This is not the report I thought I would be writing; my hope was to be able to produce a work that drew clear conclusions from my research and instead I am beset with more and broader questions surrounding reproductive technologies in general and the pervasive medicalization of women’s bodies. Still, the topics fascinate me, and I plan to continue to follow the work being done in emerging reproductive technologies and to begin a deeper exploration of the historical medical treatment of women’s bodies. I find myself less consumed with finding tidy answers and more consumed with uncovering the reasons behind the questions. Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic has had major effects on the infertility industry and on my own perception of my moral obligations to the world.
Some of the questions that I still see as open and in need of further exploration include the question of whether women have a right to gestate or whether people have a broader right to reproduce at all. Related to these is the problem of societal pressure on people to reproduce. Even in the absence of pressure to reproduce, I believe the choice to reproduce should be utterly a free one. A further problem in this country with our dysfunctional health care system is the high cost of reproductive technologies that place them out of reach for all but the wealthiest people. Dr. Giuliano Testa, principal investigator of the Baylor transplant team, predicts that the uterus transplant will be available to women in the next five to ten years, but it is most unlikely the technology will be available to any but the richest people. However, this is in line with the high cost of commercial surrogacy, IVF treatments, and reproductive technology in general.
What sparked my interest in the first place was a news story in the summer of 2019 about New York’s inability to pass a bill legalizing commercial surrogacy and in particular, the opposition to the bill of noted feminists including Gloria Steinem. I perceived the feminist opposition as a disconnect with the more typical feminist position of championing a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy. That bill has since passed, at around the same time the coronavirus shut the world down this past spring and the newsworthiness of the bill’s passage was a blip compared to the growing pandemic. Also due to Covid-19, people in the middle of IVF treatments (deemed to be elective), international adoptions, and international surrogacy arrangements suddenly saw their plans coming to a hard stop. An unfortunate result of Covid-19’s closing of borders has been the months-long stranding of hundreds of infants away from their intended parents. These infants are left in the care of third parties—not necessarily the surrogates who bore them—and many of them are stateless and unable to have passports issued to them to enable their being united with their intended parents.
A new question that I would like to explore is the moral status of the embryo, particularly in regard to the disposition of unclaimed embryos at storage facilities (when people stop making payments to store their frozen embryos, clinics are not sure how to proceed) and the disposition of frozen embryos when a couple’s relationship dissolves.
It has been a privilege to be a Stone Fellow and to have the opportunities to conduct my research and interact with the members of the Center for Values at UTD.