AMA Releases Position Statement on Ethical Issues in Reproductive Medicine 2013

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The AMA today released its Position Statement on Ethical Issues in Reproductive Medicine 2013, which is a revision and renaming of the Position Statement on Reproductive Health and Reproductive Technology 1998 (Revised 2005).
The Position Statement addresses ethical issues related to access to services, discrimination and stigmatisation, contraception, sterilisation, termination of pregnancy, assisted reproductive technologies, and surrogacy.
AMA Vice President, Professor Geoffrey Dobb, said that all individuals have the right to make their own decisions about reproduction and the use of available reproductive medicine.
“Access to reproductive medicine should be free from political or religious interference,” Professor Dobb said. “All individuals should be aware of, and have access to, affordable family planning information and services. “Clinical research into reproductive medicine should be freely conducted within the prevailing ethical, social, medical and legal frameworks. “And there should be uniformity and clarity of all legislation related to reproductive medicine,” Professor Dobb said.
The Position Statement covers many AMA views, including:

• people with impaired capacity should be included in the decision-making process regarding their family planning, to the extent possible;


• it is inappropriate to offer money or benefits in kind to encourage gamete or embryo donation, but donors may be reimbursed for reasonable expenses;


• while a doctor may refuse to be clinically involved in a termination of pregnancy because of a conscientious objection, the objection should not impede the patient's access to care;


• pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) should be restricted to fatal or seriously and permanently disabling diseases;


• genetic selection should not be undertaken on the basis of sex (except in order to avoid hereditary sex-linked disease) or on the basis of characteristics or traits unrelated to disease; and


• it is inappropriate to offer money or benefits in kind to encourage an individual to become a surrogate; however, they may be reimbursed for reasonable expenses.