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Fetal Motherhood: Toward a Compulsion to Generate Lives?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2009

Andrea L. Bonnicksen
Andrea L. Bonnicksen
Affiliation:
Professor and assistant chair in the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
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Extract

A scientist at Edinburgh University announced in 1994 that he had removed ovaries from, mouse fetuses and transplanted them, to adult mice. The ovaries released eggs, and conceptions occurred. Although this was not the first such attempt with mice, the study attracted attention because the researcher suggested, that fetal to adult ovarian transplants were a theoretical possibility for humans. If aborted, fetuses were used, as egg sources in assisted conception, a new entity would arise: the never-born genetic mother. Using eggs from aborted fetuses for conception would lead to quixotic and novel family ties. Its use would echo surrogate gestational motherhood, in which a child has both a genetic mother who contributed her egg and a gestational mother who contributed her uterus for gestation and childbirth. With fetal egg use, however, the child's genetic mother would be a never-born fetus without sentience or known, physiology.

Type
Special Section: The Unborn and the Newly Born: Seeking Ethical Standards
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 19 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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Notes

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