Egg freezing can allow women to preserve their eggs to avoid age-related infertility. The UK's recent extension of elective egg freezing storage has been welcomed as a way of enhancing the reproductive choices of young women who wish to delay having children. In this paper, I explore the issue of enhancing women’s reproductive choices, questioning whether there is a more significant aspect overlooked in egg freezing. While increasing storage limits expands reproductive choices for some women, focus on this extension alone, (...) I argue, misses a fundamental issue with egg preservation that often remains ignored; the importance of effective information on egg freezing and the effect this has on women’s reproductive choices. Ultimately, I highlight the crucial role of balanced information in enhancing women’s choices regarding egg freezing and argue that focusing on extending and increasing provision may obscure this real opportunity to empower women and their authentic reproductive choices. (shrink)

Common hospital and surgical center responses to the Covid‐19 pandemic included curtailing “elective” procedures, which are typically determined based on implications for physical health and survival. However, in the focus solely on physical health and survival, procedures whose main benefits advance components of well‐being beyond health, including self‐determination, personal security, economic stability, equal respect, and creation of meaningful social relationships, have been disproportionately deprioritized. We describe how female reproduction‐related procedures, including abortion, surgical sterilization, reversible contraception devices and in vitro (...) fertilization, have been broadly categorized as “elective,” a designation that fails to capture the value of these procedures or their impact on women's overall well‐being. We argue that corresponding restrictions and delays of these procedures are problematically reflective of underlying structural views that marginalize women's rights and interests and therefore threaten to propagate gender injustice during the pandemic and beyond. Finally, we propose a framework for triaging reproduction‐related procedures during Covid‐19 that is more individualized, accounts for their significance for comprehensive well‐being, and can be used to inform resumption of operations as well as subsequent restriction phases. (shrink)

On July 2021, the UK High Court of Justice heard the Case CO/2066/2020 on the application of Heidi Crowter who lives with Down’s syndrome, and Máire Lea-Wilson whose son Aidan has Down’s syndrome. Crowter and Lea-Wilson, with the support of the disability rights campaign, ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’, have been taking legal action against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the UK Government) for a review of the 1967 Abortion Act: the removal of section 1(1)(d) making termination (...) of pregnancy lawful for ‘severe’ fetal indications detected after 24 weeks' gestation. On 23 September 2021, the High Court dismissed the claim. This action came at a time when non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) was introduced into the NHS England Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme for the trisomies 21, 13 and 18. The implementation of NIPT has been heavily criticised, in particular by ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’ campaigners, for increasing fetal selection and discrimination of people living with disabilities. The case of Crowter and Lea-Wilson echoes debates in other European countries such as in France and Germany, where the introduction of NIPT in the public healthcare system has provoked equally vehement public reactions and discussions. The comparison between these three countries allows contextualising the public discourses around NIPT and the ground for termination of pregnancy in relation to different socio-cultural and political contexts. We examine how each country, and particularly England, deals with the conflict between the principles of promoting the rights of people living with disabilities and preserving women’s reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

Reproductive autonomy is central to women’s welfare both because childbearing takes place in women’s bodies and because they are generally expected to take primary responsibility for child rearing. In 2005, the factors that influence their autonomy most strongly are poverty and belief systems that devalue such autonomy. Unfortunately, such autonomy is a low priority for most societies, or is anathema to their belief systems altogether. This situation is doubly sad because women’s reproductive autonomy is intrinsically valuable for women and also (...) instrumentally valuable for the welfare of humankind. This paper takes for granted the moral and practical necessity of such autonomy and digs deeper into the question of what such a commitment might entail, focusing on the mid-level policy making that, at least in the US and Canada, plays a significant role in shaping women’s options. This paper examines a large teaching hospital’s policy on reduction of multifetal pregnancies. The policy permits reduction of triplets to twins, but not twins to a singleton. As there is no morally relevant difference between these two types of reduction, it is evident that inappropriate medicalisation can still limit women’s autonomy in undesirable ways. (shrink)

When Communism collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe women seemed to lose the control they had gained over their reproductive lives. Abortion rights became more limited as did access to childcare and maternity benefits. The authors argue that this picture conceals two key points. First, the effects of both Communism and post-Communism for women's reproductive lives need to be understood as byproducts of state initiatives geared towards the fulfilment of quite different political goals – and not attempts to intervene (...) in women's health and well-being per se. Second, these effects are very varied and cannot be attributed to a single cause. ‘Central and Eastern Europe’ comprises a whole range of political, ethnic and religious groupings, the result being that women's reproductive lives have been shaped within a diversity of political processes. Some women have faced pressures from the state to reproduce, some have lost the conditions necessary for them to continue paid work after childbirth, others have lost abortion rights. To understand these very different outcomes of post-Communism, this article looks beyond women's issues per se to unravel their role as symbolic resources which have been drawn upon in power struggles taking place in political arenas which exclude the majority of women. This argument is elaborated through empirical evidence from Poland, Serbia and East Germany. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 219-225, June 2021.

