Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Reproductive science continues to revolutionise reproduction and propel us further into uncharted territories. The revolution signalled by the birth of Louise Brown after IVF in 1978, prompted governments across Europe and beyond into regulatory action. Forty years on, there are now dramatic and controversial developments in new reproductive technologies. Technologies such as uterus transplantation that may enable unisex gestation and babies gestated by dad; or artificial wombs that will completely divorce reproduction from the human body and allow babies to be gestated by machines, usher in a different set of legal, ethical and social questions to those that arose from IVF. This book revisits the regulation of assisted reproduction and advances the debate on from the now much-discussed issues that arose from IVF, offering a critical analysis of the regulatory challenges raised by new reproductive technologies on the horizon.

• Explains why assisted reproductive technologies have warranted specialist legal regulation, providing essential context of the developments in law, science and ethics which are crucial for an informed assessment about regulating these technologies
• Examines new and emerging reproductive technologies, such as the controversial topic of uterus transplants, which addresses both the collaboration of transplant medicine and assisted reproduction, whilst discussing the regulatory issues raised from this combination
• Provides a discussion about new and emerging reproductive advances from a practical regulatory perspective, as opposed to sensational media coverage or literature focusing only on the ethics, offering a pragmatic and legal insight into how these advances would be governed and the regulatory issues they will raise if they become a reality