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Feminist Ethics and In Vitro Fertilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Susan Sherwin
Susan Sherwin*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, CanadaB3H 3J5
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Extract

New technology in human reproduction has provoked wide ranging arguments about the desirability and moral justifiability of many of these efforts. Authors of biomedical ethics have ventured into the field to offer the insight of moral theory to these complex moral problems of contemporary life. I believe, however, that the moral theories most widely endorsed today are problematic and that a new approach to ethics is necessary if we are to address the concerns and perspectives identified by feminist theorists in our considerations of such topics. Hence, I propose to look at one particular technique in the growing repertoire of new reproductive technologies, in vitro fertilization (IVF), in order to consider the insight which the mainstream approaches to moral theory have offered to this debate, and to see the difference made by a feminist approach to ethics.

Type
III—Some Applications
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 13: Science, Morality & Feminist Theory , 1987 , pp. 264 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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Footnotes

1

I appreciate the helpful criticism I have received from colleagues in the Dal-housie Department of Philosophy, the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, and the Women’s Studies program of the University of Alberta where earlier versions of this paper were read. I am particularly grateful for the careful criticism it has received from Linda Williams and Christine Overall.

References

2 Sherwin, Susan ‘A Feminist Approach to Ethics,’ Dalhousie Reveiw 64, 4 (Winter 1984-85) 704-13Google Scholar

3 Ramsey, Paul ‘Shall We Reproduce?’ Journal of the American Medical Association 220 (June 12 , 1972), 1484.Google ScholarPubMed

4 Kass, Leon ‘“Making Babies” Revisited,’ The Public Interest 54 (Winter 1979), 32-60.Google Scholar

5 Card Ratzinger, Joseph and Bovone, Alberto ‘Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day’ (Vatican City: Vatican Polyglot Press 1987), 23-4.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 28.

7 Bayles, MichaelReproductive Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1984) 15Google Scholar

8 Ratzinger and Bovone, 28.

9 Gorovitz, SamuelDoctors’ Dilemmas: Moral Conflict and Medical Care (New York: Oxford University Press 1982), 168Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 173.

11 Bayles, 66.

12 I owe this observation to Linda Williams.

13 Tristram Englehardt, H.The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986), 237Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 241.

15 Direcks, Anita ‘Has the Lesson Been Learned?’ DES Action Voice 28 (Spring 1986), 1-4;Google Scholar and Crook, Nikita A. ‘Clomid,’ DES Action/Toronto Factsheet #442 (available from 60 Grosvenor St., Toronto, M5S 1B6)Google Scholar

16 Bayles, 32. Though Bayles is not a deontologist, he does concisely express a deontological concern here.

17 Gorovitz, 177.

18 Soules, Michael “The In Vitro Fertilization Pregnancy Rate: Let’s Be Honest with One Another,” Fertility and Sterility 43, 4 (1985) 511-13CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Overall, ChristineEthics and Human Rqjroduction: A Feminist Analysis (Allen and Unwin, forthcoming), 104 ms.Google Scholar

20 Englehardt, 239.

21 Bayles, 31.

22 Edwards, Robert G. and Sharpe, David J. ‘Social Values and Research in Human Embryology’ Nature 231 (May 14 , 1971), 87CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

23 Ratzinger and Bovone, 33.

24 Ibid., 34.

25 Many authors are now working on an understanding of what feminist ethics entail. Among the Canadian papers I am familiar with, are Kathryn Morgan’s ‘Women and Moral Madness,’ Sheila Mullett’s ‘Only Connect: The Place of Self-Knowledge in Ethics,’ both in this volume, and Leslie Wilson’s ‘Is a Feminine Ethics Enough?’ Atlantis (forthcoming).

26 Sherwin, ‘A Feminist Approach to Ethics’Google Scholar

27 Addelson, Kathryn Payne ‘Moral Revolution,’ in Pearsall, Marilyn ed., Women and Values (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 1986), 291-309Google Scholar

28 Gilligan, CarolIn a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982)Google Scholar

29 Noddings, NelCaring (Berkeley: University of California Press 1984)Google Scholar

30 Baier, Annette ‘What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?’ Nous 19 (March 1985) 53-64, and ‘Trust and Antitrust,’ Ethics 96 (January 1986) 231-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Linda Williams presents this position particularly clearly in her invaluable work ‘But What Will They Mean for Women? Feminist Concerns About the New Reproductive Technologies,’ No. 6 in the Feminist Perspective Series, CRIAW.

32 Marilyn Frye vividly describes the phenomenon of inter-relatedness which supports sexist oppression by appeal to the metaphor of a bird cage composed of thin wires, each relatively harmless in itself, but, collectively, the wires constitute an overwhelming barrier to the inhabitant of the cage. Frye, MarilynThe Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press 1983), 4-7Google Scholar