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This paper reviews common advertising claims by egg freezing companies and evaluates the medical evidence behind those claims. It then surveys legal standards for truth in advertising, including FTC and FDA regulations and the First Amendment right to free speech. Professional standards for medical advertising, such as guidelines published by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and the American Medical Association (AMA), are also summarized. A number of claims, many of which relate to the targeting of younger women for eOC, are found to breach legal and ethical standards for truth in advertising. The ethical implications of misleading advertising claims are also discussed, and the central narrative woven by OC ads — that egg freezing is empowering to women — is examined. The paper concludes that a more balanced approach to the risks and benefits of OC is necessary to truly respect women's autonomy. Moreover, justice requires us to look beyond a medical procedure accessible only to a minority of women in order to address inequities in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of nonhuman research ethics tend to focus on what we owe nonhuman research subjects in laboratory settings only. But humans make critical decisions about these animals outside the lab, too, during breeding, transportation, and end-of-study protocols. This article reviews extra-lab risks and harms to nonhuman research subjects, focusing on the most commonly and intensively used animals like rodents and fishes, and argues that extra-lab risks and harms merit ethical consideration by researchers and institutional review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary on Madeira's paper complicates the relationships between commodification, consumption, abortion, and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) she draws in two ways. First, I examine under what conditions the commodification of ARTs, gametes, and surrogacy lead to patients becoming consumers. Second, I show that there are some stark difference between applying commodification critiques to ART versus abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Novel assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are poised to present our society with strange new ethical questions, such as whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) couples should be allowed to produce children biologically related to both parents, or whether trans‐women who want to experience childbirth should be allowed to receive uterine transplants. Clinicians opposed to offering such technologies to LGBT couples on moral grounds are likely to seek legal shelter through the conscience clauses enshrined in U.S. law. This paper begins by briefly discussing some novel ART on the horizon and noting that it is unclear whether current conscience clauses will permit fertility clinics to deny such services to LGBT individuals. A compromise approach to conscience is any view that sees the value of respecting conscience claims within limits. I describe and critique the constraints proposed in the recent work of Wicclair, NeJaime and Siegel as ultimately begging the question. My purpose is to strengthen their arguments by suggesting that in the controversial situations that elicit claims of conscience, bioethicists should engage with the metaphysical claims in play. I argue that conscience claims against LGBT individuals ought to be constrained because the underlying metaphysic—that God has decreed the LGBT lifestyle to be sinful—is highly implausible from the perspective of a naturalized metaphysic, which ought to be the lens through which we evaluate conscience claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stigma marks both surrogacy and abortion. Legal change lessens stigma but may not remove it altogether. Post-legalization regulation may reinstall stigma by surrounding a legalized practice with barriers that make exercise of that right more difficult. As a result, law may reenact stigma even as it purports to take it away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the comparative history of the law and practice of abortion and assisted reproduction in the United States to consider the interplay between medical paternalism and legal paternalism. It supplements existing critiques of paternalism as harmful to women's equality with the medical perspective, as revealed through the writings of Alan F. Guttmacher, to consider when legal regulation might be warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Many assisted reproductive technology (ART) centers utilize satellite clinics to expand reach and access to clinical services, but their contribution to lowering geographic barriers in access to care has not been examined. This study's purpose is to determine the extent to which satellite clinics impact geographic access to ART and estimate the percentage of reproductive-age women who have geographic access to ART services.Methods: A systematic web-search collected the locations of all main and satellite ART clinics in the United States (US). Driving times were calculated between satellite clinics and main clinics. The percentage of women with geographic access to care was characterized by clinic type using US Census Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs). Logistic regression was used to statistically model the presence of main and satellite clinics as a function of CBSA median income and female reproductive-age population.Results: Four hundred sixty-nine main clinics with embryology labs and 583 satellite clinics were found in the US. Practices with satellite clinics tend to perform more ART cycles. Satellite clinics are located on average 66 minutes from their practice's main clinic and 31 minutes from any main clinic. 22% of satellite clinics were in CBSAs without a main clinic. 46 M (72%) US reproductive-age women live in a CBSA with a main clinic, 5.1 M (8%) women live in a CBSA without a main clinic but at least one satellite clinic, and 13 M (20%) women live in an area with no ART clinic of either type. Female reproductive-age population was found to be a more important predictor of clinic presence than median income.Conclusions: The majority of satellite clinics in the US are positioned in relative proximity to a main clinic. 85% of satellite clinics are located closer to the main clinic of other practices than to their own main clinic. Less than a quarter of ART satellite clinics expand geographic access to ART services by being located in areas without a main clinic, and the vast majority of practices with satellite clinics position their satellite clinics close to another practice's main clinic.Trial Registration: Not applicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses fertility issues involving transgender youth in the U.S., particularly the lack of access to fertility preservation (FP) services. Other topics include the FP methods like sperm cryopreservation and oocyte cryopreservation, the various causes of infertility like environmental health factors, and how parental consent laws prevent said youths to access the care they need.

