Sex Selection or Gender Selection? Queering the Ratio Question

I am at a fantastic event at Yale I co-organized on Intersections in Reproduction: Perspectives on Abortion, Assisted Reproductive Technologies, and Judicial Review with some amazing scholars present and excellent papers being presented. Like many people who have thought about sex selection, I would have imagined I have thought through most of the issues from most perspectives. What I love about these gatherings is that they always prove me wrong.

Today two very interesting questions were raised about a common argument raised about sex selection, the risk that it will result in unbalanced sex ratios. Our discussion, I would say, “queered” the typical claim in two interesting ways, and I am curious what others think (to be clear these were my thoughts on questions raised, not putting words in their mouths).

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Smoke and Mirrors and Women, Oh My

[Guest post by Katherine L. Record, JD, MPH, MA]

Last week the Supreme Court attracted lots of attention when it heard arguments about whether a corporation can exclude mandatory preventive benefits from its employee health plan, based on a religious objection to certain types of healthcare.  This is a tale as old as time; religion has long been the basis for opposition to reproductive (i.e., women’s) health – including the preventive healthcare now in question, contraception.

Yet this argument has nothing to do with government infringement on the practice of religion.

In fact, the corporation, Hobby Lobby, covered two of the four contraceptive devices in dispute until its lawyers were actually arguing the issue in court, apparently to little detriment to the company’s faith in God.  What’s more, Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) includes more than $73 million invested in the companies that produce these objectionable contraceptives (e.g., intrauterine devices, emergency contraception).

This has not stopped Hobby Lobby from arguing that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is threatening its freedom, as a corporation, to practice religion.

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Awkward Company

I am often surprised when I discover the folk who are on the same side of an issue as me. I must say, it’s not always a pleasant surprise. In fact, I just as often regret having to share company with many people who are on “my side” of a cause.

I expect this is exactly what many of those who oppose abortion in this country would feel if they learned who the main champion of their cause is in Colombia: Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez, who recently gained international notoriety after he deposed the left-leaning Mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro and barred him from holding public office for 18 years. The official reason is related to his administration’s handling of waste management in Bogotá. However, many believe that the harshness of the sanctions were motivated due to Ordoñez’s repudiations of Petro’s positions regarding abortion and the rights of the LGBT community.

I very much believe that most opponents of abortion in the US would also strongly oppose most of the stringently misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic views that are fundamental to Ordoñez’s political conception, which he defends in his writings, including: “Towards the Free Development of our Animalness” or “Gender Ideology: Tragic Utopia or Cultural Revolution.”

In case you’re curious, below are some translated excerpts from his Law School thesis, which he presented to the University of Saint Thomas in Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 1979.

Fundamental Presuppositions of the Catholic State

Dedication: To our lady the VIRGIN MARY, Mother of God and Mother of ours, co-redeemer of the human lineage… supplicating from her the restoration of the Christian order and the crushing of atheistic communism so that catholic faith my shine allover since without her there is no hope for societies or for men.”

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Caplan: Three-Parent Babies Are an Ethical Choice

Art Caplan has a new op-ed out on the three-parent baby issue.  Here’s an excerpt:

In my view, trying the technique to fix a terrible disease even with risks of failure makes ethical sense. The FDA may ask for more studies in monkeys, but that really wont settle the safety issue in humans. Given the severity of mitochondrial diseases it is worth trying the technique.

The big worry is not so much safety, but where will allowing this form of genetic engineering lead. If we let doctors try to repair defective eggs today, who is to say they won’t be trying to make superbabies or designer babies tomorrow by transferring other genes into eggs?

The answer to that is that how far we go in engineering future generations through genetic manipulations is up to us. We can enact laws and treaties that say yes to gene therapies but no to cosmetic genetic engineering. Holding families hostage by saying they cannot try to repair broken genes to treat diseases because we worry that we cannot put steps or handrails on the slippery slope to designer babies seems wrong to me.

Take a look here.

TOMORROW: Frances Kamm’s Bioethical Prescriptions: Book Talk and Panel Discussion

Please join us on February 27 at 2:00pm in Wasserstein 1019 at the Harvard Law School as we launch Professor Frances Kamm’s latest book, Bioethical Prescriptions: To Create, End, Choose, and Improve Lives (Oxford University Press, January 2014). The book showcases Professor Kamm’s articles on bioethics as parts of a coherent whole, with sections devoted to death and dying; early life (on conception and use of embryos, abortion, and childhood); genetics and other enhancements (on cloning and other genetic technologies); allocating scarce resources; and methodology (on the relation of moral theory and practical ethics).

