ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of ethical issues concerning in Vitro Fertilization (IVF). The first section evaluates specific ethical issues; the medical understanding of IVF, the development of the procedure, the risks of the procedure, and issues related to consent. The second part of the paper reviews broader issues: the allocation of resources, who receives the benefits, implications of IVF, and feminist issues. This review of ethical issues presents a framework to understand and evaluate the value dimensions raised by this technology. Such a bias, and the technologies that express it, also reinforce the perspective that the primary role of women is to have children. An assumption may be that a female is not fully a woman until she has been able to bear a child. There is an implicit affirmation that the worth of a woman is cantered on her ability to reproduce. This attitude reinforces stereotypes of women and helps keep them in their subordinate social position.