In the last decade, transnational surrogacy has attracted world-wide attention for making babies and pregnancies exchangeable with money. Involuntarily childless couples and individuals travel abroad and pay to have the desired child and to become parents. Acknowledging the importance of asking into the consequences of this monetization of reproduction, the author takes issue with universalistic assumptions about money and markets, and their presumed universal effects on social relations. Instead, it is argued that we need to explore how money works, and, by extension, how transnational surrogacy works out and becomes viable to people as a way to become parents. Putting together insights from economic sociology, and the assisted reproductive technology and parenting culture literature, the author employs the notion of accounting to grasp how people make sense of the money involved in making them parents. Based on a study involving 21 interviews with Norwegian gay and straight couples and single men and women seeking surrogacy abroad, the author explores how money is accounted for in three cases, set in three different countries; India, the United States and Canada. The analysis shows how money is accounted for in particular ways to confirm parenthood. These ways differ depending on the local context and transnational relations; ultimately making differentiated monetized parenthood. This is of significance when we try to conceptualize contemporary parenthood and how money seemingly sustains parenthood in ever more radical ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Supreme Court declared procreation to be a fundamental right in the early twentieth century in a case involving Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act, an act that permitted unconsented sterilization of individuals convicted of certain crimes. The right that the Court articulated in that case is a negative right: it requires that the government not place unjustified roadblocks in the way of people seeking to procreate, but it does not require the government to take positive steps to help people procreate if they wish to. I argue that a positive legal right is morally necessary in the United States, given the profound significance of procreation, the current barriers to access to care, and the related issues of individual and societal justice. I assume at the outset that the right to procreate should be expansive enough to include a right to noncoital reproduction. The absence of a positive right to procreate reflects not just constitutional tradition but also a governmental and societal commitment to a longstanding set of reproductive hierarchies by which those who fall outside of the traditional framing of family too frequently find their procreative dreams hindered. Reconceiving procreative rights to include a positive right would create greater opportunities to argue and lobby for increased access to technologies that are out of reach for many. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market-based health services have arisen out of major transformations in US healthcare in the last several decades. This study addresses pricing in the human egg donation market – an under-explored topic despite substantial scholarship on commodification and financial coercion of donors. Through analysis of primary data collected from 276 US fertility clinics and egg donation agencies, I assess what impacts average donor compensation and likelihood of compensation being more than $5000. Drawing on theories of organizational behavior, I test whether organizational characteristics, ecological factors, or regulatory pressure have the greatest impact on donor compensation amounts. I find that compensation is influenced primarily by ecological/market factors. Furthermore, industry self-regulation (measured by professional affiliation) did not deter clinics and agencies from having higher donor compensation levels, despite American Society for Reproduction Medicine recommendations. I conclude by addressing the broader implications of these findings for medical market dynamics and the problem of industry self-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Grounded in face theory (see Brown & Levinson, 1987; Cupach & Metts, 1994; Goffman, 1967) and exploratory in nature, the present study sought to understand the face-related experiences o f parents whose children were conceived with an anonymous donor. The sample included 19 parents from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, who experienced infertility, were in a lesbian relationship, or identified as solo parents. The researchers identified face-related concerns parents have for themselves and their children and preventative facework strategies they enact to avoid or minimize face loss. Findings showcase parents' desire for social approval, autonomy, respect, and preventing rejection. Also discussed are a variety o f facework strategies, namely, disclosure, avoidance, closedness, humor, deception, and strategic donor choice. The findings support and extend previous research on donor-assisted families and showcase the complexity o f face for members o f these families by highlighting instances where communication simultaneously preserves and threatens face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third-party reproduction is a growing field, and an increasing body of literature considers the ethics of embryo donation. Due to the psychosocial complexities that generally accompany the donation