Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction (The International Library of Medicine, Ethics and Law)

While advances in reproductive medicine such as IVF, GIFT and ZIFT have enabled thousands of couples worldwide to have children, they have also raised a plethora of ethical, philosophical and legal questions. This is a collection of essays addressing these issues. The first part of the text concerns questions about the nature and scope of the right to reproduce. The second explores the meaning of parenthood and family, and the third examines issues aside from custody that are raised by gamete donation and surrogacy. Part four concerns the combination of reproductive and genetic technologies and the new possibilities this offers for the conception of children, as well as for selecting offspring characteristics, and a final section considers the limits to procreative liberty.