Advances in Medically-assisted procreation technologies: can malpractice claims and "reproductive damage" be...

Medically assisted procreation and assisted reproductive techniques have made giant strides over the past decades, enabling countless couples to achieve parenthood. Still, the ethical and moral concerns that have come to the fore as a result of ART's rise pose a multi-faceted issue that lawmakers have struggled to keep up with; procedures such as heterologous fertilization are strictly regulated, and even banned, in several nations around the globe, among which Italy, where a controversial piece of legislation was passed in 2004; such a reform has been partly nullified by court decisions, among which the Italian Constitutional Court and even the European Court of Human Rights. Relevant scientific articles were identified from Medline, Cochrane Central, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, EMBASE and Google Scholar, through February 2020, by using the following keywords: "assisted reproductive techniques", "heterologous fertilization", "European rulings on ART", "reproductive damages". The rise of ART has laid bare a shortage of adequate legal tools for the purpose of guaranteeing the exercise of reproductive rights for all. Hence, the harmonization of regulations, at least at the European level, is greatly needed in order to ensure equality of parental opportunities for all.