Reproductive Ethics: Choices

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Reproductive Ethics Choices

• 3/17/04

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Schedule

• High Order Multiples
• Choosing Procedures
• Ethical Issues in Reproduction

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High Order Multiples

• Often due to IVF where multiple embryos where
  implanted to overcome the risk of rejection.
• Health risks are similar to those of crack
  babies.

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High Order Multiples

• High profile case is the McCaughey septuplets
  (born 11/19/97), which was due to taking
  Metrodin.
• Lists of high order multiples at
  http//mypage.direct.ca/c/csamson/multiples/sextup
  lets.html

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High Order Births

• Spontaneous abortions, premature births,
  critically low birth weights, months-long
  hospital stays, chronic development delays,
  cerebral palsy, blindness, death these are the
  frequent outcomes in pregnancies involving at
  least triplets. (Finkle A22)

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High Order Births

• Reduce the number of fetuses to two and the
  odds for success increase substantially.
  (Finkel A22)
• You spent thousands of dollars to be able to
  conceive, and now the doctors ask if you want to
  perform selective reduction (abortion).

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Selective Reduction in High Order Births

• You know how much these people invest not just
  financially, but emotionally. And then you
  wonder Why cant they have come to the decision
  that made sense medically? Not morally.
  Medically. (Finkel A23)

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Selective Reduction in High Order Births

• Why?
• Why not?
• When are you not playing God?

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Blamed vs. Celebrated

• What is the difference?
• Why the difference?

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Why McCaughey?

• Another set of septuplets was born in 1998 in
  Saudi Arabia.
• A third set was born in 2001 in Washington DC.
• Octuplets were born in 1998 in Houston. (7
  survivors)
• 5/8/97 Sextuplets born in DC. Little press. 5
  survivors. First African-American Sextuplets.

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Other Procedures

• Why choose one procedure over another?
• What information should potential parents receive
  to be informed consenters?

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Ethical Issues in Reproduction

• Who has rights?
• Do people beyond the parents and potential
  children have rights?
• What rights?
• What are the basis for those rights?
• Do these rights carry obligations toward others?

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More General Reproduction Discussion
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Next Time

• Veatch 150 158, 162 163
• Hopkins, Patrick. Bad Copies How Popular Media
  Represent Cloning as an Ethical Problem.
  (Progdata)
• Shreeve, James. Secrets of the Gene
• Weiss, Rick. Fertility Experiments Mix Genes of
  2 Women (Progdata)