ETHICS AND REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE

This article surveys relevant moral and ethical implications of reprod uctive medicine, excluding any aspects of contraception, To maintain t he methodological priority of a moral perspective, it focuses on moral theory and ethics in general before looking at the impact of ethics o n the different techniques applied in reproductive medicine, We sugges t that discourse ethics should be centre-stage among the mol al perspe ctives, since it has a unique capacity to synthesize, gauge and emulat e other moral perspectives without necessarily replacing them, Questio ns of spousal Fidelity, parental identity, sexual relations, reshaping of family ties, preimplantation diagnosis, discarding of human life, up to the question of what kind of life is generally acknowledged as w orth living, and which is not, all these are morally significant topic s, As well as providing a description of the techniques used in reprod uctive medicine, our article presents a rationale for charting potenti als for moral problems, This renders it possible to elucidate the mora l costs of each of the options offered by reproductive medicine in the light of whatever moral view one identifies with.