Although the term commodification is sometimes criticised as imprecise or overused, in fact it has a complex philosophical ancestry and can never be used too much, because the phenomena that it describes are still gaining ground. The issues that commodification raises in relation to reproductive technologies include whether it is wrong to commodify human tissues generally and gametes particularly, and whether the person as subject and the person as object can be distinguished in modern biomedicine. This chapter examines three areas (...) in which commodification is a serious concern for important reproductive technologies: the sale of eggs for IVF and research, the banking of umbilical cord blood, and the use of gestational surrogates both domestically and internationally. Sales of human eggs for IVF or research are frequently disguised as “gifts”, which conceals the very real bodily risks and harms associated with ovarian hyperstimulation and egg harvesting undergone by egg “donors.” Umbilical cord banking is a fast-growing industry, with donated cord blood trading globally at very high prices; women who consent to banking of cord blood ostensibly for the potential future benefit of their child may not be informed of the likelihood that it will be traded in commercial markets or that the method used for harvesting may increase risks of jaundice in their babies. Commercial surrogacy also exploits altruism but in addition involves wrongful sale of babies, particularly in the international context. In each example, the commodification of women’s reproductive labour is masked by the manner in which ‘the lady vanishes’ under a gift model, ignoring the true economic value of their labour. (shrink)

A woman's right to know the contents of her own body, and to make a choice about whether to continue her pregnancy or not, should be defended against laws trying to stop prenatal sex selection, either in the developing world or in the developed world. Restrictions on women's reproductive freedom harm the interests of women and girls, and ignore myriad social policy solutions, such as education and income incentives to have girls and universal old age pensions, that provide better (...) answers to the strains of unbalanced sex ratios. The opponents of sex selection trumpet all accounts of increased discrimination against women resulting from unequal sex ratios while ignoring growing evidence of positive cultural change and women's empowerment fromwomen's enhanced marriage prospects. Opponents of sex selection reify a conservative heteronormative model of sexuality, gender roles and family structure, while arguing that unmarried men are social time bombs who can only be controlled by a wife. Eventually the social policy dilemma around sex selection will presumably be made moot since would-be parents will be able to use pre-conceptive technology to determine a conceptus's gender without abortion or in-vitro fertilization. But until the sex selection argument unravels before technological innovation, women's rights to control their bodies must be defended against laws banning - or requiring - prenatal ultrasound and abortion. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to establish whether there is anything intrinsically immoral about surrogacy arrangements from the perspective of the surrogate mother herself. Specific attention is paid to the claim that surrogacy is similar to prostitution in that it reduces women's reproductive labour to a form of alienated and/or dehumanized labour.

This paper provides an overview of the development and the sociopolitical background of legislation pertaining to abortion in Finland from the nineteenth century to the current day. The first Abortion Act came to force in 1950. Before that, abortions were handled under criminal law. The 1950 law was restrictive and allowed abortions in very limited circumstances only. Its main aim was to reduce the number of abortions and especially illegal abortions. It was not very successful in reaching these goals, but, (...) significantly, it moved abortions from the realm of the criminal law to the hands of medical professionals. The birth of the welfare state and the prenatal attitudes of 1930s and 1940s Europe played their part in shaping the law. By late 1960s, with the rise of the women’s rights movement and other changes in society, there was pressure to change the outdated law. The new 1970 Abortion Act was broader and allowed abortions for limited social reasons too but left very limited, if any, room for a woman’s right to choose. After a citizen’s initiative in 2020, the year 2023 will see a significant amendment to the 1970 law; during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, an abortion can be performed on the woman’s request alone. However, there is still a long way to go in terms of women’s rights and abortion laws in Finland. (shrink)

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; (...) and reproductive rights. (shrink)

The “demand” for selective termination of pregnancy is a socially constructed response to prior medical interventions in women's reproductive processes, themselves dependent on cultural views of infertility.

