28 H A S T I N G S C E N T E R R E P O R T July-August 2007

agency would help us on this—or at least not enough to war-rant the considerable costs of getting there.

We can list other issues that will vex us, like human-animalchimeras, germline alteration, and PGD for gender selectionor disease susceptibility. There is much to say about each, butit will get said, and workable though imperfect policies will re-sult. Fukuyama and Furger’s policy fantasy won’t do any bet-ter. So let’s continue to muddle through—we could do a lotworse.

Although Fukuyama and Furger are not the first to sug-gest that the interests of children should be among themost pressing concerns attending assisted reproduc-

tion, their decision to stress children’s well-being and health isstill noteworthy and commendable. In a business motivatedstrongly by the interests of would-be parents, they do well toremind us that the intended results of assisted reproductionare future persons who must live intimately with the decisionsof their parents, fertility services providers, and any egg,sperm, embryo, or other donors involved in their creation.

What I find strange about their proposal for regulating re-progenetics, however, is one of the prohibitions that they sug-gest is key to safeguarding children’s interests.

Fukuyama and Furger do not set out very many substan-tive recommendations as to what should be prohibited, per-mitted, or regulated. They focus instead on detailing the reg-ulatory mechanism itself. Nevertheless, they identify generalethical principles that the regulatory system should promote

and a few targets for prohibition and regulation that followfrom these ethical principles. In addition to banning repro-ductive cloning, the creation of human-animal chimeras forreproductive purposes, germline modification, and thepatenting of human embryos, they seek to outlaw the creationof children who are not the genetic offspring of one man andone woman. Anything else—the creation of a child with ge-netic material from two men, or two women, or one man andtwo women, and so on—would violate both a “fundamentalbiological principle” and the moral commitment to protect-ing the health and well-being of children.

“Heather Has Two Mommies”

In the early days of assisted reproduction, the use of donorsperm prompted questions about parentage: who is the “fa-

ther”—the sperm donor or the man who will help raise thechild? Indeed, until the law clarified that the man who in-tends to raise the child is the legal father, some fertility clinicswould mix the sperm of a few donors together so that no onecould know which donor had fathered the child.

Similar questions were raised by egg and embryo donationand surrogate gestation: who is the “real mother”—the eggdonor, the woman who gestates the child, or the woman whointends to raise the child? While not always as easy to solve asparentage questions in the sperm donation context, we havegenerally come to recognize the intended parents as the legaland social parents of any child born from donated gametes orembryos, and the donors are understood simply as donors, oras “genetic parents” or “biological parents” or—in the case ofa gestational surrogate—as the “gestating mother.” Theseterms are still somewhat problematic and contested—in partbecause we usually give so much responsibility to anybodyidentified as a parent—but it is fair to say that the legal sys-tem, the fertility industry, and much of society now recognizethe social parents as the legitimate parents and release thedonors and surrogates from any parental rights and responsi-bilities.

Now, Fukuyama and Furger warn, “There are a number oftechnologies emerging that will make possible the creation ofchildren who are not the offspring of one man and onewoman, as every human child has been up to now in the his-tory of our species.” The problem for Fukuyama and Furger isapparently not that these technologies introduce the need fora distinction between biological or genetic parents on the onehand and legal or social parents on the other. The problem isthat the child will have been created by combining geneticmaterial from persons other than one man and one woman.

An example of such a technology that is already in use isooplasm transfer, a technique employed to circumvent prob-lems in some women’s eggs that involves replacing the nucle-us of a donor’s egg with the nucleus of another woman’s egg(usually the intended mother’s). The egg is then fertilized withsperm (usually from the intended father) and the embryo istransferred for gestation. Any child born will have received ge-netic material from three people: the man whose sperm fertil-

B Y J O S E P H I N E J O H N S T O N

Tied Up in Nots overGenetic Parentage

Josephine Johnston, “Tied Up in Nots over Genetic Parentage,” Hastings CenterReport 37, no. 4 (2007): 28-31.

