Women Students’ Attitudes toward the New Reproductive Technologies

Abstract

An investigation of 191 women students’ attitudes toward the new reproductive technologies revealed the highest rate of tolerance to AIH, and next highest to marital IVF and preconceptional sex selection limiting for the purpose of prevention of severe sex-linked genetic diseases. On the other hand, the respondents showed the highest intolerance to preconceptional sex selection for other purposes, and highly negative attitudes toward extramarital IVF, surrogate mothers and AID. These results suggest that young Japanese women have three standards in judgement on tolerance or intolerance to the new reproductive technologies; (1) whether maritally or extramaritally, (2) the technology’s naturalness, (3) the motive’s humanity.