Early life > Assisted reproduction

Whether and when a child was conceived was largely a matter of chance (one could eliminate chance, of course, by not engaging in sexual intercourse, or reduce it by much less effective contraception than is available today). Where it was conceived was always in a woman's body. How life was transmitted to the child was through sexual reproduction. What genetic heritage the child received was determined by the natural recombination of the genes carried in the female parent's ovum and the male...

 PDF file  Read more 

In fact, we must ask ourselves what gives us the right to plunge an embryonic child into a ‘cold prison?' In 1987 Donum vitae addressed the issue as follows: “The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo—cryopreservation—constitutes an offence against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing th...

 PDF file  Read more 

Professor in the Faculty of Medicine Founding Director of the Faculty of Law's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University Children's Human Rights  to Natural Human Origin Some old and new phenomena – adoption is old, new reproductive and genetic technologies and same-sex marriage are new – have recently thrown the issue of children's rights with respect to their biological origins and biological families into the public policy spotlight and public square debate.   Adoption ha...

 PDF file  Read more