Chapter 10: Liminality and the Ethical Challenges Presented by Innovative Medical Procedures

International commercial gestational surrogacy in India, gender selection, and female cosmetic genital surgery are sometimes offered commercially as services where legally permitted. The technology for each has been developed enough to offer the services but given the embryonic stage of development of these services, numerous ethical issues are apparent. New technologies sometimes elude regulation in the early stages, taking a marginal place in the legal environment. Yet ethical responses to new technologies can be very strong, since such technologies represent manmade alternatives to human life as it has been known for generations. Such distinctive technologies thus may offer unusual insights into the purpose and nature of ethical analysis as well as the value of the enterprises that occupy what may be viewed as liminal spaces. In striking new ground, such enterprises are relatively free to stage new modes of experience, develop new rituals, and, in the midst of delivering what might seem fantastic, potentially deliver as well unexpected and unwanted transformations of humanity. The ultimate aim of this paper is to further discussion of the ethics of these controversial technologies with a primary focus on liminality. People engaged in any of these innovative medical practices enter a liminal space where they are between what they were and what they might become.