Adrienne Asch is the Edward and Robin Milstein Professor of Bioethics at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both at Yeshiva University. She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Swarthmore College; an M.S. in Social Work and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Columbia University. Her work focuses on the ethical, political, psychological, and social implications of human reproduction and the family. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and is editor with Erik Parens of Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, published in 2000 by Georgetown University Press and a co-editor of The Double-Edged Helix: Social Implications of Genetics in a Diverse Society, published in 2002 by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Asch has been a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the Clinton Task Force on Health Care Reform, and the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Policy Planning Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute. She is a newly-elected board member of the Society of Jewish Ethics and is a Fellow at The Hastings Center. http://www.wellesley.edu/ReproIssues/homepage.html

Presentation: Does Reproductive Choice Mean Reproductive Selection

A variety of new and not-so-new reproductive technologies permit prospective parents to select for, or against, certain characteristics in their future children. While advocates of such selection celebrate these technologies as extensions of women's reproductive "choice," this talk will argue that the interest in selecting children's characteristics is troubling even for those committed to a pro-choice position on reproductive freedom. The appropriate response of a pro-choice critic of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, selective abortion after amniocentesis, or selecting gamete providers based on their physical characteristics and intelligence--all different methods of selection--is not to ban the practices, but to urge health professionals and prospective parents to reflect more on their purposes in offering or using such selection technologies. In addition to providing an illusion of control over the shaping of future children, these technologies increase society's tendencies toward thinking of humans as the sum of their genetic endowments, and could decrease familial and societal willingness to respect and incorporate people who vary from a narrow group of acceptable traits. Such selectivity is arguably antithetical to ideals of parental love and to social inclusiveness in the moral community.