Women's reproductive rights are not an issue that concerns only women. A well-documented causal chain connects a woman's access to contraception and abortion services, the fertility rate, women's educational levels in a developing nation, and that nation's gross domestic product.

What do these matters have to do with women's reproductive rights? The key point is choice. No availability of reliable birth control methods directly equates to no choice. And as has been forcefully demonstrated recently, the availability of choice is deemed critical to the health and well-being of men and women in all socioeconomic groups. Witness the Susan G. Komen Foundation debacle.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers graduate online masters in bioethics programs. For more information on the AMBI master of bioethics online program, please visit the AMBI site.

Recently, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) issued a report seeking feedback on their new proposed allocation system for kidneys–a complete overhaul of the current system – which seeks to match kidney recipients with deceased donor organs based on age and health.  Click here for report.  It has been evident for a while that the system for allocating kidneys faces many problems—there is an ever-growing wait list with over 100,000 people currently on the list and significantly less donors than are needed.  The looming question, then, is how do we allocate life-saving limited resources?    

The question of allocating scarce resources is often posed as a “priority problem” with several opposing options: (1) giving the scarce resource to the worst off, (2) using an utilitarian argument by focusing on the greatest overall good, or (3) using a first-come, first-served method.  Each of these options presents their own unique benefits and downfalls.  The current system tends to allocate based on first-come, first serve with compatability (but there are numerous stories over the years that note the ineffectivness or blatant violation of this).  The proposed system, however, adopts a more utilitarian argument, focusing on giving priority to those first with longest estimated survivial and then to a recipient within 15 years of the donor organ if the donor organ has a KDPI score of greater than or equal to twenty percent.  The overall goal of the proposed system is to increase the total life span following transplant.