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Reproduction without Sex—But with the Doctor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Eugene B. Brody
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Extract

Nine years after the appearance of the world's first “test tube baby,” the public is being deluged with technical and ethical opinions about non-coital reproduction. U.S. legislators, policymakers, and lawyers, energized by the court battle about “Baby M,” are reconsidering the rights of would-be parents and of the children created by the new technologies. But in the course of this turmoil one salient fact has been ignored: social policy and technological advances in respect to reproduction are mediated for the individual woman through her interaction with her doctor.

Doctors have gotten by with remarkably little scrutiny in this regard. The perception of them as benevolent magicians has, indeed, been enhanced. The only criticism has come from religious leaders concerned with the experimental use of fetal or reproductive materials, and from those who see the doctor-scientist “playing God.”

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Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Fall 1987 , pp. 152 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1987

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References

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