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Home , Reproductive technology, Sex selection

The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies

Elizabeth Reis, Macaulay Honors College Fall, 2018

This is a tentative syllabus; the readings will inevitably change.

Tuesdays, 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 pm.

Email: [email protected] Office hours: Tuesdays, 1:30-3:30 (call when you get to Macaulay: x2908) and by appointment

Should people be able to sell reproductive materials like sperm and eggs? Should students who go to Harvard get paid $100,000 or more for their eggs while those who go to CUNY receive $8000? Should prenatal sex selection be encouraged? Should there be laws regarding pre-implantation genetic diagnosis? If some parents are able to avoid having a baby with certain disabilities or diseases, should others be allowed to select for certain disabilities? Is it wrong to have a child if there are known genetic risk factors? Is surrogate motherhood exploitative or empowering for women? How might the growth of in developing nations change our understanding of reproductive technology?

This interdisciplinary seminar will explore the medical, legal, ethical, and gendered implications of assisted reproductive technologies. Topics will include egg and , traditional and gestational surrogacy, transgender pregnancy, “designer” babies, the ethics of sex selection, disability and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, control and disposition of cryopreserved , post-menopausal pregnancy, the ethics of reproductive globalization, and the use of reproductive technology in same-sex unions and non-traditional families.

Drawing on science and technology studies, feminist theory, and , the class will focus on the dilemmas posed by various forms of conceptive technologies as they intersect with the personal and political meanings of creating human life.

Readings will include selections from these and other works:

*Rene Almeling, Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (Berkeley, 2011) * Erik Parens and Adrienne Ash, eds., Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights (PTDR), (Washington, 2000) *Julia Derek, Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor (New York, 2004) *Lennard Davis, Go Ask Your Father: One Man’s Obsession with Finding His Origins Through DNA Testing (Amazon edition, 2015) *Vicki Forman, This Lovely Life (Mariner Books, 2009) COURSE REQUIREMENTS Class participation: This class will require active and sustained class participation, with open and honest discussion. We will be covering material that may challenge your beliefs and values. While you may not agree with everything said, you owe it to each other to listen carefully and respectfully to other people’s views.

Attendance: Because this will be a discussion-oriented class, you have to be here to benefit. I cannot recreate the class discussion for you if you have to miss class. Absences (as well as arriving late or leaving early) will negatively affect your final grade.

Rules: No computers, iPads, etc. are allowed in the class unless we are looking at the reading together. Please no texting either.

Academic Integrity All work completed for this class must be your own. If you cheat (hand in your friend's work or copy directly from the internet or a book, etc.) you will (at the very least) fail the class and your name will be registered with the University. For guidelines and the Macaulay Honors pledge, see: http://macaulay.cuny.edu/community/handbook/policies/honors-integrity/

Students with Disabilities I will make every effort to accommodate students with disabilities. If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this course, please make arrangements to meet with me as soon as possible. Please request that the Counselor for Students with Disabilities send a letter verifying your disability.

Weekly Journals should be uploaded to the “journals” section on Wednesday morning before 12:00 noon.

There are 13 weeks of Journal submissions, but you can take one week off (of writing, not reading!) If you do a beautiful job, incorporate all the reading, and thoroughly contemplate and address the study questions, you will get full credit. If you complete all the journal entries and receive full credit, you will get an A on this part of the course. If you only submit and get credit for 11 you will receive an A- for this part of the course; 10, a B+; 9, a B; 8, a B-; 7 a C+, 6 a C and less than that a D or lower. If you submit fewer than 5, you will not pass the class at all.

The quality of the submission counts too! In other words, this is your opportunity to grapple with the readings, to question, to connect one week to the next, and to raise issues that you’d like to see discussed in class. The journals aren’t formally graded, but I still want complete sentences, though you don’t have to worry about making an argument, having smooth transitions, and the like. If you only write about one of the readings or you write about your opinions with no reference to the readings at all, you won't get credit that week (though I may award partial credit.) I don’t have a page limit, but I expect you’ll submit roughly 500-750 words. More is fine. Fertility project/paper (to be explained: due during finals week) Journals: 50% paper: 30% Class participation and attendance: 20%

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Week 1: Introduction to Ethical Debates about ART Read:  You do not have to write a journal entry this week.  Alan Zarembo, “Octuplets Draw Critical Eyes To Fertility Industry,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 14, 2009  Diamond Sharp, “White Mother Sues After Birth of Mixed Race Daughter,”  In class film: Beholder

Week 2: New Technologies vs. , Race, Sexuality, and Identity  Patricia K. Jennings, “’God Had Something Else in Mind’: Family, Religion, and ,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 39:2 (April 2010), 215-237. (Online)  Laura Mamo, “Negotiating Conception: Lesbians’ Hybrid-Technological Practices,” Science, Technology Human Values 32:3 (May 2007), 369-93 (Online)  Mary Lyndon Shanley and Adrienne Asch, “Involuntary , Reproductive Technology, and Social : The Medical Mask on Social Illness,” Signs 34(4) (Summer 2009): 851-874. (Online)  Robin Marantz Henig, “Transgender Men Who Become Pregnant Face Social, Health Challenges,” NPR (Nov. 7, 2014) In class film: Technostorks

Week 3: Voluntary and Involuntary  Tracy Clark-Flory, “Is Forced Sterilization Ever OK?” Salon.com (February 16, 2011)  On The Ashley Treatment: “Treatment Keeps Girl Child-Sized,”  Arthur Kaplan, “Is Peter Pan Treatment a Moral Choice?”  Kim Severson, “Thousands Sterilized: A State Weighs Restitution,” NYT (Dec. 9, 2011) (Online)  J. Bryan Lowder, “Sterilize Me, Please: Why is it so difficult for young women to get their tubes tied?” Slate.com (July 9, 2012)  First half of Lennard Davis, Go Ask Your Father  In class film: La Operacion Week 4: The 20th-Century History of ART  Finish Lennard Davis, Go Ask Your Father  In class film: Donor Unknown; Thank You For Coming by Sarah Lamm

