Fertility Tourism: Options and Ethics
What should you consider when going abroad (or coming to the United States) for fertility treatment? Host Dawn Davenport, Executive Director of Creating a Family, the national infertility & adoption education and support nonprofit, interviews Dr. Glen Cohen, Harvard professor and author of Patients With Passports: Medical Tourism, Law & Ethics.
Hit the Highlights
- We think of fertility tourism in terms of US intended parents going abroad to save money on infertility treatment, but much of the demand is from other countries: foreign intended parents coming to the US for infertility treatment.
- Why do people come to the US for fertility treatment?
- What procedures bring people to the US?
- What procedures draw US citizen abroad for fertility treatment?
- Do US citizens often go abroad for IVF if they aren’t also doing egg donation or surrogacy?
- Differences in prices for egg donation in the US and abroad.
- Differences in prices for surrogacy in the US and abroad.
- What are major countries for egg donation?
- What are major countries for surrogacy?
- Is surrogacy a form of exploitation?
- Are the ethical questions different if we are talking about fertility tourism to the US vs. fertility tourism to a developing country?
- Immigration issues. What is the current status of getting the child born of a surrogate in another country back into the US?
- What should US intended parents do to prevent immigration issues if no genetic connection? With genetic connection?
- Is there a legal problem or ethical problem when the procedure being done in the foreign country is not allowed in the country of the intended parents?
- Quality of reproductive medicine in other countries. How big of an issue should this be for those considering fertility tourism?
- Current status of law in India and Thailand on surrogacy.
- What happens if intended parents back away and do not want to take custody of the baby?
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Image Credit: Richard Eriksson
Show re-aired in 2018.