to thank Anna Smajdor, Anca Gheaus, Kristien Hens, Kalle Grill, and the editors of this volume for the various ways in which they have helped me in the writing of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ESHRE, ‘6.5 Million IVF Babies since Louise Brown’ (2016): https://focusonreproduction.eu/2016/07/05/6-5-million-ivf-babies-since-louise-brown/. Accessed 11 May 2016.

  2. 2.

    In this section, I wish to thank Anna Smajdor for permission to draw on our previous collaborative research.

  3. 3.

    France: LOI n° 2011-814 du 7 juillet 2011 relative à la bioéthique, art. 33: www.legifrance.gouv.fr. Accessed 6 December 2016. Author’s translation.

  4. 4.

    Legge 40, 19 February 2004, art. 1: www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/04040l.htm. Accessed 6 December 2016. Author’s translation.

  5. 5.

    Legge 40, art. 5.

  6. 6.

    Fernando Zegers-Hochschild, Geoffrey D. Adamson, Jacques de Mouzon, Osamu Ishihara, Ragaa Mansour, Karl Nygren, Elizabeth Sullivan, Sheryl Van der Poel for ICMART and WHO, ‘International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technology (ICMART) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Revised Glossary of ART Terminology’, Fertility and Sterility, 92:5 (2009), p. 1522.

  7. 7.

    National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), ‘Fertility: Assessment and Treatment’ (2013): https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg156. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  8. 8.

    Susanna Graham, ‘Choosing Single Motherhood? Single Women Negotiating the Nuclear Family Ideal’, in Daniela Cutas and Sarah Chan (eds), Families – Beyond the Nuclear Ideal (London, 2012); Susan Golombok and Shirlene Badger, ‘Children Raised in Mother-Headed Families from Infancy: A Follow-Up of Children of Lesbian and Single Heterosexual Mothers, At Early Adulthood’, Human Reproduction, 25:1 (2009); Fiona Maccallum and Susan Golombok, ‘Children Raised in Fatherless Families from Infancy: A Follow-Up of Children of Lesbian and Single Heterosexual Mothers at Early Adolescence’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45:8 (2004).

  9. 9.

    Graham, ‘Choosing Single Motherhood’.

  10. 10.

    Mark Bellis, Karen Hughes, Sara Hughes and John Ashton, ‘Measuring Paternal Discrepancy and its Public Health Consequences’, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 59 (2005).

  11. 11.

    Eurostat, ‘Marriage and Divorce Statistics’ (2015): http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Marriage_and_divorce_statistics. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  12. 12.

    David Crary, ‘Via Surrogacy, Some Men Opt to Become Single Dads’, The Journal Times (1 September 2013): http://journaltimes.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/via-surrogacy-some-men-opt-to-become-single-dads/article_2dfdcd2c-0f2d-11e3-a58f-0019bb2963f4.html. Accessed 6 December 2014; Nicholas Blincoe, ‘Why Men Decide to Become Single Dads’, Guardian, 2 November 2013.

  13. 13.

    See, for example, Susan Golombok, Modern Families: Parents and Children in New Family Forms (Cambridge, 2015); Marc H. Bornstein (ed.), Handbook of Parenting: Vol. 1: Children and Parenting (Mahwah, 2002); Michael Lamb, ‘Mothers, Fathers, Families, and Circumstances: Factors Affecting Children’s Adjustment’, Applied Developmental Science, 16:2 (2012); Joanna Scheib and Paul Hastings, ‘Donor-Conceived Children Raised by Lesbian Couples: Socialization and Development in a New Form of Planned Family’, in Cutas and Chan (eds), Families – Beyond the Nuclear Ideal.

  14. 14.

    Laura Hamilton, Simon Cheng and Brian Powell, ‘Adoptive Parents, Adaptive Parents: Evaluating the Importance of Biological Ties for Parental Investment’, American Sociological Review, 72:1 (2007).

  15. 15.

    Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos, ‘US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents’, Pediatrics, 126:28 (2010); Susan Golombok, Laura Mellish, Sarah Jennings, Polly Casey, Fiona Tasker and Michael E. Lamb, ‘Adoptive Gay Father Families: Parent-Child Relationships and Children’s Psychological Adjustment’, Child Development, 85 (2014).

  16. 16.

    See, for example, Zev Rosenwaks in Helen Pearson, ‘Making Babies: The Next 30 Years’, Nature (2008): www.nature.com/news/2008/080716/full/454260a.html. Accessed 6 December 2016; Sarah Boseley, ‘End of Infertility Within a Decade, Say Doctors’, Guardian, 25 July 2003.

  17. 17.

    Katsuhiko Hayashi, Hiroshi Ohta, Kazuki Kurimoto, Shinya Aramaki, and Mitinori Saitou, ‘Reconstitution of the Mouse Germ Cell Specification Pathway in Culture by Pluripotent Stem Cells’, Cell, 146: 4 (2011); Katsuhiko Hayashi, Sugako Ogushi, Kazuki Kurimoto, So Shimamoto, Hiroshi Ohta, and Mitinori Saitou, ‘Offspring from Oocytes Derived from In Vitro Primordial Cell-Like Cells in Mice’, Science, 338: 6109 (2012); Karim Nayernia et al, ‘In Vitro-Differentiated Embryonic Stem Cells Give Rise to Make Gametes that can Generate Offspring Mice’, Developmental Cell, 11 (2006).

  18. 18.

    David Cyranoski, ‘Stem Cells: Egg Engineers’, Nature, 21 August 2013; Hinxton Group, ‘Consensus Statement: Science, Ethics and Policy Challenges of Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Gametes’ (2008): www.hinxtongroup.org/au_pscdg_cs.html. Accessed 6 December 2016; Roger Highfield, ‘Sperm Cells Created from Female Embryo’, Telegraph, 31 January 2008.

  19. 19.

    Saitou in Cyranoski, ‘Stem Cells: Egg Engineers’.

  20. 20.

    Daniela Cutas and Anna Smajdor, ‘“I am Your Mother and Your Father!” In Vitro Derived Gametes and the Ethics of Solo Reproduction’, Health Care Analysis (2016), online first: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10728-016-0321-7/fulltext.html.

  21. 21.

    Masahito Tachibana et al, ‘Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer’, Cell, 153: 6 (2013).

  22. 22.

    ‘UK Approves Three-Person Babies’, BBC, 24 February 2015: www.bbc.com/news/health-31594856. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  23. 23.

    Nuffield Council on Bioethics, ‘Novel Techniques for the Prevention of Mitochondrial DNA Disorders: An Ethical Review’ (2012): www.nuffieldbioethics.org/mitochondrial-dna-disorders. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  24. 24.

    Wellcome Trust, ‘Q&A Mitochondrial Donation’ (2015): https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/mitochondrial-donation-faqs-wellcome-aug14.pdf. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  25. 25.

    Jason Barritt, Steen Willadsen, Carol Brenner and Jacques Cohen, ‘Cytoplasmic Transfer in Assisted Reproduction’, Human Reproduction Update, 7:4 (2001); Jacques Cohen et al, ‘Ooplasmic Transfer in Mature Human Oocytes’, Molecular Human Reproduction, 4:3 (1998).

  26. 26.

    AA v BB. 2007 ONCA 2: www.samesexmarriage.ca/docs/abc030107.pdf. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  27. 27.

    Abigale Subdhan, ‘Vancouver Baby Becomes First Person to Have Three Parents Named on Birth Certificate in B.C.’, National Post Canada, 11 February 2014: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/10/vancouver-baby-becomes-first-person-to-have-three-parents-named-on-birth-certificate-in-b-c/. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  28. 28.

    New Zealand Ministry of Justice, ‘Government Responds to Law Commission Report: “New Issues in Legal Parenthood”’ (March 2006): http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/government-responds-legal-parenthood-report. Accessed 6 December 2016; California: SB-1476 Family Law: Parentage: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB1476. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  29. 29.

