COMMENTARY: Puzzling out the ethics of reproductive technologies

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ Recent studies indicate nearly one out of eight married couples in America suffers from infertility or has problems in conceiving a child or carrying a pregnancy to term. Mention this statistic to rabbis, priests, or […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Recent studies indicate nearly one out of eight married couples in America suffers from infertility or has problems in conceiving a child or carrying a pregnancy to term.


Mention this statistic to rabbis, priests, or ministers, and they invariably relate poignant stories of congregational members who desperately seek every means possible to have children of their own.

To meet this problem, the scientific and medical professions are providing new assisted reproductive technologies offering a hopeful message to childless couples: it is possible to have your own baby.

These techniques include artificial insemination, drugs to induce the ovaries to produce eggs, the implantation into a woman of eggs that have been fertilized in a laboratory, and the use of sperm from anonymous donors.

Indeed, scientific advances in this area are easily outrunning the ability of the religious and medical communities to keep up with the dizzying array of new technologies designed to overcome infertility and impotency.

Unfortunately, assisted reproductive technologies are frequently filled with risks of failure that can be accompanied by psychological damage to the would-be parents, low success rates, high financial costs, and possible abortions.

But, not surprisingly, the intense yearning to have a child trumps the serious problems that can arise from assisted reproductive efforts.

Often forgotten in discussions of assisted reproductive technologies is the well-being of children born through such efforts.

Sometimes the new fertility methods produce multiple births of four or more infants who are susceptible to extremely low birth weights, blindness, and retardation, both physical and mental. Sometimes the termination of one or more embryos may be necessary to insure the birth of at least one child. Such abortions, even for compelling medical reasons, can have traumatic effects and the possibility of abortions may force a couple to abandon any attempt to have a child through assisted reproductive technology.


Added to these extraordinarily complex problems is the increasing number of fertility clinics that are sometimes insufficiently supervised or regulated by appropriate government bodies. Clearly, public policy, including oversight and accountability, is sorely needed in the area of assisted reproduction.

To meet this need, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law recently issued an analysis and recommendations of assisted reproductive technologies. The 24-member Task Force, established in 1985, is composed of physicians, clergy, lawyers, ethicists, and nurses.

As a member of the Task Force, I strongly believe our comprehensive list of recommendations contained in the 474 page report, is an important model for other states to emulate. Without clear public policy, legal and medical chaos along with incredible human suffering lies ahead for families who crave children of their own.

One of many vexing questions the Task Force confronted was the possibility a child could have three biological parents: a man who contributes sperm, a woman who provides her egg, and another woman who is implanted with the fertilized egg and carries it to term. The Task Force recommended that the woman who gives birth is the child’s legal mother despite the fact the child was conceived from the egg of another woman.

In another recommendation, the Task Force urged the husband of a married woman be made the legal father of any child conceived with the sperm of another man provided the husband gave consent for the procedure. The Task Force also placed strong emphasis upon the health of children born by assisted reproductive technologies, and it urged such children be informed about the genetic makeup of any egg or sperm donors. However, it said children do not have the right to know the names of the donors.

Overall, the Task Force was unanimous in recognizing that the many troubling questions raised by reproductive technologies will not go away. They are part of a long list of other bioethical problems that will perplex American society for decades to come.


END RUDIN

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