Nobody's Child, Everybody's Children:

Complexities, Connections & Questions:  Inter-Relations of Reproductive & Genetic Technology and Cultural Change

“Science creates change” is perhaps the ultimate truism. Yet, prediction of the direction and extent of change is rarely possible. Further, past expectations and present practices often obscure recognition of the effect and complexity of any change. The new reproductive and genetic technologies (NRGT) present prime examples of these difficulties.

The pace of advances in NRGT has compounded the difficulties. Less than three decades ago, with the birth of the first “test tube baby,” discussions ranged about the appropriateness - medically, ethically, legally and psychologically - of the relatively simple concept of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).1 Today, dialogues surround much more complex issues, from the choice of the sex of an embryo for implantation, the number of embryos to implant, the fate of the stored embryos, to the implications of stem cell research and cloning.

Inserting these rapid scientific advances into societal and cultural patterns provides problems and questions unimaginable those several decades ago - due not only to the changes in NRGT itself, but also to concomitant cultural changes. For example, previously, the North American family was defined relatively simply. It was viewed as a small, independent, continuing unit of a male, a female and several related children. The heterosexual adults the parents, and fulfilled defined roles. Although idealized, and undoubtedly frequently not met, families worked to approximate the ideal.

Today, because of social and scientific changes, the family and parentage are no longer clear-cut. Family constellations have become diverse and fluid, encompassing single parents, same-sex couples and blended groupings of biological and non-biological relatedness. A child could have 5 parents: two biological, one surrogate and 2 adoptive. Indeed, a recent Canadian Justice determined that a child had 3 legal parents - gestational, adoptive same-sex partner, and biological donor.2
The implications of these changes can be murky, with resolutions diverse. Nonetheless, solutions to new conundrums must be found and successful new approaches to old assumptions developed. Pragmatism often dictates that answers be found long before simmering debates reach consensus.

One such pragmatic area is the law. Both courts and the lawyers appearing before them must analyze and resolve the inevitable conflicts emerging from applications of NRGT. They must address questions of intimate relationship, parentage, status of embryos, extent of genetic manipulation. Their deliberations are illustrative.

This presentation addresses the inter-relation between reproductive technological advances and the expectations and realities in shifting societal relationships, the questions that must be asked, and how the answers may be found. It uses an illustration recent U.S. judicial determinations of personhood and parentage of embryos within the supposedly narrow question of embryo donation/adoption. The decisions on this issue, as well as other solutions in related areas, require attention to the rights and needs of both children and parents, and to ethical, religious, and political expectations, historical attitudes, and cultural assumptions and practices.