Syllabus

The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies

Elizabeth Reis, Macaulay Honors College

Spring, 2016

Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 pm.

Email: elizabeth.reis@mhc.cuny.edu

Office hours: Mondays, 1:30-3:30 (call when you get to Macaulay: x2908) and by appointment on most Wednesday afternoons.

ITF Margaret Galvan
margaret.galvan@macaulay.cuny.edu
Office hours: Online on Mondays, 12:30-2:30pm and by appointment

Should people be able to sell reproductive materials like sperm and eggs? Should female 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 surrogacy 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 sperm donation, traditional and gestational surrogacy, transgender pregnancy, “designer” babies, the ethics of sex selection, disability and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, control and disposition of cryopreserved embryos, 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 medical ethics, 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 Clinic project/paper (to be explained: due during finals week)

Journals: 50%

Fertility Clinic paper: 30%

Class participation and attendance: 20%

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Week 1: Wednesday, February 3

Introduction to Ethical Debates about ART

Read:

Week 2: Wednesday, February 10

New Technologies vs. Religion, Race, Sexuality, and Gender Identity

  • Patricia K. Jennings, “’God Had Something Else in Mind’: Family, Religion, and Infertility,” 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 Childlessness, Reproductive Technology, and Social Justice: 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: Wednesday, February 17

Voluntary and Involuntary Sterilization

Week 4: Wednesday, February 24

The 20th-Century History of ART

  • Finish Lennard Davis, Go Ask Your Father
  • In class film: Donor Unknown

Week 5: Wednesday, March 2

Sperm Donation

  • Rene Almeling, Sex Cells: The Medical Market For Eggs and Sperm, 25-109
  • 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: Wednesday, March 9

Egg Donation

  • Rene Almeling, Sex Cells: The Medical Market For Eggs and Sperm, 111-178

Andrew Solomon chapter from Far From the Tree. You can start on p. 688. (online)

Katie’O’Reilly, “When Parents and Surrogates Disagree on Abortion,” The Atlantic, February 16, 2016

  • Guest Speaker: Andrew Solomon
  • Wednesday, March 23 – NO CLASS 

Week 8: Wednesday, March 30
International surrogacy and IVF

Week 9: Wednesday, April 6

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 Gamete Donation in Sunni versus Shi’a Islam,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 30 (2006): 427-450. [Online]
  • In class film: Google Baby 

Week 10: Wednesday, April 13

Embryo Disposition: Whose Babies are These?

  • 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 Family Planning, Maryland Journal of International Law 28:1 (2013) (Online)
  • Tamar Lewin, “Anti-Abortion Groups Join Battles Over Frozen Embryos,” New York Times (January 19, 2016) (Online)

Week 11: Wednesday, April, 20

Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis, Disability Rights

  • Eric Parens and Adrienne Asch, “The Disability Rights Critique of Prenatal Genetic Testing: 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
  • Adrienne Asch, “Why I Haven’t Changed My Mind About Prenatal Diagnosis,” PTDR, 234-258
  • Nancy Press, “Assessing the Expressive Character of Prenatal Testing,” PTDR, 214-233 (recommended only, if you have time)
  • In class film: Fixed

Wednesday, April 27 – SPRING BREAK 

Week 12: Wednesday, May 4

Premature Babies, Patients’ Rights, and Hospital Policies

  • Read: Vicki Forman, This Lovely Life
  • In class film: Preemies: Born Before Their Time

Week 13: Wednesday, May 11

Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis and “Designer Babies”

      Ruth Padawer, “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,” New York Times (August         2011) (Online)

  • Dorothy E. Roberts, “Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?,” Signs 34(4) (Summer 2009): 783-804. [Online]

Week 14: Wednesday, May 18

Genomic and Stem Cell Technologies: Where Are We Headed?

  • Read: Karen Rothenberg and Lynn Bush, Narrative Genomics, Chapters 2 and 2 (Online)