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Choosing Assisted Reproduction

Social Emotional and Ethical Considerations

By Susan Lewis Cooper and Ellen Sarasohn Glazer

(Houghton Mifflin, 1993) is critical of the new reproductive technologies. She believes that ART clinics intentionally attempt to convince couples that reproduction in one form of another is inherently better than adoption and that families created from genetic ties (or partial genetic ties) are stronger and more desirable than those created by adoption. Bartholet argues that what she sees as objective counseling would surely steer more infertile couples away from technological means of reproduction to adoption. In fact many infertile couples do struggle with this issue. Longing for a gestational and/ or genetic (or partial genetic) connection to their offspring, yet aware that too many children in the world need good homes, many prospective parents wonder if this longing to reproduce should take precedence over the right of existing children to have loving homes.

As we will see in Chapter 7 ("Surrogacy"), the ability to separate genetic from gestational motherhood means that offspring can be born (and have been born) to women old enough to be grandmothers and great-grandmothers and who are likely to die before their children reach adulthood. The use of anonymous sperm or egg donation means that children may have several half siblings that they do not know. Furthermore, the separation of genetic and gestational motherhood may mean that a couple who have donated frozen embryos has several biogenetic children who are being raised by different families, and who know nothing about each other's existence. These are but some of the ethical and psycho-social dilemmas brought about by the new reproductive technologies -- dilemmas that couples face as they consider their parenting and treatment options.