If you have been trying to get pregnant for a year or longer and have been told you are dealing with infertility, you may be interested in the ethical debate about your right to bear children and your access to treatment for infertility.
Infertility affects approximately 15% of all US couples, and with all of the modern breakthroughs and advances in infertility treatments, more couples are looking to ART, or Assisted Reproductive Technology, to help them conceive.
Basically, the present cultural belief here in the USA is that bearing children is a right. As infertility is a medical condition, patients who have been diagnosed with infertility largely feel that the medical community has an obligation to provide them with treatment so that they can bear children.
However, this is a very gray area with medical providers. For example, some doctors feel that their moral obligation regarding deciding who should receive infertility treatments ends with a physical assessment.
Others adhere to the belief that they are ethically bound to refuse infertility treatments when they have reason to believe the prospective parent or parents are not going to provide a safe, stable environment for rearing a child.
The Constitution of the United States does not specifically mention the right to bear children. But, there have been many court cases that show that procreation is considered a right, protected under the law by the 14th Amendment to the constitution.
The Ethics Committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, or ECASRM has issued recommendations that it believes fertility services may provide, as well as identifying grounds that would place a moral duty on prospective parents not to reproduce, and medical providers not to assist in reproduction.
These recommendations include such factors as the risk of disease being transmitted to unborn children, the inability or unwillingness of the potential parent/s to comply with proper prenatal care, the inability to provide for a child’s well-being, the potential for physical or psychological harm to a child, and population overgrowth.
In addition, the ECASRM concluded that fertility services should not be denied to unmarried persons or homosexuals.
Bear in mind that these are recommendations only, not hard and fast policies or rules that medical providers must abide by.
Top Questions About Infertility
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