Kant

assIstEd rEProdUctIon Has oPEnEd UP nEW HorIzons for Many PHysIcIans WorLdWIdE, Has LEd to tHE crEatIon of nUMEroUs sPEcIaLIst MEdIcaL cEntrEs and, far MorE IMPortantLy, Has gIvEn HoPE to MILLIons of PEoPLE WorLdWIdE. HoWEvEr, JUst LIkE any scIEntIfIc and tEcHnoLogIcaL advancE It aLso raIsEs MoraL dILEMMas, In tHIs casE bEcaUsE of tHE PossIbILItIEs for controLLIng gEnEtIc MatErIaL.

assistedhuman reproduction: an ethical view
begoña román Maestre Philosophy faculty Lecturer. University of barcelona

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e c h n i c a l p r o g r e s s a n d m o ra l progress Progress means taking a step forward in overcoming an obstacle which prevented us from advancing towards a desired human goal; progress means freeing ourselves of a burden which prevented us from embarking on the future of ourchoosing. In forging the path of progress, technology, understood as the application of knowledge and construction of tools, instruments and methods, has played a fundamental role. Knowledge makes us free because it helps us overcome the ignorance, superstition and dependence which an inability to control outside causes involves, and allows us to move forward by taming fate (all that does notdepend on ourselves). Thanks to technology, we have been freed of such burdens allowing us to establish greater levels of autonomy, for which reason technological progress is also ethical progress. While ethics concerns itself with the reasons for our actions, when those reasons become ours, and in the past they were not, we broach a new domain for ethics, for liberty or autonomy. As Kant pointed out:“Morality is the ratio cognoscendi of liberty, and liberty is the ratio essendi of plurality”.1 Assisted human reproduction marks a technical and ethical advance in that it overcomes the problems faced by those with fertility issues in having children; because it allows for new forms of family, as one need no longer have a stable or different-sex partner. Thanks to techniques of assistedreproduction we can
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also genetically interfere with the embryo, free it of disease or choose the baby’s sex. Nonetheless, our conquest of these new powers involves taking on board new responsibilities, which in turn call for changes to legislation in line with the social changes involved. For example, the traditional claim that “you only have one mother” has simply become obsolete: the donor of theegg could be one, the womb which houses the foetus for months and the mother who gives birth to the baby be another, while guardianship may lie with a third woman, who in turn may not actually end up performing the role of mother in the traditional sense of being there at the baby’s side and accompanying it through its process of development. And so a number of legal judgements2 have ref lectedthese changes and recognised the same rights on the part of both mothers, the biological and the other ex-partner with whom the former decided and agreed to conceive a child by turning to assisted reproduction. The judgement declares that both are equally mothers, moving beyond the traditional “enshrinement” of biological maternity. It is hard, though, to legislate as to whether, for example,surrogate maternity (“wombs for rent”) should be allowed or not: in Spain the practice is illegal, among other reasons because it is felt that it serves to objectify a person in exchange for money, and because it is not yet clear that the period of gestation involves simply incubation, etc. Whatever the case, new knowledge will

KANT, I Critique of Practical Reason, Madrid, Aliança Editorial;Traducció de R. R. Aramayo, pàg. 52-53, 2004. 2 FARNÓS AMORÓS, E. y GARRIGA GORINA, M: “Mares? Poden ser més d’una. Tres casos recents de la Supreme Court de Califòrnia”, InDret, Revista per a l’Anàlisi del Dret, issue 4, 2005.

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force us to reconsider more and better reasons regarding what can and cannot ethically be done once it has become technically feasible. Ethics,...