Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Market Needs Legal Regulation

by Naomi R. Cahn

Overview

The birth of the first test tube baby in 1978 focused attention on the sweeping advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART), which is now a multi-billion-dollar business in the United States. Sperm and eggs are bought and sold in a market that has few barriers to its skyrocketing growth. While ART has been an invaluable gift to thousands of people, creating new families, the use of someone else’s genetic material raises complex legal and public policy issues that touch on technological anxiety, eugenics, reproductive autonomy, identity, and family structure. How should the use of gametic material be regulated? Should recipients be able to choose the “best” sperm and eggs? Should a child ever be able to discover the identity of her gamete donor? Who can claim parental rights?
Naomi R. Cahn explores these issues and many more in Test Tube Families, noting that although such questions are fundamental to the new reproductive technologies, there are few definitive answers currently provided by the law, ethics, or cultural norms. As a new generation of "donor kids" comes of age, Cahn calls for better regulation of ART, exhorting legal and policy-making communities to cease applying piecemeal laws and instead create legislation that sustains the fertility industry while simultaneously protecting the interests of donors, recipients, and the children that result from successful transfers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814716823
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Naomi Cahn is John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington UniversityLaw School. Her previous books include Red Families v. Blue Families, Test Tube Families (NYU Press 2009), Families By Law: An Adoption Reader (NYU Press 2004), and Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in Contemporary Culture.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Part I Initial Conceptions
1 The Treatment Plan for Legal Issues
2 The Treatment Plan for Creating Babies
Part II The State of ART
3 Market Regulation
4 Parenting Regulation
5 Donating to Parenthood
6 Donor Identity
Part III Race, Class, and Gender: Who Benefits?
7 Barriers to Conception
8 Expensive Dreams
9 What Is Wrong with Technology?
Part IV Baby Steps Forward
10 Baby Steps: Going to Market
11 Five-Parent Families? A Proposition
12 Finding Out
Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

"Test Tube Families explores autonomy implicitly by examining the nature of relationships involved in the process of assisted conception using medical technology, and focusing on the reulatory environment in the USA."

Feminist Legal Studies - Hazel Biggs

"In her careful and detailed analysis, Cahn builds a lawyerly case for comprehensive federal and state laws governing infertility treatment and establishing the legal rights and obligations of everyone involved in the process."

Bitch Magazine

"In the United States, there is a competitive market in human eggs provided for reproductive purposes. An 'extraordinary' egg donor can earn as much as $50,000 when she offers her eggs to an infertile couple. In California, however, that same 'extraordinary' individual would receive nothing, aside from payment for her direct expenses, if she provided those same eggs for research purposes. That could change soon."

Los Angeles Times - Naomi Cahn and June Carbone

"In describing the lengths to which people will go in order to produce a biological child, Cahn is both respectful of this very human desire and sensitive to the ethical and legal issues that result . . . That she also writes in accessible prose makes this a valuable text."

Choice

"In her historical and contemporary analysis of legal regulation in each of these areas, she weaves erudite yet accessible translations of law, vivid depictions of cases, and personal insights to portray an industry critically in need of oversight."

New England Journal of Medicine

"Professor Cahn proposes some useful reforms. Her proposals include legal consistency, particularly over the identity of donor conceived children and the rights of parents; transparency; a requirement to test gametes for serious genetic conditions; the provision of counseling to & consumers; and restrictions on the number of donations by any one donor."

Bio News

“Cahn’s case for a uniform, federal legal code is compelling and vivid.”
-Publishers Weekly

“In describing the lengths to which people will go in order to produce a biological child, Cahn is both respectful of this very human desire and sensitive to the ethical and legal issues that result . . . That she also writes in accessible prose makes this a valuable text.”
-Choice

From the Publisher

A lawyer who teaches family law at Georgetown Univ., Cahn (co-author, Contemporary Family Law) presents a fascinating look into the workings of reproductive law by exploring the complex process by which, for an increasing number of modern families, "biology, medicine, human determination, and the law bring babies into being." Artificial Reproductive Technology-in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers-has become a multi-billion dollar industry that is, in the U.S., comparatively unregulated. Because family law differs across states, everything from the liability of fertility clinics to the rights of donors, donor children and the hopeful couples create a thicket of legal issues. Complicated contesting claims include a 2006 case in which an Ohio couple, James Flynn and Eileen Donich, sued their gestational carrier, Penn. resident Danielle Bimber, when she refused to give up her triplets. The case was tried in both states, and ultimately decided in favor of Flynn-the biological father-but not Donich, who was accorded no standing by the court. Cahn's case for a uniform, federal legal code is compelling and vivid. (Jan.).
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