Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Market Needs Legal Regulation

(NYU Press)

      Assisted reproductive technology (ART) 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 pubic policy issues that touch on technological anxiety, eugenics, reproductive autonomy, identity, and family structure.
      Naomi R. Cahn, John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, explores these issues and many more in her new book Test Tube Families. She asks questions which are fundamental to new reproductive technologies: 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?
      As a new generation of “donor kids” comes of age, Test Tube Families calls for better regulation of ART. It exhorts legal and policy-making communities to cease applying piecemeal laws and instead create laws that sustain the fertility industry, yet protect the interests of donors, recipients, and the children that result from successful transfers.


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