Assisted Reproduction
Assisted reproductive technologies, like in vitro fertilization (IVF), are used to treat medical infertility and to help single and LGBTQI people form families. They have provided welcome opportunities for millions, but their significant safety risks are often downplayed or overlooked by the fertility industry. For example, egg retrieval for IVF relies on injections of powerful hormonal drugs which can cause ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a serious condition that can require hospitalization and in rare cases has resulted in death.
Regulation and oversight of the fertility sector varies widely among countries and sometimes within them (as in the U.S.). The same is true of costs. Together, these differences encourage “cross-border reproductive care,” especially for surrogacy arrangements. Yet weak or laxly enforced policies can harm all parties – intended parents, children, egg providers, and surrogates. Power imbalances among these parties increase the potential for exploitation.
Aggregated News
TORONTO — Women who become pregnant using fertility treatments — particularly in-vitro fertilization — have a slightly higher risk of...
Aggregated News
Published September 26, 2023
Emily Galpern speaks at the Black Women for Wellness Reproductive Justice Conference in August 2023 about deep disparities between the people most directly affected by state control of reproduction and those with privilege who can access privatized, high-cost fertility services to form their families.
Gene editing technology like CRISPR may have potential to treat diseases, but does editing future generations go too far? In this August 9, 2022 event, we heard renowned bioethicist Françoise Baylis, reproductive justice activist Nourbese Flint, and disability rights scholar and activist Karen Nakamura discuss the serious societal and ethical implications of human gene editing in the context of assisted reproductive technology. This discussion was moderated by Osagie Obasogie, professor of law and bioethics at UC Berkeley.
(For those who participated in the live event, the audio on this version has been fixed, and missing slides have been added.)
Published March 31, 2023
The third panel in CGS' Missing Voices Initiative webinar series, this roundtable conversation explored the perilous prospect of reproductive uses of human genome editing from the perspective of feminist and reproductive justice scholars and advocates. Their intersectional analyses illuminated concerns related to eugenics and the rapidly expanding global fertility industry. Speakers were Kavita Ramdas, Alana Cattapan, and Amrita Pande, and the panel was moderated by Susan Berke Fogel.
Find more information about the panel's speakers here: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/in...
Learn more about CGS' Missing Voices Initiative here: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/in...
This two-part online CGS event centers social justice and human rights, presenting voices and perspectives from feminist, disability rights, reproductive rights and justice, racial justice, environmental, and human rights movements and scholars, who question whether heritable genome editing has any place in a fair and inclusive future. Part one took place on February 27, 2023 and features CGS Executive Director Marcy Darnovsky discussing history and context of the Summit process, followed by Dorothy Roberts, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, George Annas and Silvia Yee (moderator) in conversation to discuss the social justice case against heritable genome editing.
On January 29, 2020, Marcy Darnovsky spoke to an audience of 600 in Santa Barbara at TEDxLagunaBlanca. Her talk was titled, “Use Gene Editing to Treat Patients, Not Design Babies.”