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Anthropological Challenges Raised by New Reproductive Technologies Essay Example

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Anthropological Challenges Raised by New Reproductive Technologies Essay Example
Discuss some of the anthropological challenges raised by the introduction of NRT’s (New Reproductive Technologies).

In the world we live today, technology plays a very important role in the construction of our society. By the means of new technologies, new theories, ideologies and perspectives are being applied to understand social phenomena. Society has gone, and is still going through a new revolution, because technology has changed the way we look at different sectors in our lives, such as in the way we communicate, social institutions, different jobs and so on. In this assignment, I am going to write about new reproductive technologies and the impacts these leave regarding the family unit, as such technologies can change the meaning of what family is, or what the norm of the family used to be. These also challenge fundamental categories about what is natural, the expected roles a person should carry, kinship problems, marriage problems and how it could be affected, childbirth. These bring about questions about what is ethical, what should be legal, and also other philosophical problems. The new reproductive technologies constitute a broad variety of technologies aimed mostly at facilitating the process of reproduction, or even preventing or intervening this process such as by contraceptives and abortion. New reproductive technologies are being used more and more because of the infertility problem. Couples including an infertile partner seek these technologies as their remedies for their problem. The media started to promote such procedures. Certain studies have shown that the media promotes these technologies as being genius technologies, as if the doctors perform miraculous triumphs. They don’t always involve the mother or father of the child in this medical experience. Examples of new reproductive technologies are super ovulation, in vitro fertilization (IVF), artificial insemination by donor, embryo flushing and transfer, surrogate motherhood and sex
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