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S18-S21, March‐April 2022.

The Family Planning Association Northern Ireland (F.P.A.N.I.) has recently been successful in holding the state accountable for its duty to safeguard women’s reproductive health and welfare, and clarify the circumstances in which abortion is lawful. By demanding that the Minister for Health investigate abortion provision and produce abortion guidance, F.P.A.N.I. hope to improve the quality of abortion services and alleviate the situation of those women who are legally entitled to abortion in Northern Ireland but cannot access it there. This action (...) has challenged a public failure which impacts most negatively on those women who cannot easily escape its effects. Although the case succeeded in shaming the state for such a failure, the judicial review strategy could not challenge the legal ethos which denies women a say over their reproductive lives. This case commentary argues that pro-choice strategic litigation needs to positively and generally assert women’s reproductive rights at the same time as it seeks to accommodate the needs of the most vulnerable. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses an argument that is sometimes pressed into service in the ethical debate about the use of assisted reproduction. The argument runs roughly as follows: we should prevent women from using assisted reproduction techniques, because women who want to use the technology have been socially coerced into desiring children - and indeed have thereby been harmed by the patriarchal society in which they live. I call this the argument from coercion. Having clarified this argument, I (...) conclude that although it addresses important issues, it is highly problematic for the following reasons. First, if women are being coerced to desire to use AR, we should eradicate the coercive elements in pro-natalist ideology, not access to AR. Second, the argument seems to have the absurd implication that we should prevent all woman, whether fertile or not, to try to have children. Third, it seems probable that women's welfare will be greater if we let well informed and decision-competent women decide for themselves whether they want to use AR. (shrink)

Continuing medico-technical progress has led toan increasing medicalisation of pregnancy andchildbirth. One of the most common technologiesin this context is ultrasound. Based on someidentified `pro-technology feminist theories',notably the postmodernist feminist discourse,the technology of ultrasound is analysedfocusing mainly on social and political ratherthan clinical issues. As empirical researchsuggests, ultrasound is welcomed by themajority of women. The analysis, however, showsthat attitudes and decisions of women areinfluenced by broader social aspects. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the visualtechnology of ultrasound, in addition to otherreproductive technology (...) in maternity care, islinked to the `personification' of the foetusand has therefore contributed to a new image ofthe foetus. The exploration of these issueschallenges some arguments of feministdiscourse. It draws attention to possibleadverse implications of the technology forwomen's reproductive freedom and indicates theimportance of the topic for politicaldiscussions. (shrink)

Analysis of ART and abortion must include the experiences of women at the emerging center of American life, as well as those at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Our contribution explores the triple system of fertility regulation, analyzing the intersections between fertility and class and using the experiences of women in the middle to add depth to our understanding of women's exercises of autonomy.

As the HIV epidemic continues to grow worldwide, women are increasingly and disproportionally affected. With the introduction of anti-retroviral medications that have been found to effectively prevent perinatal transmission of HIV, the approach to HIV testing in pregnant women has grown increasingly more controversial. In recent years, the model of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) has come into question with opt-out testing now advocated for by the Centers for Disease Control and occurring widely in pregnancy. The benefits of opt-out testing (...) are numerous and may justify its use in replacing the VCT that many have come to see as insufficient. An ethical analysis of opt-out testing suggests it may be at odds with true informed consent and involve a degree of coercion that would not be allowed outside the prenatal setting. If opt-out testing is going to remain the standard of care then the ethical issues it raises must be made transparent. Strategies need to be designed for ensuring that HIV counseling and testing in pregnancy is done in accordance with ethical and reproductive rights principles. (shrink)

This article aims to lay out the ‘for money’ and ‘for dignity’ arguments that feminist ethicists have given about the reproductive labour women perform in providing oocytes or in getting pregnant for others. Feminist arguments about the morality of these two practices overlap significantly because, from a feminist perspective, the morally relevant facts about them are quite similar. Still, there are dissimilarities, stemming from the obvious fact that one practice involves giving up oocytes while the other involves giving up a (...) baby after a pregnancy. Some arguments by feminists reflect this core difference, in that they apply specifically to one practice but not to the other. The article highlights when the relevance of a particular argument differs for these different reproductive practices. (shrink)

