Many authors examine the governmental, the scientific, and the sexual politics of AIDS. Many of these same authors tell the AIDS story within the context of decrying homophobia. The implications of that story, however, have a troubling significance for women. This essay proposes to move the discussion of the sexual politics of AIDS beyond the confines of homophobia and to highlight issues not widely discussed outside of AIDS activist circles—issues which are having, and will continue to have, profound effects on women.

This paper explores the reasons why women who are themselves fertile might consent to undergo in vitro fertilization (1VF) with an infertile male partner. The reasons often given are desire to have that particular man's child, or altruism, giving a gift to the partner. Although ethically, the decision should be completely woman's prerogative, because IVF programs usually treat the couple as a unit, she may be offered few other options by the medical staff. In social terms, whether the woman is or is not infertile may be immaterial because in either situation, if she wants to try to have a biological child and maintain the relationship, she may have to make a patriarchal bargain and undergo in vitro fertilization.

Women wishing hospital admission for childbirth are asked to sign very general pre-admission consent forms. The use of such forms suggests that women in labor are considered incompetent to give informed consent. This paper explores some of the problems with advance directives and general consent, and argues that since women in labor are not generally incompetent, it is not appropriate to require this kind of consent of them.

Does birth make a difference to the moral rights of the fetus /infant? Should it make a difference to its legal rights? Most contemporary philosophers believe that birth cannot make a difference to moral rights. If this is true, then it becomes difficult to justify either a moral or a legal distinction between late abortion and infanticide. I argue that the view that birth is irrelevant to moral rights rests upon two highly questionable assumptions about the theoretical foundations of moral rights. If we reject these assumptions, then we are free to take account of the contrasting biological and social relationships that make even relatively late abortion morally different from infanticide.

To what extent are women obliged to be child-bearers? If reproductive technology could offer some form of ectogenesis, would feminists regard it as a liberating reproductive option? Three lines of reproductive rights arguments currently used by feminists are applied to ectogenesis. Each fails to provide strong grounds for prohibiting it. Yet, there are several ways in which ectogenesis could contribute to women's oppression, in particular, if it were used to undermine abortion rights, reinforce traditional views of fertility, increase fetal rights in pregnancy, and perpetuate the unequal distribution of scarce medical resources. A re-thinking of women's relationship to pregnancy is needed in order to challenge ectogenetic research.

Surrogate motherhood—at least if carefully structured to protect the interests of the women involved—seems defensible along standard liberal lines which place great stress on free agreements as moral bedrocks. But feminist theories have tended to be suspicious about the importance assigned to this notion by mainstream ethics, and in this paper, we develop implications of those suspicions for surrogacy. We argue that the practice is inconsistent with duties parents owe to children and that it compromises the freedom of surrogates to perform their share of those duties. Standard liberal perspectives tend to be insensitive to such considerations; we propose a view which takes more seriously the moral importance of the causal relationship between parents and children, and which therefore illuminates rather than obscures the stake that women and children have in surrogacy.

In this article, 1 argue that the liberal framework—its autonomous individuals with equal rights—allows judges to justify enforcing surrogacy contracts. More importantly, even where judges do not enforce surrogacy contracts, the liberal framework conceals gender and class issues which insure that the surrogate will lose custody of her child. I suggest that Marx's analysis of estranged labor can reveal the class and gender issues which the liberal framework conceals.

I will argue the free market in babies or in women's bodies created by an institution of paid surrogate motherhood is contrary to Kantian principles of person-hood and to the feminist principle that men do not have—and cannot gain through contract, marriage, or payment of money—a right to the sexual or reproductive use of women's bodies.

I defend the permissibility of paid surrogacy arrangements against the arguments Sara Ketchum advances in “Selling Babies and Selling Bodies.” I argue that the arrangements cannot be prohibited out of hand on the grounds that they treat persons as objects of sale, because it is possible to view the payments made in these arrangements as compensation for the woman's services. I also argue that the arguments based on exploitation and parental custodial rights fail to provide adequate grounds for prohibiting the arrangements.

A critical review of four recent works that reflect current conflicts and tensions among feminists regarding new reproductive technologies: In Search of Parenthood by Judith Lasker and Susan Borg; Ethics and Human Reproduction by Christine Overall; Made to Order, Patricia Spallone and Deborah Steinberg, eds. and Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, Michelle Stanworth, ed. Their positions are evaluated against the background of growing feminist dialogue about the future of reproduction and the bearing of reproductive innovations on such related issues as racism, sexuality, motherhood and abortion.