The changing moral landscape of human reproduction: two moments in the history of in vitro fertilization.

Ethical attitudes toward in vitro fertilization (IVF) have varied historically. This paper discusses the changes in views about the morality of human IVF by exploring the response to a pair of critical moments in the history of this reproductive technology: the announcement of the first successful IVF experiment by John Rock and Miriam Menkin in 1944 and the first successful IVF live birth of Louise Brown in 1978. By exploring public and private reactions to these two events in the context of wider social and political developments, this paper demonstrates the degree to which our notions of the morality of medical experimentation and of reproductive technologies are socially constructed and historically contingent.