Assisted Reproductive Technology
- Enforcing motherhood: ART and the media - D.Payne & S.Goedeke, Auckland University of Technology, 2009
- Ethical dilemmas over frozen embryos - WHW June 2006
- New NECAHR members - WHW Sept 2002
- Stir over surrogacy- WHW Mar 2001
- Swimming in the Gene Pool - WHW June 2001
- ART bills in limbo - WHW Dec 2000
- Surrogacy on the agenda - WHW Sept 1999
- Cloning may cause health defects - WHW July 1999
- New Assisted Human Reproduction Bill - WHU Jan 1999
- Protecting our Future: The case for greater regulation of assisted reproductive technology- 1999
- The rights and interests of the child- Ch 9 'Protecting Our Future'
- Convention on the Rights of the child- from Ch 9 'Protecting Our Future'
- Health and psyco-social issues arising from assisted reproductive technology- Ch 12 'Protecting Our Future'
Ethical dilemmas over frozen embryos
June 2006 Women's Health Watch
IVF has been plagued with the issue of who has rights and control over frozen embryos. Frozen embryos are in a complex legal, ethical and emotional limbo and have an almost infinite shelf life. The Fertility Society of Australia announced in February that Australia and New Zealand have over 100,000 frozen embryos stored. Recently a British woman lost her legal case to use the frozen embryos fertilised by a former partner. Natalie Evans and her then partner, Howard Johnson, fertilised and froze embryos in 2001 after Ms. Evans was diagnosed with cancer. They subsequently broke up but the embryos remained in a fertility clinic. Ms. Evans wanted to use the embryos to try to have a child. Mr. Johnson refused consent arguing that he does not want to become a father. The European Court has ruled that the frozen embryos should be destroyed, recognising the need for consent from both partners throughout the process.
New NECAHR members
September 2002 Women's Health Watch
The National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction has new members. For the 2002 committee membership read here
Update: The National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction (NECAHR) no longer exists. Assisted reproductive technology is now covered by the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ACART) and the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ECART)
Stir over surrogacy
September 1999 Women's Health Watch
Camille Guy reports on a recent Human Rights Commission action which over-turned an ethics committee decision not to allow a surrogacy arrangement.
A recent Human Rights Commission decision has called what limited controls there are on surrogacy into question. The case concerned a woman of 40 who could no longer bear children due to a hysterectomy. She and her partner of 13 years had five children by previous relationships. Wanting to have a child of their own, they had found an older friend willing to gestate their child. In cases like this, where the services of a fertility clinic are required to create then transfer the embryo into another woman, ethical approval must be sought by the clinic. (Seeking such approval is a condition of the clinic's Australian accreditation.)
The New Zealand ethics committee is known as NECAHR (National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction). This committee, chaired by Rosemary De Luca, declined approval for the proposed surrogacy procedure on the grounds of the genetic mother's age (40) and her family status. The committee argued that there were risks to the genetic mother due to her age and associated risks because of her older oocytes (egg cells). The risks attached to the procedure outweighed the benefits for a woman who already had children, NECAHR claimed. The couple took a complaint to the Human Rights Commission (HRC)... Read More
A recent Human Rights Commission decision has called what limited controls there are on surrogacy into question. The case concerned a woman of 40 who could no longer bear children due to a hysterectomy. She and her partner of 13 years had five children by previous relationships. Wanting to have a child of their own, they had found an older friend willing to gestate their child. In cases like this, where the services of a fertility clinic are required to create then transfer the embryo into another woman, ethical approval must be sought by the clinic. (Seeking such approval is a condition of the clinic's Australian accreditation.)
The New Zealand ethics committee is known as NECAHR (National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction). This committee, chaired by Rosemary De Luca, declined approval for the proposed surrogacy procedure on the grounds of the genetic mother's age (40) and her family status. The committee argued that there were risks to the genetic mother due to her age and associated risks because of her older oocytes (egg cells). The risks attached to the procedure outweighed the benefits for a woman who already had children, NECAHR claimed. The couple took a complaint to the Human Rights Commission (HRC)... Read More
Swimming in the gene pool
June 2001 Women's Health Watch
Labour MP Dianne Yates gives an update on proposed legislation to regulate assisted reproductive technology. This article was released by Dianne Yates
This article will give a history of two bills now before the New Zealand Parliament, my Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Members Bill and the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill originally lodged by Sir Doug Graham when he was Minister of Justice...
It has been hard to get recognition of the importance of legislation on reproductive technology - cloning, gene technology in relation to humans. Genetic modification of food has captured media and political imagination. GM of people seems to have been put in the too hard basket until recently.... Read More
It has been hard to get recognition of the importance of legislation on reproductive technology - cloning, gene technology in relation to humans. Genetic modification of food has captured media and political imagination. GM of people seems to have been put in the too hard basket until recently.... Read More
ART bills in limbo
December 2000 Women's Health Watch
Two bills on assisted reproductive technology &endash; the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill introduced by National in 1998 and Dianne Yates Private Member Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill (1996) &endash; are languishing in select committee with no apparent date for them to be reported back to the House. The National bill was due back this month, but WHA has been told that this will be deferred. Written submissions on both bills closed early in 1999, and WHA indicated it would want to make an oral submission in addition to providing its report Protecting Our Future. While the bill vastly improved access to information for children born through ART, and for donors, other aspects were unsatisfactory. The Bill excludes surrogacy and there is no intention to establish a strong overseeing body.
