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Reframing the Australian Medico-Legal Model of Infertility

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Abstract

Australian law affirms a binary construction of fertility/infertility. This model is based upon the medical categorization of infertility as a disease. Law supports medicine in prioritizing technology, such as in vitro fertilization, as treatment for infertility. This prioritization of a medico-legal model of infertility in turn marginalizes alternative means of family creation such as adoption, fostering, traditional surrogacy, and childlessness. This paper argues that this binary model masks the impact of medicalization upon reproductive choice and limits opportunity for infertile individuals to create families. While medical technology should be available to enhance reproductive opportunity, infertile individuals will benefit from regulatory change which disentangles the medico-legal construct of infertility as a disease from the desire to create a family. This paper suggests that the medico-legal model of infertility should be reframed to support all opportunities for family creation equally, including non-medical opportunities such as adoption, fostering, and childlessness.

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Notes

  1. For example, OMU & RGJ v Patient Review Panel & Secretary to the Department of Health and Human Services [2018] VCAT 1235.

  2. See also Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 1988 (SA) (term “reproductive technology used, defined as the branch of medical science which is concerned with artificial fertilisation”); Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 (VIC) (no definition); Human Reproductive Technology Act 1991 (WA) (term “reproductive technology used”).

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Funding

This research was funded by Australian Research Council Grant DP 1510157. Thanks to Jenni Millbank, Isabel Karpin, and Norman O’Dowd for comments on earlier versions of this paper and to Miranda Kaye, Norman O’Dowd, Michaela Stockey-Bridge, and Susan Chandler for research assistance on the project and to our interview participants for sharing their views and thoughts. A special acknowledgment to Rachel Carr for her research and writing assistance on this paper.

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    Anita Stuhmcke

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Stuhmcke, A. Reframing the Australian Medico-Legal Model of Infertility. Bioethical Inquiry 18, 305–317 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-021-10094-3

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