This paper imagines what the liberatory possibilities of (full) ectogenesis are, insofar as it separates woman from female reproductive function. Even before use with human infants, ectogenesis productively disrupts the biological paradigm underlying current gender categories and divisions of labour. I begin by presenting a theory of women’s oppression drawn from the radical feminisms of the 1960s, which sees oppression as deeply rooted in biology. On this view, oppressive social meanings are overlaid upon biology and body, as artefacts of culture (...) and history. I then argue that ectogenesis should be pursued to replace two modes of assisted gestation that can be seen as outgrowths of oppressive assumptions about women's function, ectogenesis should be pursued to replace two modes of assisted gestation. These are gestational surrogacy and uterine transplant, which arise partly from gendered, pronatalist, and geneticist norms. These practices are supported by assumptions about women’s identity and value. Pursuing technologies such as ectogenesis, which weaken the presumed link between biology and gender, is beneficial to (trans-inclusionary radical) feminist aims, as part of a broad project of challenging dominant power relations resting on and maintaining gender categories. By allowing the conceptual separation of female reproductive function from ‘woman’, ectogenesis raises questions about how we determine who counts in this gender identity, and also how we value those who claim the identity ‘woman’. I conclude that ectogenesis has the potential to challenge traditional patriarchal family structures, and thence all other male-dominated structures (of work, education, cultural production), allowing a reimagining of the family and society in more radical ways than we have yet achieved. (shrink)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health continues a trajectory of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence that undermines the normative foundation of public health — the idea that the state is obligated to provide a robust set of supports for healthcare services and the underlying social determinants of health. Dobbs furthers a longstanding ideology of individual responsibility in public health, neglecting collective responsibility for better health outcomes. Such an ideology on individual responsibility not only enables a shrinking of public health infrastructure for reproductive (...) health, it facilitates the rise of reproductive coercion and a criminal legal response to pregnancy and abortion. This commentary situates Dobbs in the context of a long historical shift in public health that increasingly places burdens on individuals for their own reproductive health care, moving away from the possibility of a robust state public health infrastructure. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 245-269, June 2021.

There is an urgent need for reconstructing models of property to make them more women-friendly. However, we need not start from scratch: both ‘canonical’ and feminist authors can sometimes provide concepts which we can refine and apply towards women’s propertylessness. This paper looks in particular at women’s alienation from their reproductive labour, building on Marx and Delphy. Developing an economic and political rather than a psychological reading of alienation, it then considers how the refined and revised concept can be applied (...) to concrete examples in global justice for women: in particular, the commercialisation of embryonic and fetal tissue in the new stem cell technologies. (shrink)

This article focuses on the transformation of the female reproductive body with the use of assisted reproduction technologies under neo-liberal economic globalisation, wherein the ideology of trade without borders is central, as well as under liberal feminist ideals, wherein the right to self-determination is central. Two aspects of the body in western medicine—the fragmented body and the commodified body, and the integral relation between these two—are highlighted. This is done in order to analyse the implications of local and global (...) transactions in women’s reproductive body parts for their right to self-determination and individual agency and what this means for their embodiment. We conclude by exploring whether women can become embodied subjects by exercising their proprietary right to their bodies through directing technology to achieve their own goals, while at the same time being fragmented into parts and losing their personhood and bodily integrity. (shrink)

This article argues that changes in the organization of social reproduction, defined to include the activities, attitudes, behaviors, emotions, responsibilities, and relationships involved in maintaining daily life, can explain historical differences in women's political self-organization. Examining the Progressive period, the 1930s, and the 1960s and 1970s, the authors suggest that the conditions of social reproduction provide the organizational resources for and legitimation of women's collective action.

Background: In 2014, companies began covering the costs of egg freezing for their employees. The adoption of this benefit was highly contentious. Some argued that it offered women more reproductive...