    Rachel Cook, Shelley Day Sclater and Felicity Kaganas, Surrogate Motherhood: International Perspectives (Oxford, 2003).

  30. 30.

    See, for example, Peter Singer and Deane Wells, Making Babies: The New Science and Ethics of Conception (New York, 1985); Anna Smajdor, ‘The Moral Imperative for Ectogenesis’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 16 (2007); Timothy Murphy, ‘Research Priorities and the Future of Pregnancy’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 21 (2012).

  31. 31.

    Stephen Coleman, The Ethics of Artificial Uteruses: Implications for Reproduction and Abortion (Burlington, VT, 2004); Singer and Wells, Making Babies.

  32. 32.

    Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York, 1971); Smajdor, ‘The Moral Imperative for Ectogenesis’; Anna Smajdor, ‘In Defense of Ectogenesis’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 21:1 (2012).

  33. 33.

    ‘US “Pregnant Man” has Baby Girl’, BBC, 3 July 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7488894.stm. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  34. 34.

    Guido Kleinhubbert, ‘Birth Fathers: Trans Parenthood Tests Berlin Authorities’, Spiegel Online, 10 September 2013: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/transsexual-parenthood-a-challenge-to-government-agencies-in-berlin-a-921350.html; ‘Transgender Israeli Mother Recognized as “Father”’, JTA: The Global Jewish News Source, 16 September 2013: www.jta.org/2013/09/16/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/israel-recognizes-two-men-as-babys-biological-parents. Both accessed 6 December 2016.

  35. 35.

    In 2010, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights counted 17 European countries that required sterilization, including France, Poland, Greece and Finland. In some countries (Denmark, The Netherlands, Portugal), law-makers were at that time discussing removing this requirement. The report, ‘Homophobia, Transphobia and Discrimination on Grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, 2010 Update, Comparative Legal Analysis’, is available at fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/1759-FRA-2011-Homophobia-Update-Report_EN.pdf. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  36. 36.

    Jamie Ross, ‘“Pregnant Man” Can’t Get Divorced in Arizona’, Courthouse News Service, 1 April 2013: www.courthousenews.com/2013/04/01/56254.htm. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  37. 37.

    Robert Winston, The IVF Revolution: Definitive Guide to Assisted Reproductive Techniques (London, 1999).

  38. 38.

    ‘First Womb-Transplant Baby Born’, BBC, 4 October 2014: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29485996. Accessed 6 December 2016; ‘Baby Born from Grandmother’s Donated Womb’, Guardian, 25 August 2015.

  39. 39.

    Ian Sample, ‘Womb Transplant Babies “Within Three Years”: Scientists in Sweden Offer Alternative to Surrogacy’, Guardian, 2 July 2003.

  40. 40.

    Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies (London, 1995), p. 235.

  41. 41.

    Patrick Parkinson, Family Law and the Indissolubility of Parenthood (Cambridge, 2011); Richard Collier and Sally Sheldon, Fragmenting Fatherhood: A Socio-Legal Study (Oxford, 2008).

  42. 42.

    John Robertson, Children of Choice (Princeton, NJ, 1994).

  43. 43.

    Alison Diduck and Felicity Kaganas, Family Law, Gender and the State: Text, Cases and Materials (Oxford and Portland, 2012), chapter 4; Daniela Cutas, ‘Sex is Overrated’, Human Fertility, 12:1 (2009); Lisa Bortolotti and Daniela Cutas, ‘Reproductive and Parental Autonomy: An Argument for Compulsory Parental Education’, Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 19:1 (2009).

  44. 44.

    Bonnie Steinbock, ‘Rethinking the Right to Reproduce’, Harvard Working Paper Series, No. 98.05 (1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Daniela Cutas

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  1. Daniela Cutas
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Correspondence to Daniela Cutas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gayle Davis

  2. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK

    Tracey Loughran

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Cutas, D. (2017). Infertility, Ethics, and the Future: An Exploration. In: Davis, G., Loughran, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_31

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