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Human Reproduction Update, Vol.2, No.5 pp.447-456, 1996
© European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 1996; all rights reserved

Ethics and reproductive medicine

D Schafer0,1, R Baumann2 and M Kettner3

0 Institute of Human Genetics and 2 Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, J.W. Goethe-University Clinic Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, D-60590 Frankfurt/Main, Germany 3 Cultural Studies Center (KWI), Hagmanngarten 5, D-45259 Essen, Germany 1 Corresponding author

Abstract

This article surveys relevant moral and ethical implications of reproductive medicine, excluding any aspects of contraception. To maintain the methodological priority of a moral perspective, it focuses on moral theory and ethics in general before looking at the impact of ethics on the different techniques applied in reproductive medicine. We suggest that discourse ethics should be centre-stage among the moral perspectives, since it has a unique capacity to synthesize, gauge and emulate other moral perspectives without necessarily replacing them. Questions of spousal fidelity, parental identity, sexual relations, reshaping of family ties, preimplantation diagnosis, discarding of human life, up to the question of what kind of life is generally acknowledged as worth living, and which is not, all these are morally significant topics. As well as providing a description of the techniques used in reproductive medicine, our article presents a rationale for charting potentials for moral problems. This renders it possible to elucidate the moral costs of each of the options offered by reproductive medicine in the light of whatever moral view one identifies with.

Keywords: discourse/ethics/reproductive medicine


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