Nelson, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-3686-9333, Romanis, E.C. orcid.org/0000-0002-8774-4015, Adkins, V. orcid.org/0000-0002-7614-0048 et al. (2 more authors) (2024) Death and the artificial placenta. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 11 (2). lsae013. ISSN 2053-9711
Abstract
Artificial Amnion and Placenta Technology (AAPT)—sometimes referred to as ‘Artificial Womb Technology’—could provide an extracorporeal alternative to bodily gestations, allowing a fetus delivered prematurely from the human uterus to continue development while maintaining fetal physiology. As AAPT moves nearer to being used in humans, important ethical and legal questions remain unanswered. In this paper, we explore how the death of the entity sustained by AAPT would be characterized in law. This question matters, as legal ambiguity in this area has the potential to compound uncertainty and the suffering of newly bereaved parent(s). We first identify the existing criteria used to delineate the legal characterization of death, which occurs before birth or during the immediate neonatal period in England and Wales. We then demonstrate that attempting to apply these in the context of AAPT gives rise to a number of challenges, which make it impossible to reach a definitive conclusion as to the nature of death in AAPT using the current legal framework. In doing so, we demonstrate that the current legal framework in England and Wales may be unable to adequately capture the situation of an entity being sustained by AAPT.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Duke University School of Law, Harvard Law School, Oxford University Press, and Stanford Law School. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Law (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Jul 2024 12:56 |
Last Modified: | 29 Jul 2024 14:28 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsae013 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/jlb/lsae013 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:215019 |