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Opinion,
Comment & Reviews
Reproductive technologies |
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What
about me? The child of A.R.T.
A conference organised by Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE)
Review by Emily Jackson
'What about me? The child of A.R.T.' was a one-day conference,
held on 28 March at the Royal Society, London. Organised by
Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), the event aimed to
examine the outcome for children of conception through assisted
reproduction (A.R.T. is the now rather little used acronym
for artificial reproductive technology).
Despite the apparent neutrality of its name, CORE is a pro-life
organisation run by Josephine Quintavalle, the founder of
the Pro-Life Alliance (the organisation that fielded candidates
in the 1997 General Election).The pro-life lobby's attitude
to assisted conception is intriguing. At first sight one might
be forgiven for assuming that they would consider trying to
make babies to be a thoroughly benign enterprise. But reproductive
technologies only exist because scientists were able to carry
out research on human embryos, so it is perhaps unsurprising
that the 'pro-lifers' seem unwilling to embrace infertility
treatment. In addition to the 'waste' of human embryos in
research, embryos may also be discarded during IVF treatment.
And aside from the inevitable destruction of embryos, some
members of the pro-life lobby perceive the unnaturalness of
assisted conception to be an illegitimate attempt to 'play
God'.
One wondered whether the speakers invited to participate in
the conference fully appreciated their hosts' distinctly partisan
perspective. Several of the speakers are actively involved
in the provision of assisted conception services. Eleonora
Porcu from the University of Bologna has been a pioneer in
the cryopreservation of oocytes (eggs) and their subsequent
use in fertility treatment. Ole Schou is the Director of a
Danish sperm bank which exports sperm to 25 countries. Hossam
Abdulla is the Director of the Lister Fertility and Endocrine
Clinic, and, in addition to being the Director of the Multiple
Births Foundation, Jane Denton is the deputy chair of the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Additionally
Derek Morgan, a Reader in Law at Cardiff Law School, has published
a guide to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. And
Susan Golombok is a psychologist whose research into children
born following assisted conception has found that the children
are functioning well, and that they may even have better relationships
with their parents than children conceived naturally.
It was left to Alexina McWhinnie, an academic from Dundee
University, to give the only paper which was clearly hostile
to reproductive technologies. Immediately following Susan
Golombok's impeccable presentation of her empirical research,
Alexina McWhinnie's research, which appeared to reach completely
opposite conclusions, was rather confusing. Susan Golombok
had laid out the criteria they used in the psychological assessment
of children and their parents and in the assessment of the
quality of their relationships. In addition to interviews
with all of the family members, they had also talked to teachers
in order to get a third party's view of the family. Families
which had used IVF, egg donation and donor insemination were
compared with families where the children were adopted in
infancy and with families with no fertility problems. Over
200 families had been studied in England when the children
were 6 years old, and again when they were 12, and the research
had been replicated in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, where
the results were identical.
In contrast, McWhinnie told us that she had looked at 54 families,
31 where IVF had been used, and 23 involving donor insemination
(DI). There was no control group which of course meant that
when she said 40 per cent of DI children had problems, there
was no way of comparing this with children conceived naturally.
This was exacerbated by the absence of clear criteria for
determining what constituted a 'problem'. We heard about DI
parents 'bringing it up' during arguments: 'he's not yours
anyway' was one example. Again without a control group it
would be hard to say that arguments in families helped by
assisted conception were necessarily 'worse' than arguments
between fertile couples.
The pro-life contingent was much more evident among the audience.
Derek Morgan was asked about the dismemberment of babies during
late-term abortions. Jane Denton, whose presentation concerned
multiple births, was asked whether fetal reduction was more
common among IVF multiple pregnancies than where the fetuses
had been conceived naturally. And there was considerable hostility
from at least one member of the audience to Susan Golombok's
presentation.
What then was the purpose of this conference? The conference
was meant to be about the children born as a result of A.R.T.,
and we were reminded several times that we needed to think
and talk more about the welfare of children. Additionally,
in our conference pack we were given a list of very angry
quotes from people who had been born as a result of donor
insemination.
There is a fascinating parallel between the pro-life lobby's
suggestion that abortion causes psychological harm to women,
and this new interest in the possibility that assisted conception
may result in children with long-term psychological problems.
Abortion is not going to be re-criminalised, and assisted
conception is not going to be banned. Instead the pro-life
lobby perhaps intend to sow seeds of doubt about their long-term
side effects.
But we do not burden fertile people with the requirement that
they demonstrate that they are capable of producing psychologically
well-balanced individuals prior to conception. And even when
we know that a person's alcoholism, record of domestic violence
or history of abuse poses a statistically significant risk
to the well being of their offspring, we are not entitled
to prevent them from having children. If protecting the civil
liberties of the fertile population prohibits us from policing
conception among those who may actually pose a serious risk
of causing psychological harm to their offspring, it seems
incongruous that a possibly groundless fear of psychological
harm to children born through assisted conception should be
used to challenge the continued provision of services to would-be
parents.
If the 'pro-lifers' are concerned about the welfare of children
in England, they should worry more about the poverty and deprivation
of children who are already living and suffering, and rather
less about the children who may be born to parents who will
love and cherish them
Emily Jackson is a lecturer in law at the London School of
Economics |
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