Attitudes of fertile and infertile woman towards new reproductive technologies

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Attitudes of fertile and infertile woman towards new reproductive technologies

– Reported, May 22, 2013

According to statistical data, more and more couples around the world including Lithuania complain of fertility disorders or are infertile. In today‘s world every sixth couple, i.e. 10-15%, faces some sort of fertility problems while another 10-25% of women experience secondary infertility, i.e. they cannot conceive following a previous pregnancy. Two million new infertile couples appear annually worldwide. For example, one in six British couples has difficulty in conceiving a baby, and the number of couples seeking medical help to have a family has risen dramatically. At present, in Lithuania there are about fifty thousand infertile couples; two more thousand are added to this number annually. The percentage of men and women that encounter fertility problems is nearly the same. Female infertility constitutes 30-40% of cases, male infertility – 10-30%, infertility due to both partners –
15-30% and unexplained infertility – 5-10%.

The solution to this problem is important not only to individual families but also to all countries, including Lithuania, with the decreasing birth rate. In such European countries as Denmark, Finland, Belgium more than 4% of all children are born with the help of assisted reproduction and the best treatment for those with blocked fallopian tubes, or the increasing numbers with unexplained infertility, is in vitro fertilization (IVF).

IVF and other forms of assisted reproductive technology have provided society with a wide array of reproductive possibilities that challenge moral and legal conventions regarding the structure of society and the concept of what constitutes the family unit. At the same time, access to health care is increasingly being recognized as a basic human right. If society is required to accept assisted reproduction as a basic right, it has the right to regulate access for its physical, social, and economic well being. The advances of the past decades in the area of reproductive medicine periodically fuel a discussion in the media on the moral boundaries of what is feasible with technology. Researchers have extensive discussions about the moral status of the human embryo. Rapid development of biotechnologies leads to new dangers to human life in prenatal phase. Artificial insemination, when embryos are produced in vitro, cloning, extracting embryonic stem cedf and experiments with embryos are related to embryonic death. Lithuania has no legal acts regulating the ethical problems associated with infertility treatment and work on such legislation has been in progress for a long time, arousing very intensive emotions in Lithuanian society.

Current legislation does not regulate such controversial issues as donation of reproductive cells, freezing, thawing and preservation of embryos, surrogate motherhood. The latest draft of the Law on Assisted Reproduction of the Republic of Lithuania was prepared in 2013; however, due to prolonged debate and dispute it has not yet been adopted. Attitudes of fertile and infertile women towards new reproductive technologies depend on the answer to the question whether an embryo is a human being or merely a human entity.

For some people, particularly for those adhering to religious creeds, “human embryos are not more biological tissues or clusters of cells; they are the tiniest of human beings, thus we have a moral responsibility not to deliberately harm them” (Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, 1999). For others – among them the overwhelming majority of the biologist community – an early embryo, prior to development of the primitive streak or implantation, is a ball of cells, not a human entity, and the embryo research oriented to finding cures for a number of major diseases is morally legitimate. In modern societies, beliefs about the moral status of the embryo have been shaped by several cultural traditions, in particular by scientific advances in biology and medicine and, more importantly, by religion.

In summary, it may be maintained that fertile respondents were statistically more likely to believe that the IVF procedure should be applied only to married couples or women who had a regular partner, the age limit should be defined and the psychological assessment of the couple’s relationship and their readiness for the IVF procedure was necessary.

In contrast, infertile couples were statistically more likely than fertile respondents to maintain that the IVF procedure should be fully reimbursed by the state. While expressing opinions on legal and ethical regulation of IVF, fertile respondents were statistically more likely to be categorical with respect to the number of embryos and the freezing of embryos. Meanwhile there is a statistically significant difference in opinions of infertile respondents who were in favour of stricter regulation on donation of reproductive cells.

CREDITS:
http://www.reproductive-health-journal.com/
Aurelija Blaževiciene, Irayda Jakušovaite and Alina Vaškelyte            

 

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