Perception of assisted reproductive technologies by Russian student youth

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are an innovative area of medicine having the potential to positively influence population fertility. However, this potential is limited, among other factors, by values and ethical barriers to their use in prospective patients. Decisions on whether to use them or not, in the case of reproductive health disorders, may be associated not only with the high cost of such intervention and/or complicated geographical accessibility, but also with ideas about their insufficient “naturalness” or moral burden associated with certain methods, such as surrogacy. In the conditions of low fertility and increase of the average age of mother at birth of her first child in Russia, the question of the reproductive values of young people in this area is becoming more and more urgent. The article is based on a questionnaire study of students of both sexes in Moscow and Novosibirsk on the issues related to ideas about the ethics of certain ART methods and the willingness to use them in case of reproductive health disorders. As a result of the study, it was found that students, on average, have rater a positive attitude to the use of all fairly widespread and well-known methods, although with regard to surrogacy, as the method, the ethics of which is most widely covered in media discussions, there is polarization of views. However, still, there are more of those who have positive attitude to this method than those who adhere to a negative point of view. Thus, the main barriers to the use of reproductive technologies by young Russians continue to be economic and geographic circumstances, the impact of which is currently diminished due to the government’s policy of providing free access to IVF programs to all who need them for medical reasons.