Panelists include:

  • Frances Kamm, Littauer Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University; Former Senior Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Norman Daniels, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Thomas (Tim) Scanlon, Jr., Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University
  • Moderator: Christopher T. Robertson, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Associate Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

This event is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu or 617-496-4662.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and BioethicsEdmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; and the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

2/27: Frances Kamm’s Bioethical Prescriptions: Book Talk and Panel Discussion

Please join us on February 27 at 2:00pm in Wasserstein 1019 at the Harvard Law School as we launch Professor Frances Kamm’s latest book, Bioethical Prescriptions: To Create, End, Choose, and Improve Lives (Oxford University Press, January 2014). The book showcases Professor Kamm’s articles on bioethics as parts of a coherent whole, with sections devoted to death and dying; early life (on conception and use of embryos, abortion, and childhood); genetics and other enhancements (on cloning and other genetic technologies); allocating scarce resources; and methodology (on the relation of moral theory and practical ethics).

Panelists include:

  • Frances Kamm, Littauer Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University; Former Senior Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Norman Daniels, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Thomas (Tim) Scanlon, Jr., Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University
  • Moderator: Christopher T. Robertson, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Associate Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

This event is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu or 617-496-4662.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics; Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; and the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

TOMORROW: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

Please join us for our second annual Health Law Year in P/Review event, co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the New England Journal of Medicine. The conference will be held in Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 31, 2014, from 8:30am to 5:00pm.

This year we will welcome experts discussing major developments over the past year and what to watch out for in areas including the Affordable Care Act, medical malpractice, FDA regulatory policy, abortion, contraception, intellectual property in the life sciences industry, public health policy, and human subjects research.

The full agenda is available on our website. Speakers are:  Read More

Would Marlise Munoz’s Fetus Have Survived? Should It Have?

By Michelle Meyer

This is post is part of The Bioethics Program’s ongoing Online Symposium on the Munoz and McMath cases, which I’ve organized, and is cross-posted from the symposium. To see all symposium contributions, in reverse chronological order, click here.

Had the hospital not relented and removed the ventilator from Marlise Munoz’s body, could the Munoz fetus have been brought to term, or at least to viability? And if so, would the resulting child have experienced any temporary or permanent adverse health outcomes? Despite some overly confident commentary on both “sides” of this case suggesting a clear answer one way or the other—i.e., that there was no point in retaining the ventilator because the fetus could never be viable or was doomed to be born with catastrophic abnormalities; or, on the other hand, that but for the removal of the ventilator, the “unborn baby” was clearly on track to being born healthy—the truth is that we simply don’t know.

Before getting into the limited available data about fetal outcomes in these relatively rare cases, a bit of brush clearing. The New York Times juxtaposed reports about possible abnormalities in the Munoz fetus with the hospital’s stipulation about the fetus’s non-viability in ways that are likely to confuse, rather than clarify:

Lawyers for Ms. Muñoz’s husband, Erick Muñoz, said they were provided with medical records that showed the fetus was “distinctly abnormal” and suffered from hydrocephalus — an accumulation of fluid in the cavities of the brain — as well as a possible heart problem.

The hospital acknowledged in court documents that the fetus was not viable.

Whether intentionally or not, the nation’s newspaper of record implies — wrongly, I think — that the hospital conceded that the fetus would never be viable because of these reported abnormalities. In court, the hospital and Erick Munoz stipulated to a series of facts, including that Marlise was then 22 weeks pregnant and that “[a]t the time of this hearing, the fetus gestating inside Mrs. Munoz is not viable” (emphasis added). The hospital conceded nothing at all about any fetal abnormalities. In short, the Times, and many other commentors, have conflated “non-viability” as a function of gestational age with “non-viability” as a way of characterizing disabilities that are incompatible with life. As I read this stipulation, the hospital was not at all conceding that the fetus would never have been viable, had the ventilator remained in place. Rather, given the constitutional relevance of fetal viability, the hospital was merely conceding the banal scientific fact that the Munoz fetus was, at 22 weeks, not currently viable. There is nothing surprising in the least about the hospital’s “concession” about “viability” in the first sense, above: 22-week fetuses are generally not considered viable. Read More