[Public health ethics and reproduction]

Medical progress has enabled achievements that were not even thinkable earlier but at the same time society and public health have had to face new challenges. What are we ready to accept in the area of human reproduction? This paper aims at ethical analysis of Bulgarian laws on reproduction. The abortion debate nowadays has got new dimiension focusing not that much on its moral acceptability but rather on the acceptable indications for its performance. Is it ethical to perform abortion in case of undesired gender of the embryo or genetic malformations? Lots of moral issues mark the area of assisted reproduction which is due to the separation of the reproductive functions (ova, sperm and embryo donation, surrogacy), fragmentation of motherhood and fatherhood, differentiation of biological and social parenthood. Defining limits of acceptable interference or non-interference in human reproduction will never be easy, but dynamics of moral judgment shouldn't bother us. The rigidity of moral norms is what should be alarming because it threatens procreative autonomy.