Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: For many years, conventional wisdom has embraced with little examination what I. Glenn Cohen and Daniel L. Chen dub "the substitution theory"-the claim that facilitating treatment for infertility, including subsidizing in vitro fertilization (IVF), decreases adoptions.1 According to this arm-chair principle, 2 making IVF more affordable will attract to such medical interventions infertile adults who, in the absence of subsidies, would adopt children instead.In order to enhance the prospect that children awaiting placement will find adoptive homes, the argument proceeds, we should reject the call for insurance mandates to cover IVF.In Trading-Off Reproductive Technology and Adoption: Does Subsidizing IVF Decrease Adoption Rates and Should It Matter?(the "Article"), Cohen and Chen venture well beyond the arm chair, closely interrogating the substitution theory both normatively and empirically.In the cheery conclusions that Cohen and Chen present, there is a strong normative case in favor of IVF insurance mandates and, as an empirical matter, a robust adoption rate can happily coexist along with sub-
Source: bepress Legal Repository
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Language: English
Subfield: Reproductive Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W50488486