ABSTRACT
Despite the desirability of as broad a public involvement as possible in reproductive policymaking, critical decisions must be made by those individuals responsible for making public policy. Especially in regard to reproductive intervention techniques, responsibility to future generations must become an integral aspect of any policy decision. Policymaking in a democratic society is an ongoing dynamic process shaped by the social, political, and technological environment. Policy goals contain both a political and normative component in spite of attempts by some policy analysts to identify the process as value free. The National Academy of Sciences submits that insights provided by technology assessment might be ignored when policy decisions are made because these decisions ultimately are political, emerging from a "welter of competing claims, motives, interests and pressures," including some "forces hostile to the public good." Inherent in any political system are forces which constitute boundaries of acceptable policy decisions and serve as restraints upon both the direction and speed of change.
