About this Event
Around one in six people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility during their lifetime. Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), including in vitro fertilisation (IVF), have been used for more than three decades to overcome infertility and millions of children have now been born through these technologies.
The UK was the first country to regulate assisted reproduction by statute and oversight by a statutory authority.The paper explores a curious asymmetry: before harm, assisted reproduction is treated as exceptional, governed by specialist rules on licensing, consent, storage and traceability.
But when those safeguards fail, those affected are largely sent back to private law such as negligence, contract, property, family law and human rights to find a remedy.The law is remarkably precise about protecting reproductive choices before harm, yet surprisingly uncertain about what has been lost once those choices are defeated.
I argue for a more coherent model of reproductive accountability.
Professor Amel Alghrani is Professor of Law at the University of Liverpool and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford (2024–2027). She is an internationally recognised scholar of health law, medical law and bioethics whose research examines how law responds to some of the most ethically complex issues in healthcare, reproduction, criminal justice and children’s rights.
She is a leading expert on reproductive justice and the law governing maternal care and assisted reproduction, with particular expertise in abortion, fertility treatment and emerging reproductive technologies. Her work has shaped legal and policy debates on reproductive innovation, including publishing with clinicians involved in the UK’s first uterus transplant and service on a Nuffield Council on Bioethics expert working group on stem cell-based embryo models (2024).
Her scholarship has been cited by the UK Supreme Court and featured in national media, including BBC News, BBC Radio 4’s The Law Show, and the BBC Politics Show.
For more information see: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/amel-alghrani
Event venue & nearby stays
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, United Kingdom
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.