A place for criminal law in the regulation of reproductive technologies.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The CBA's National Health Law and Family Law Sections take a similar position. They underscore that reproductive technologies are characterized by their quick pace of change. The legislation created for dealing with these technologies thus must be able to respond to the emerging and changing social concerns, public opinions and scientific developments that arise in this area. Creating a regulatory body responsible for defining, interpreting and amending a list of prohibited reproductive technologies is thus preferable to criminally banning these activities, as a regulatory approach could respond quickly and effectively to scientific and social change.Relying on the broader, collective notion of that [M. McTeer] has described and relied on in her analysis of the state's intervention in reproductive technologies, it becomes easier to identify and understand the harm that these technologies could inflict. Such harm could be experienced not only by individuals who make choices about assisted reproduction, but also by society more generally, given that these activities touch upon core social values. In addition, the importance of these values and the extent to which they could be affected by reproductive technologies reflect the severity - both in nature and degree - of the potential harm that we may incur as a result.Yet, while the criminal prohibitions that Parliament has proposed in the AHR Act are appropriate from both a legal and ethical standpoint, a difficulty arises when we search for a policy justification for these prohibitions. Right now, Parliament has failed to provide us with any such justification. Bill C-13 does not contain any clear statement of policy or principle, and contains no preamble. Until a clear and frank justification is provided, this legislation will remain open to criticism. There is also a possibility that it will not withstand a Charter challenge. In setting out to articulate a policy rationale for the new AHR Act, legislators must keep in mind that any contention that there is a social consensus in Canada about the criminalization of reproductive technologies is unpersuasive. More convincing is the argument that the AHR Act must be consonant with, and based upon the fundamental values of Canadian society. It is imperative that Parliament voice this point and articulate the real impetus underlying the proposed legislation. Absent such a statement, the new law will remain subject to ongoing scrutiny and challenge, thereby giving us less time and opportunity to think about the benefits of the new law, and the way it should develop in the future as inevitable scientific changes unfold.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.030 | 0.037 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.040 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.044 | 0.041 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".