Am I My Son? Human Clones and the Modern Family

33 Pages Posted: 9 Apr 2009 Last revised: 3 Apr 2016

Abstract

As increasingly complex assisted reproductive technologies (ART) become available, legal and social conceptions of family become ambiguous and sometimes misaligned. The as-yet unrealized technology of cloning provides the clearest example of this confusion: is the legal parent of a clone the individual cloned, or are that individual's parents also the parents of the clone? These issues have been generally obscured by the debates around the deployment of ART, especially cloning; far less consideration has been given to the way these new technologies impact the way we think about and develop law on the relationships between genetic, social, gestational, and legal parenthood. This article considers these issues in depth, looking at competing common-law frameworks for determining parentage, the statutory framework of parentage, and deeper theoretical concerns underlying the area. The article concludes that an intent-based framework, with at least some external limitations, most accurately matches law to social views of parents using new forms of ART.

Suggested Citation

Price II, William Nicholson, Am I My Son? Human Clones and the Modern Family. 11 Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 118 (2010), Columbia Public Law Research, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1375655 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1375655

William Nicholson Price II (Contact Author)

University of Michigan Law School ( email )

625 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
United States

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