Post-Humous Reproduction Debate: Social Security Commissioner

Things that I am now sure of after this debate: More information and more points of view only make these topics more confusing.
In this simulation, I played the part of a Social Security Commissioner, on the pro-limitations side to post-humous reproduction. From the governmental/economical aspect, post-humous reproduction only poses financial problems when discerning whether or not a woman is getting pregnant with the sperm of a dead man. Does she really feel like he would want her to be using her sperm? If so, does that mean that the child is 'dependant' on the man, thus receiving benefits from his side? How long can one be allowed to wait before the frozen sperm is used?
Being part of the government, I obviously leaned on the side of strict consent and regulations before one would undergo post-humous reproduction. What if the man did not want his sperm to be used? Problems that arise from this type of reproduction can be limited if there is layers and layers of consent, a notion that the couple was trying to have a child before a partner's death (trying for IVF), and a time limit on the usage of the sperm. In my position, I am just trying to make sure that every one's rights are recognized.
In the 'pro-restriction' group, it was difficult to come up with a generalized regulatory standard that we all agreed on since we had a couple religious leaders on our side (Catholic priest and a Presbyterian priest). The legal characters, like myself, could not be influenced by moral or religious sways, because we could only represent justice and humane rights, including autonomy.
This exercise was helpful because I had to delineate the different roles in my head, taking each person as one mindset, focusing on certain issues and completely disregarding others. I will have to be able to turn off some parts of my brain for some parts of analysis, but still keep my personal views intact.

A Recent Podcast

 



I recently was listening to a Catholic podcast "Catholic Underground" and came across one 'Life is Still Worth Living' on 2/2/12 about contraceptives and the religious views on them. I thought that the speaker was incredibly effective in his delivery and evidence against using any form of contraception. I even forwarded this to a few of my Protestant friends to listen to!

Age Limits To Motherhood?

In 2005 a 66 year old Romanian professor Adriana Iliescu chose to have IVF and gave birth to a child via emergency Cesarian section. Ever since this case, age limits to ART have been popular debate, causing individual clinics to differ on the way they regulate and enforce limitations. Arthur Caplan addresses this particular case in his MSNBC article 'How Old is Too Old to Have a Baby?' from 2005. Taking a strong stance against these 'granny-moms', he reports "there was a terrible price to pay for using reproductive technology to make a 66-year-old woman pregnant". Statistically any pregnancy for a woman over 40 is considered 'high risk', and in Adriana's case, caused her to have a premature baby. Caplan brings up the problems that result from these unrestricted age treatments: the mother will not be able to physically take care of the child, as she will need looking after soon; the baby has intensified risks during the pregnancy, and the pregnancy is very stressful on such an old body. He proposes state regulation should enforce an age restriction of  65 years old for single women to have a baby through ART, and if in a relationship the total years should not exceed 130. Anyone near 55 years of age must pass a physical examination. 

 The chapter "From Legalization to legislation: Race and Age as Determining Factors" taken from Jose Van Dyck's book Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent  covers a couple topics relating to social restrictions: post menopausal pregnancies, transracial impregnation, and foetal pregnancies. He gives an interesting statistical approach to age restrictions for ART. Technologies now make it possible for ages to have the capacity to gestate and deliver babies using egg donation and oocyte transplantation, causing increased success rates in older women. So now, clinics which were once holding back from fear of decreasing overall success rate are now more inclined to provide assistance to these older women. Who wouldn't want that extra income from an older, wealthier couple, desperate for a child? Grandmothers have always had a role in childrearing, and provide as much love as any young mother, right? Van Dyck doesn't give an answer to the question of age-regulation, but ends the chapter commenting on the difficulty on clinic enforcement especially since denying access would decrease revenues. 

Our technology is getting so advanced that not even the idea of decreased success rates can scare a clinic into creating an age policy, it now relies on the initiative of a clinic's individual preference to set the standards of regulation. I believe that if a woman has hit menopause, they should not be given any form of ART. because at that point, God is indirectly telling them that they are not naturally meant to reproduce any longer. This should be a federally mandated restriction, as it would be their responsibility to pay for the child and/or mother who may suffer any consequences of such a late pregnancy. 

I believe that I have formed these opinions due to my brother having been born so late in my mom's life. In her situation, there was nothing wrong with her becoming a mother again because it happened naturally. However, when a woman has had menopause for over 15 or 20 years, her biological clock has told her she is not physically able to carry out the pregnancy and become a mother. If under some unusual circumstances an age of menopause is in question, the default should be the average age of 51 years. 


Post-Class Discussion
I found our class discussion on the different topics very held back and reserved. I would love to have an intense debate with one another in an anonymous setting, as I felt like I had to hold back a few things because of what I believed religiously. Especially in my group discussion on age, I could not see how it would be possible to have a non-mandated policy on age if you had any thought that age in fact posed a problem in ART treatment. I briefly touched on my religious beliefs, but when our group tried to combine our views to create a unified decision on regulation, we could not mix. I hope that my religious views will not offend anyone, because I definitely will not be cutting down on what I want to convey about what I think is right and wrong. 
Everyone's various scholarly articles were very helpful when we needed to back up our position with evidence and statistics. I think that having the RefWorks account with the various articles posted on it will be very helpful in the future for our websites. I just hope that people remember to put up the article summary for their source! 

Infertility and Ethnicity

The notion of 'access' implies that there is a certain need, demand and supply of a product or service. A more appropriate term when discussing ART's is an 'equitable service'(Culley). This is defined as a service that provides equal access for an equal need. When looking at the 'needs' of individuals seeking reproductive technology services, a discerning factor is the race of the individual. Data from a national survey found that 10.5% of Blacks, 13.6% of Hispanics, and 6.4% of Caucasians reported infertility out of 10,847 women (Jain, 2006). But does this match the social stereotypes of family sizes? In the media, black and hispanic families consist of multiple generations with multiple children, which most definitely play a part in the common notion that black and hispanic females may be more fertile than whites. Because of this stereotype of fertility, many would argue that blacks and hispanics have this limited cultural access to ART due to the stigma of being infertile. 

I don't think that this is something that we can deliberately change, but it is interesting to see how jokes, pictures, tv shows and the news can portray one set of racial ideals that may be making it taboo for women of some races feel comfortable to use ART.