N. B. Sarojini | InfoChange News and Features | Agenda | Medical Technology: Ethics | December 2010
The unethical use of technology to control reproduction has a long and contentious history, writes Sarojini N B. There can be no doubt that women need effective contraception. The question is: Are the contraceptives being tested and promoted both effective and safe? Shouldn’t women be able to control their use? Shouldn’t women have the right to choose, with complete awareness of the risks involved?
Just because we can do something, should we do it?
As medical technologies develop in ways that were unimaginable only a few decades ago, this is a question that has come to plague all of us since the second half of the 20th century. Advancements in the field of reproductive medicine, reproductive technologies in particular, have prompted this question. In a sense we ‘can’ do something because it has been made possible; research in medical technologies, whose direction and type have been shaped by the needs of the state and international bodies, has furthered intervention in the reproductive potential of women.