A Research Study On Savior Siblings : Children Who Are Conceived Through Selective Assisted Reproduction

It is assumed by most that we will all be able to grow up, fall in love, get married, and then have children of our own. This is not the lifestyle that all people choose, but it is still the view accepted by the majority of society. What happens when the unthinkable occurs and a happily married couple is unable to get pregnant? This is a reality for 7.1%, or 2.8 million, of the married couples in the United States (Lenox, 1999). Today, there are many people all over the world that decide to use fertility treatments to help them conceive a child, and this often leads to the birth of twins, triplets, or even higher order multiples. There are many risk factors that are involved in this type of

In the news article “Abortion: Every Woman’s Rights” Sharon Smith wrote an article about women’s rights to get abortions prior to the hearing of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey court case, “which threatened to severely restrict women access to abortion” (Smith). Women wanted reproductive control over their lives and felt that they were not equal to men no matter what advances they got at work and how high their level of education was. The women’s right movement wanted women to have the choice of abortion for all women, the rich and the poor. In the US, thirty- seven states did not provide

I read an article that was published on The Hasting Center Journal, called “The Case Against Surrogate Parenting”, by Herbert Krimmel, Krimmel takes a stand against surrogate motherhood arrangements because of the many ethical issues it causes, he argues surrogate motherhood, is a financial profit, there can be conflicts during the process, and is designed to separate in the mind of the surrogate mother. First, Krimmel argues that the reason a woman often or always undertakes the pregnancy is because of the money motive. He states, “The cause of this dissociation is some other benefit she will receive, most often money.' In other words, her desire to create a child is born of some motive other than the desire to be a parent. This separation

Surrogate motherhood is considered the most controversial form of medically assisted conception. Surrogacy is defined as an arrangement by which a woman gives birth to a baby on behalf of a woman who is incapable of conceiving babies herself or is infertile. The issue of surrogacy has been running for almost three decades. Elizabeth Cane was the first woman in the United States to legally become a surrogate mother in 1980 (Chittom and Wagner). Surrogate births are illegal in many countries, including some states in the United States. For example, it is illegal in Michigan, Washington, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and New York, whereas it legal in California, Oregon, Texas, and Arkansas (Chittom and Wagner). According to the Organization of Parents Through Surrogacy (OPTS), about 22,000 babies have been born from surrogate mothers in the United States since surrogacy became legal in the 1970s (Chittom and Wagner).

However, I believe that in order for saviour siblings to live happily, it is vitally important for them to receive support from their parents and family. They need to understand that if their sibling did die, it would not be their fault and they need to feel loved by their parents. I also think that it is important when creating saviour siblings to ensure that the embryos are being selected purely for being a genetic match to the sick child and free from any genetic diseases. Selecting embryos for medical reasons is very different to selecting them purely because you want them to be a girl or a boy but in order to ensure that saviour siblings do not become designer babies it is important to ensure that there is real need and a purely medical reason to choose the

On January 29, 2001 at around four o’clock in the afternoon, a beautiful little girl named Leslie Arreaga was born. It was the first time I was able to hold and see a baby so up close. When I saw her for the first time I didn’t know what to say. All I told my parents was “ I love her and she is perfect.” My parents laugh at me because I was only four years old when she was born. I just couldn’t believe that I was finally an older sister. I remember that every time a person would come in and try to hold her I would give them a look saying “ If you hurt her, I will hurt you.” Leslie was the most precious little baby I had ever seen in my little four year life. She was so chubby, with big brown eyes and a little heart shaped mouth. The day my

"Abortion in the United States." : Quick Stats. Guttmacher Institute, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.

Annotated Bibliography Alcorn, Randy. " 39 ProChoice Arguments. " Seeking Direction? There Are Answers.

Did you know that abortion is common for around 1 of every 3 women in the United States (Camosy 17)? Abortion became a bigger problem in The United States in 1973 when it was made legal. Roe v. Wade was a case in Texas where a woman named Norma McCorvey wanted to have an abortion. She filed a lawsuit on behalf of herself and every other pregnant woman saying that it is an “invasion of privacy”(Roe v. Wade, The Free Dictionary). In 1973, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Texas law was unlawful. They allowed abortion to be legal, but it was too late because she had already had her child two years beforehand (Roe v. Wade, The Free Dictionary). Since Roe v. Wade, there have been around 55 million abortions. Twenty-one percent of pregnancies

Every life should be spared and deontologically the duty of the parent is not to create harm in one child to save another child. It’s wrong to take something away from a child who isn’t old enough to give consent. In Dickey’s non-fiction article, “Who Will Save the Savior Sibling?”, Maura Dickey is informing parents that the idea of a savior sibling is wrong even though it may save another child’s life because the savior child can’t defend for or in some cases

Although I was very hesitant to come to last night’s class I’m glad I did. I wanted to take anxiety meds before-hand but I didn’t have any left. The concepts of pregnancy and childbirth are uncomfortable for me because I’m adopted. I’m not sure if it was me being overwhelmed with the topic or what but I feel like it was rushed and I’m not sure how much of it I absorbed or understood it. There was so much terminology when it came to the infertility solutions.

Those who have gone through the adoption process often refer to it as a roller coaster ride. There are moments when you feel you have been climbing forever – working towards a desired result that seems to never arrive. Then suddenly you are hanging on for dear life as you are whipped through major stretches at break neck speed, twisting and turning. You may lose sight of the ground and find yourself reacting instead of relying on your careful plans and preparations. What’s the trick to a successful adoption? You might say that it’s learning how to enjoy the ride for what it is...something you probably can’t predict, but that leads you right where you wanted to go. Struggling to stay grounded during your own roller coaster adoption ride?

Another study carried out on twins, were twins separated at birth through adoption. The studies wanted to see if growing up in different environments with different families had any impact on whether or not the twins grew up to be deviants. (Blackburn, 1993a) Psychologists wanted to work out if there was interaction between the environment in which they grew up in and their genes. Schulsinger (1972) carried out the first adoption study in Denmark. His theory was to compare adopted adults, some adults had been diagnosed as psychopaths and others hadn’t. There was a lot of criticism regarding his theory because Schulsinger used his own criteria to diagnose particular adults with psychopathic behaviour. Another criminologist who developed a theory around adoption was Crowe, he studied those that came from families with criminal backgrounds, but had been raised with a different family through adoption. Crowe wanted to analyze the results and see if there were any connections between your parents offending and you growing up to be an offender, even if you were raised by other parents with different values. Chemical and hormonal imbalances, bran injury and brain dysfunctions are other biological explainations of crime.

Kant claims that the human should “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means”. Critics of savior sibling have argued that the procedure violates this concept. They argue that there is something fundamentally wrong with parents having children for the wrong reasons. In the case of a savior sibling, the parents are acting unethically by having a child for the purpose of saving the life of a second child and not for the sake of the child being born. This raises concern for the welfare of the child being created. One must agree that conceiving a child can be wrong or done for the wrong reasons. Thus, first, it must be firmly established that the creation of a savior sibling would be a wrong reason because the child will solely be treated as a means.

Surrogate Motherhood is something that not many people actually support, even though it “is one of the many reproductive techniques that have enabled infertile couples to have children” (qtd. in Freedman). There are two types of surrogacy, traditional and gestational. The traditional type of surrogacy involves the surrogate mother being (AI) artificially inseminated with the sperm of the intended father or sperm from a donor when the sperm count is low. In either case the surrogate’s own egg will be used. Genetically the surrogate becomes the mother of the resulting child (Storey). Although there are two different types of surrogacy, a traditional surrogacy is rarely seen or done anymore. In gestational surrogacy, the surrogate mother has