H A S T I N G S C E N T E R R E P O R T 29July-August 2007

ized the egg, the woman who was the egg donor, and thewoman whose egg’s nucleus was used. In the future, it may bepossible to create eggs or sperm from stem cells; if that tech-nique were used to create children with two genetic “mothers”or two genetic “fathers,” it, too, would breach Fukuyama andFurger’s proposed prohibition. Because their concern is thecreation of children who do not have just one genetic motherand one genetic father, we have to assume that using thistechnology to create a child from the stem cells of a hetero-sexual couple would be permissible. But using it to let a ho-mosexual couple have a child who is genetically related toboth parents would be prohibited.

Fukuyama and Furger are light on justifications for theirproposed prohibition (which is in some ways to be expected,given that they are more interested in the regulatory mecha-

nism than in the substance of the prohibi-tions). They argue that such a child wouldnot, on the question of genetic origins, bethe same “as every human child has beenup to now in the history of our species,”but they do not explain why it is importantto maintain this particular feature ofhuman reproduction. It cannot be a con-cern to protect natural procreation in gen-eral, or they would have to oppose fertilitytreatment, which actively seeks to circum-vent natural (biological) barriers to repro-ducing. Similarly, an opposition to manu-facturing children could apply to all in vitrofertilization, where embryos are created inlaboratories rather than inside a woman’sbody.

They say that they are concerned aboutthe impact of novel genetic origins on chil-dren’s “psychological development and onthe development of their identities,” butthey do not unpack this concern or give ev-idence for why it might be so disturbing toknow that your genetic parents were twomen, or two women, or one man and twowomen. They certainly do not explain whythe nature of a person’s genetic originsmight be as important as, or more impor-tant than, say, the family environment inwhich she grows up.

Assisted Reproduction, GeneticTies, and the Well-Being of Children

Another scholar who has expressed con-cern about the impact of fertility treat-

ment on the well-being of children is Sidney Callahan. LikeFukuyama and Furger, Callahan considers the genetic“parentage” of children to be important. But unlike Fukuya-ma and Furger, Callahan is opposed to all use of sperm, egg,and embryo donors because she believes both that childrenshould be created from the egg of a woman and the sperm ofa man and that they should be raised by these very same in-dividuals.1 Instead of focusing on the origins of the geneticmaterial that was combined to produce a child, Callahan isconcerned about the relationship between the child and herparents, which she believes is ideally both genetic and social.She is not opposed to adoption, which she characterizes as“rescuing” a child, but she thinks that we should not set outto sever the link between a child and her genetic parents.

Big Baby, by Chris Twomey, 1999, acrylic andsilkscreen on canvas, 62”x42”. ©Chris Twomey

30 H A S T I N G S C E N T E R R E P O R T July-August 2007

Fukuyama and Furger, on the other hand, make clear thatthey do not wish to ban the intentional creation of families inwhich one or both of the parents is genetically unrelated tothe child. Their goal is to regulate the genetic makeup of chil-dren. They believe that “every child has the right to be bio-logically related to a mother and a father even though theymay be brought up in a variety of households in which the bi-ological mother and father may be absent.” With this proviso,they allow for the possibility of same-sex parents, just notsame-sex genetic parents.

“Illegal Beings”

The closest thing to Fukuya-ma and Furger’s proposed

prohibition is probably the wild-ly popular opposition to repro-ductive cloning, which is simi-larly rooted in a concern aboutthe supposed psychologicalharm caused by the nature of aperson’s genetic origins. Opposi-tion is expressed to the fact thata cloned child would be almostidentical genetically to an exist-ing, or deceased, person. Such achild, it is argued, would nothave an “open future” becausesomeone with the same geneswould already have existed, andthe cloned child might feel asthough his own life is thereforepredestined or constrained(commentators tend to assumethat the child would know he isa clone).

The question about an openfuture is presumably not a con-cern for children with three ge-netic parents—their future might be even more open thanours—but like a clone, any child who knows that her geneticparents were two men, or one man and two women, wouldknow that in this way she is different from the rest of us. Butit is not obvious to me that knowing about this differenceneed be harmful to the child—unless, of course, we tell herthat this difference is deviant.