Week 5: Sperm Donation  Rene Almeling, Sex Cells: The Medical Market For Eggs and Sperm, 25-109  Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, “Are Sperm Donors Really Anonymous Anymore?” Slate (March 1, 2010)  Mary Ladd, “Maps of Beauty and Disease: Thoughts on , , and Biological Family,” Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (2010), 479-482. (Online)  Alessandra Rafferty, “Donor-Conceived and Out of the Closet,” Newsweek, (February, 25, 2011)  I Glenn Cohen, "Prohibiting Anonymous Sperm Donation and the Child Welfare Error," Hastings Center Report, Sept.-Oct. 2011 (Online)  Guest Speaker: Lisa Brundage

Week 6:  Rene Almeling, Sex Cells: The Medical Market For Eggs and Sperm, 111-178  Julia Derek, Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor  Katie O’Reilly, “Superdonor” Vela Magazine (2015)  Elizabeth Reis, “Young Women’s Eggs: Elite and Ordinary” http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=5852  Rachel Warden, “Why Corporate Promotion of Egg Freezing Isn’t a ‘Benefit’ to All Women, http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/2014/10/apple-facebook-cover- egg-freezing/  Guest Speaker: Katie O'Reilly

Week 7: Surrogacy: Who is a mother?  Debora Spar, The Baby Business, 69-82 [Online]  Alex Kuczynski, “Her Body, My Baby,” NYT (November 28, 2008) (Online)  Stephanie Saul, “Building a Baby with Few Ground Rules,” Dec, 12, 2009 Melanie Thernstrom, The Twiblings article [Online]  Dorothy E. Roberts, “Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?,” Signs 34(4) (Summer 2009): 783-804. [Online]  Guest Speaker: Andrew Solomon

Week 8: International surrogacy and IVF  Ruby L. Lee, “New Trends in Global Outsourcing of Commercial Surrogacy: A Call for Regulation,” Hastings Women’s Law Journal 20:2 (2009), 275-300 (Online)  Jason Burke, “’s Surrogate Mothers Face New Rules to Restrict ‘Pot of Gold’” The Guardian (July 30, 2010)  Emily Wax, “In India, age often doesn’t stop women from seeking help to become pregnant,” Washington Post (August 13, 2010)  P. Jayaram, “OK to rent Womb in India,” The Straits Times (October 6, 2008),  Stephanie Nolen, “Desperate Mothers Fuel India’s ‘Baby Factories,’” Toronto Globe and Mail (February 13, 2009)  I. Glenn Cohen, Patients With Passports, Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics, pp. 371-398 (Online)  In class film: Made in India

Week 9: International Concerns: The Middle East  Susan Martha Kahn, “Making Technology Familiar: Orthodox Jews and Infertility Support, Advice, and Inspiration,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 30 (2006): 467-80 [Online]  Marcia C. Inhorn, “Making Muslim Babies: IVF and Donation in Sunni versus Shi’a Islam,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 30 (2006): 427-450. [Online]  In class film: Google Baby

Week 10: Disposition: Whose Babies are These?  I. Glenn Cohen, “The Constitution and the Rights Not to Procreate,” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 60, 2008; Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-30. (Online)  Ceala E. Breen-Portnoy, “Frozen Embryo Disposition in Cases of Separation and Divorce: How Nahmani v. Nahmani and Davis v. Davis Form the Foundation for a Workable Expansion of Current International , Maryland Journal of International Law 28:1 (2013) (Online)  Tamar Lewin, “Anti- Groups Join Battles Over Frozen Embryos,” New York Times (January 19, 2016) (Online)

Week 11: Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis, Disability Rights  Eric Parens and Adrienne Asch, “The Disability Rights Critique of Prenatal : Reflections and Recommendations,” in Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, ed. Erik Parens and Adrienne Ash (PTDR ) 3-43.  Deborah Kent, “Somewhere a Mockingbird,” PTDR, 57-63  Mary Ann Baily, “Why I had Amniocentesis,” in PTDR, 64-71  Philip M. Ferguson, Alan Gartner, and Dorothy K. Lipsky, “The Experience of Disability in Families,” PTDR, 72-93  Nancy Press, “Assessing the Expressive Character of Prenatal Testing,” PTDR, 214-233  Adrienne Asch, “Why I Haven’t Changed My Mind About Prenatal Diagnosis,” PTDR, 234-258  In class film: A Question of Genes

Week 12: Premature Babies, Patients’ Rights, and Hospital Policies  Read: Vicki Forman, This Lovely Life

Week 13: Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis and “Designer Babies” Ruth Padawer, “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,” New York Times (August 2011) (Online)  Darshak M. Sanghavi, “Wanting Babies Like Themselves, Some Parents Choose Genetic Defects,” NYTimes, (December 5, 2006).  Gautam Naik, A Baby, Please. Blond, Freckles – Hold the Colic, Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2009 (Online)  Brandon Keim, “Designer Babies: A Right to Choose?” Wired Science, March 9, 2009  Dorothy C. Wertz, “Drawing Lines: Notes for Policymakers,” PTDR, 261-287  In class film: Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? And My Sister’s Keeper interview

Week 14: Genomic and Stem Cell Technologies: Where Are We Headed?  Read: Karen Rothenberg and Lynn Bush, The Drama of DNA: Narrative Genomics, Chapters 3 and 4 (Online)  I. Glenn Cohen, Patients with Passports, pp. 421-443 (Online)