Reproductive ethics remains an underdeveloped area of bioethics despite the recent technological breakthroughs that carry both great promise and potential threats. Building on the first volume of work from a conference held just over one year ago, this new collection of essays from a conference held April 2017 continues this discussion as well as provides ethical insights and reviews of these emerging technologies. The ethical questions swirling around human reproduction are both old and new, but the conference presentations, and the essays derived from them, focus on new ways of appreciating old arguments such as the ethics of abortion, as well as new ways of seeing new technologies such as CRISPR and mitochondrial transfer.
Paul Burcher, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Bioethics at Albany Medical College, and the Program Director for the Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency Program at York Hospital in Central Pennsylvania. He is a practicing generalist obstetrician/gynecologist with over 26 years in practice in both community and academic settings. He completed a PhD in Philosophy at University of Oregon while working full-time as a clinician in obstetrics and gynecology. He is actively involved in the both the clinical and ethics education of medical students and residents, while also engaging in conceptual and empirical research on issues in reproductive ethics.