Traditionally reproduction, gestation and childbirth have all been regarded as being primarily a woman's domain. As natural reproduction occurs inside a woman's body, respect for autonomy and bodily integrity requires the pregnant woman to have the conclusive say over the fate of the embryo/fetus growing within her. Thus traditionally the ethics and law of reproduction is dominated by the importance of respecting women's reproductive choices. This paper argues that emerging technologies demand a radical rethink of ethics (...) and law in the area of reproduction. The creation and storing of embryos outside of a woman's body and maintaining a pregnancy in a brain dead woman's body and future possibilities such as ectogenesis and male pregnancy raise important issues that cannot simply be answered by appealing to the rights of women to control their bodies. There are those who argue that when reproduction or reproductive products exist outside of a woman's body each gamete donor should have an equal say over the fate of the embryo/fetus. Others, however, argue that giving an equal say to gamete donors in practice usually means allowing the male donor to veto the reproductive enterprise and this is unacceptable. As a result it has been suggested that women should be favoured when it comes to such reproductive choices. This paper examines both sides of this debate in order to answer the fundamental ethical and policy question: 'Is there any reason why women should necessarily retain control over reproduction rather than simply over their own bodies?'. (shrink)

Karen L. Baird, Beyond reproduction: Women’s health, activism, and public policy, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009, reviewed by Amanda R. Clarke.

Smartphones are increasingly entangled with the most intimate areas of everyday life, providing possibilities for the continued expansion of digital self-tracking technologies. Within this context, the development of smartphone applications targeted at female reproductive health are offering novel forms and practices of knowledge production about reproductive bodies and processes. This article presents empirical research from the United Kingdom on women’s use of fertility tracking applications, known more generally as fertility apps, while trying to conceive. Drawing on material from interviews with (...) women who had experience of using fertility apps, I demonstrate the significance of this particular form of fertility tracking for the embodied shift from pregnancy prevention to actively facilitating pregnancy, participants’ sense of self and identity and how they perceived the reproductive potentiality of their bodies. I argue that fertility apps are significantly involved in making fertility cycles known and thus configuring the pre-pregnant reproductive body. (shrink)

IntroductionElements mark the reality of reading the female body in symbolic constructions and social symbols in the exercise of their reproductive health. The study aims to identify elements that characterize the female condition while analyzing the reproductive health of Brazilian and French women.Materials and MethodsA qualitative, multicenter, international study was conducted in Brazil and in France between 2016 and 2019. Data were produced through the use of semi-structured scripts. Focus group discussions and individual interviews were conducted with women who gave (...) birth, hetero-female couples who lived the experience of gestation and birth of a baby, and professionals of maternal and childcare services or members of the associations concerned with the health of mothers and babies. It was guided by the theoretical-methodological framework of institutional analysis in line with the French Institutional Socioclinics.ResultsSexual and reproductive health in the realities researched in Brazil and France are sometimes close and sometimes far apart. In what involves the Brazilian health system, abortion is criminalized and often performed illegally. Furthermore, pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period are highly medicalized. In addition, childbirth is not assured as an experience for a woman and her family. This aspect is confirmed by high numbers of cesarean sections performed or by maternal and infant mortality indicators. The French health system prioritizes vaginal deliveries and seems to assure more autonomy to women, but at the same time, it is worn out by the logic of profit, the efficiency of actions, and the rationalization of practices. In association with these, there are other intrinsic elements in the functioning of the institution that delineates the format of each country: notion of women's rights, violence against women, and discussion regarding the oppression markers of race, gender, sexuality, and social class.ConclusionsBoth countries reveal aspects related to the social role of women's bodies. The established logic reflects in the decision to have children, motherhood, women's autonomy over their own bodies, and in the core values linked to the termination of pregnancy and the professional practices developed in prenatal care, childbirth, and postpartum. (shrink)

In the current political climate, understanding women’s health is necessary to achieve progressive and equitable health care reform. Women access the healthcare system more frequently and in greater numbers than men, and are more likely to vote at the polls.1 Yet politicians, corporations, activists, and patients continue to disagree on the scope and definition of women’s health. In her book Beyond Reproduction: Women’s Health, Activism, and Public Policy, Karen L. Baird offers a retrospective analysis of the women’s health movement (...) in recent decades. She discusses landmark legislation and examines how the movement has evolved in response to a changing social and political landscape. Baird’s text is both timely .. (shrink)

The welfare mother is a powerful symbol of the supposed irresponsible, sexually promiscuous, and immoral behavior of the poor. Resting on dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender, the welfare mother suggests not a poor mother but a bad mother. Based on interviews with 34 mothers receiving public assistance, this article explores how women receiving assistance claim for themselves an identity as good mothers by defining the appropriate responsibilities of mothers to prioritize, protect, discipline, provide for, and spend time with (...) their children. The material realities of poverty combined with work requirements now attached to public assistance exacerbate contradictions between these roles and create difficulties for these mothers. This article explores these contradictions and examines the possibilities for and limits of their use as resistance strategies. (shrink)