Bioethics Exam 2 Practice

From a utilitarian view, the focus is on the overall welfare produced by an action or technology. Reproductive technologies can increase happiness and well-being by expanding the ability to have children, reducing infertility distress, and enabling families to form in cases where biology or circumstances would otherwise block it. If the benefits for prospective parents, children, and society at large outweigh the harms—such as medical risks or concerns about surrogate welfare—and the risk to birth outcomes is low, the technology is seen as producing a net gain in welfare. In that light, reproductive technology would generally be viewed as capable of yielding net gains in IVF and surrogacy with relatively low risk to birth defects, rather than banning them or disregarding participants’ happiness.