and/or use of donor embryos, psychologists can play a pivotal role in these specialised fertility cases. While laws in the USA are in place to regulate the medical procedures involved in embryo donation, only unenforceable guidelines exist for psychologists specialising in fertility cases. The presentation of this case study aims to: (1) clarify the ethical concerns that fertility psychologists should consider in similar situations by assessing whether American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines compete or complement one another within this case of embryo donation and (2) consider the interests, obligations and rights of all parties involved. Several principles, standards and guidelines that must be considered are described. Overall, the APA Ethics Code and the ASRM Guidelines appear to complement one another for most aspects of this case. Fertility psychologists should consider the clinical implications of the interests, rights and duties of all involved parties, including themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on reproductive technologies often examine women's reproductive lives in terms of choice and control. Drawing on 48 accounts of procreative experiences of religiously devout Jewish women in Israel and the US, we examine their attitudes, understandings and experiences of pregnancy, reproductive technologies and prenatal testing. We suggest that the concept of hishtadlut-"obligatory effort"-works as an explanatory model that organizes Haredi women's reproductive careers and their negotiations of reproductive technologies. As an elastic category with negotiable and dynamic boundaries, hishtadlut gives ultra-orthodox Jewish women room for effort without the assumption of control; it allows them to exercise discretion in relation to medical issues without framing their efforts in terms of individual choice. Haredi women hold themselves responsible for making their obligatory effort and not for pregnancy outcomes. We suggest that an alternative paradigm to autonomous choice and control emerges from cosmological orders where reproductive duties constitute "obligatory choices." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Knowledge of state-specific infertility is limited. The objectives of this study were to explore state-specific estimates of lifetime prevalence of having ever experienced infertility, sought treatment for infertility, types of treatments sought, and treatment outcomes. Methods: Male and female adult residents aged 18-50 years from three states involved in the States Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technology Collaborative (Florida, Massachusetts, and Michigan) were asked state-added infertility questions as part of the 2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a state-based, health-related telephone survey. Analysis involved estimation of lifetime prevalence of infertility. Results: The estimated lifetime prevalence of infertility among 1,285 adults in Florida, 1,302 in Massachusetts, and 3,360 in Michigan was 9.7%, 6.0%, and 4.2%, respectively. Among 736 adults in Florida, 1,246 in Massachusetts, and 2,742 in Michigan that have ever tried to get pregnant, the lifetime infertility prevalence was 25.3% in Florida, 9.9% in Massachusetts, and 5.8% in Michigan. Among those with a history of infertility, over half sought treatment (60.7% in Florida, 70.6% in Massachusetts, and 51.6% in Michigan), the most common being non-assisted reproductive technology fertility treatments (61.3% in Florida, 66.0% in Massachusetts, and 75.9% in Michigan). Conclusion: State-specific estimates of lifetime infertility prevalence in Florida, Massachusetts, and Michigan varied. Variations across states are difficult to interpret, as they likely reflect both true differences in prevalence and differences in data collection questionnaires. State-specific estimates are needed for the prevention, detection, and management of infertility, but estimates should be based on a common set of questions appropriate for these goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay re-examines the disability critique of prenatal and pre-implantation screening in light of evidence about the larger context in which fertility and reproductive healthcare is rendered in the U.S. It argues that efforts to identify acceptable criteria for trait-based selection or otherwise impose reasons-based limitations on reproductive choice should be avoided because such limitations tend to perpetuate the discrimination encountered by adults with disabilities seeking fertility and reproductive health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stigma taints individuals with a spoiled identity and loss of status or discrimination. This article is the first to examine the stigma attached to abortion and surrogacy and consider how law may stigmatize women for failing to conform to social expectations about maternal roles. Courts should consider evidence of stigma when evaluating laws regulating abortion or surrogacy to determine whether these laws are based on impermissible gender stereotyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Kansas Assisted Reproductive Technology Statute. Topics discussed include need of reform in Kansas's parentage laws to give all children legal rights to their parents, increase in the issues of custody; support, and parenting time due to use of ART; and increased use of ART due to infertility among opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples.