The Custom-Made Child?

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some.

Contenu

Reproductive Technologies: The Birth of a Women-Centered Analysis.- Diethylstilbestrol: An Interdisciplinary Analysis.- Overview.- The DES Controversy: Discovery Distribution and Regulation.- Assessment of Risks from DES: An Analysis of Research on Those Exposed during Pregnancy or In Utero.- The Legal Aspects of the DES Case: What Can Be Done.- DES and Drugs in Pregnancy: A Consumer Reaction.- DES: Ten Points of Controversy.- DES Discussion.- Prenatal Diagnosis.- Overview.- A Look at Prenatal Diagnosis within the Context of Changing Parental and Reproductive Norms.- Prenatal Diagnosis.- Antenatal Diagnosis: The Physician-Patient Relationship.- Policy Decisions in Prenatal Diagnosis: The Example of Fetal Alcoholism Syndrome.- The Politics of Prenatal Diagnosis: A Feminist Ethical Analysis.- Prenatal Diagnosis Discussion.- The Neonate.- Introductory Remarks.- Neonatology: Directions and Goals.- Perfectability and the Neonate: The Burden of Expectations on Mothers and Their Health Providers.- Decisions About Handicapped Newborns: Values and Procedures.- Response.- Rights of a Handicapped Neonate: What Every Parent and Professional Should Know.- Living with an Impaired Neonate and Child: A Feminist Issue.- Neonate Discussion.- Sex Preselection.- Technical Aspects of Sex Preselection.- Futuristic Implications of Sex Preselection.- Unnatural Selection: On Choosing Children's Sex.- Response.- Response.- Sex Preselection: A Response.- Sex Preselection: Discussion Moderator's Remarks.- Sex Preselection Discussion.- Manipulative Reproductive Technologies.- Overview.- Biological Manipulations for Producing and Nurturing Mammalian Embryos.- Ethics and Reproductive Technology.- Response.- Manipulative Reproductive Technologies Discussion: Part I.- The Case Against In Vitro Fertilization and Implantation.- In Defense of In Vitro Fertilization.- In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer: The Process of Making Public Policy.- Manipulative Reproductive Technologies Discussion: Part II.- The Biology of Utopia: Science Fiction Perspectives on Ectogenesis.- Ectogenesis and Ideology.- Manipulative Reproductive Technologies Discussion: Part III.- Reflections: Uncovering Patriarchal Agendas and Exploring Woman-Oriented Values.- Appendix: Resolutions.- Notes and References.- Biographies.