In her book Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law, lawprofessor Kerry Lynn Macintosh argues that the most com-mon objections to cloning are “false or exaggerated,” reflect-ing and inspiring “unjustified stereotypes about humanclones” that stigmatize clones as subhuman and injure “theegalitarianism upon which our society is based.”2 She beginsby quoting law professor Laurence Tribe, who in a 1998 essaymade the argument that one risk of bans on particular meth-ods for making human babies is that such babies will still beborn, only to find themselves “potential outcasts—persons

whose very existence the society has chosen, through its legalsystem, to label as a misfortune and, in essence, to con-demn.”3 Tribe describes the high price paid by children bornto unwed women or to interracial couples and asks, “Howmuch higher would that price be when the basis on which thelaw decides to condemn a given baby-making method (likecloning) is . . . the far more personalized and stigmatizingjudgment that the baby itself—the child that will result fromthe condemned method—is morally incomplete or existen-tially flawed by virtue of its unnaturally manmade and delib-erately determined (as opposed to ‘open’) origin and charac-ter?” One might make a very similar argument against the ban

proposed by Fukuyama andFurger.

What Really Matters forChildren’s Well-Being?

Many of the techniquesthat Fukuyama and Furg-

er would like to ban have notbeen shown to work in humans,and developing them furthermight well endanger the healthof any woman made pregnantthrough them or any child bornwith their aid. Until thesehealth risks are resolved, oppo-sition will be widespread. But ifthey are resolved, what mightbe wrong with creating a childusing genetic material fromthree or more people, or fromonly two men, or only twowomen? In a world already fa-miliar with the distinction be-tween “genetic” parents and“social” parents, with step-dads,and with families that have two

mommies, why does every child have a right to have been cre-ated from the “union” of one man and one woman? Is such aright really necessary to protect the welfare of children?

Fukuyama and Furger are right to draw our attention tothe well-being of children in assisted reproduction, but I be-lieve they are wrong to think that having a different kind ofgenetic origin necessarily causes harm. Unless we tell childrenthat, due to how they were created, they are flawed or incom-plete persons, what will really matter is that these children areloved and cared for by a nurturing family. They have a rightto be fed, clothed, treated with dignity, and protected fromharm—they even, I think, have a right to be (or a strong in-terest in being) told the truth about their genetic origins. Butthey don’t have a right to have been created from the geneticmaterial of only one man and one woman. To insist otherwiseis to pull us back to a time when one’s genetic origins deter-mined one’s worth.

Any child who knows thather genetic parents were twomen, or one man and twowomen, would know she is

different. But knowing aboutthis difference need not harmher—unless, of course, we tellher the difference is deviant.

H A S T I N G S C E N T E R R E P O R T 31July-August 2007

1. S. Callahan, “The Ethical Challenge of the New ReproductiveTechnology,” in Health Care Ethics: Critical Issues for the 21st Century,eds. J.F. Monagle and D.C. Thomasma (Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen Pub-lishers, 1998).

2. K.L. Macintosh, Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law (Cam-bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), front matter.

3. L. Tribe, “On Not Banning Cloning for the Wrong Reasons,” inClones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning, eds. M.C.Nussbaum and C.R. Sunstein (New York: Norton, 1998).

For Hastings Center news,

job opportunities in bioethics,

and selected content

from our journals,*

please visit

www.thehastingscenter.org

Special Reports from the Hastings Center Report are available free* on our Web site.

Please visit

www.thehastingscenter.org/publications/reports.asp

to download these new and notable reports:

Patents, Biomedical Research and Treatments: Examining Concerns, Canvassing Solutions

The Ethics of Using QI Methods to Improve Health Care Quality & Safety

Improving End of Life Care: Why Has It Been So Difficult?

*Free downloads are limited to Special Reports published since 2002.Site registration is required.

*Site registration is required for access to some journal content.