WHA has long called for an authority, similar to the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority in the UK, to govern ART practices in New Zealand.
In the meantime, fertility clinics continue to push the boundaries with subjects under discussion including the use of family members from other generations to provide gametes.
WHA has long called for an authority, similar to the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority in the UK, to govern ART practices in New Zealand.
In the meantime, fertility clinics continue to push the boundaries with subjects under discussion including the use of family members from other generations to provide gametes.
Surrogacy on the agenda
September 1999 Women's Health Watch
A recent symposium discussed the question of surrogacy arrangements in New Zealand. SANDRA CONEY reports.
Enthusiasm and caution divided the participants at a symposium on medically assisted surrogacy held in late August by the Centre for Child and Family Policy Research at Auckland University.
Those opposed to, or at least anxious about surrogacy, came from a range of perspectives, from women's groups, such as: Women's Health Action, adoption experts from the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Agency (CYPFA), Chief Family Court Judge Patrick Mahoney, Commissioner for Children, Roger McLay, and ethicist Professor Donald Evans. Their central concern was the interests of the child, although the welfare of the surrogate mother was occasionally raised, most fully by Professor Maureen Baker, head of the Department of Sociology at Auckland University.
Advocates for surrogacy, broadly consisting of infertility clinics and infertility societies, viewed surrogacy as a viable option for infertile couples and there was anger from some at what they saw as unfair bureaucratic impediments in the way of surrogacy in New Zealand.
Currently, the National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction (NECAHR) approves medically assisted surrogacy on a case by case basis, so that clinics must apply for permission to go ahead. There was a strong push at the conference for this process to be watered down, and in particular, couples wanted to come and plead their cases directly to NECAHR which they saw as remote and inaccessible.... Read More
Enthusiasm and caution divided the participants at a symposium on medically assisted surrogacy held in late August by the Centre for Child and Family Policy Research at Auckland University.
Those opposed to, or at least anxious about surrogacy, came from a range of perspectives, from women's groups, such as: Women's Health Action, adoption experts from the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Agency (CYPFA), Chief Family Court Judge Patrick Mahoney, Commissioner for Children, Roger McLay, and ethicist Professor Donald Evans. Their central concern was the interests of the child, although the welfare of the surrogate mother was occasionally raised, most fully by Professor Maureen Baker, head of the Department of Sociology at Auckland University.
Advocates for surrogacy, broadly consisting of infertility clinics and infertility societies, viewed surrogacy as a viable option for infertile couples and there was anger from some at what they saw as unfair bureaucratic impediments in the way of surrogacy in New Zealand.
Currently, the National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction (NECAHR) approves medically assisted surrogacy on a case by case basis, so that clinics must apply for permission to go ahead. There was a strong push at the conference for this process to be watered down, and in particular, couples wanted to come and plead their cases directly to NECAHR which they saw as remote and inaccessible.... Read More
Cloning may cause health defects
July 1999 Women's Health Watch
A French study suggests cloning may cause long-term health defects. Re-search published in The Lancet sug-gests the cloning process may inter-fere with the normal genetic function-ing of developing animals. The Lan-cet report follows the death of a two-month-old calf, cloned from genes taken from the ear of an adult cow. The study is likely to lend weight to warnings that any attempt to clone humans might carry considerable health risks.
Ref: BMJ 1999; 318:1230
Ref: BMJ 1999; 318:1230
New Assisted Human Reproduction Bill
January 1999 Women's Health Update
The government's new bill outlaws a limited number of reproductive practices, including animal/human hybrids and cloning, and gives extensive information rights to donors of gametes and children born through assisted reproduction. Both donors and offspring will be entitled, as of right, to access identifying information about each other. Offspring must be given identifying information once they reach the age of 18; donors must be given identifying information when offspring reach the age of 25, and from the age of 18 with consent. However, children born from donations before the legislation is enacted will not share those rights, and people involved in surrogacy arrangements will still have to rely on the Adult Adoption Information Act... Read More
Resources
Protecting Our Future The Case for Greater Regulation of
Assisted Reproductive Technology.
A discussion document edited by Sandra Coneyand Anne Else
A thought-provoking examination of the current issues in ART in New Zealand.
Edited by Sandra Coney and Anne Else,
Published by Women's Health Action, 1999
Find here
Chapter 9 The Rights and interests of the child
By Sandra Coney
From 'Protecting Our Future: The case for greater regulation of assisted reproductive technology' (1999)
- Contains: Human rights legislation in New Zealand; Overseas human rights law, international conventions, the Human Rights Act and the rights of the child, The legal vacuum, The responsibility of the state and health professionals, Convention on the Rights of the Child, The rights and interests of children in ART, Giving effect to the rights of children born through ART, Rights and best interests of the child not yet conceived, New Zealand family law, Preventing harm, The perfect child, What will the children say?, Setting limits.
Chapter 12 Health and psycho-social issues arising from assisted reproductive technology
By Sandra Coney
From 'Protecting Our Future: The case for greater regulation of assisted reproductive technology' (1999)
- Contains: Short-term health risks, Risks during pregnancy and birth, Risks to infants conceived through ART, Short-term psycho-social effects of ART on participants and donors, Long-term health risks to women, Long-term risks to children, Long-term psycho-social effects, Discussion, New Zealand situation with follow-up.
Read here
Convention on the Rights of the child
from Ch 9 'Protecting Our Future' (1999) Read Here
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