The Natural Father: Genetic Paternity Testing, Marriage, and Fatherhood

Abstract

The emerging phenomenon of genetic paternity testing shows how good science and useful social reform can run off the rails. Genetic paternity testing enables us to sort out, in a transparent and decisive way, the age-old but traditionally never-quite-answerable question of whether a child is genetically related to the husband of the child's mother. Given the impossibility of settling this question for certain, British and American law has long held that a biological relationship must almost always be assumed to exist. According to what is known as the "marital presumption" or "presumption of legitimacy," a child born to a woman within a marital relationship is assumed to be the biological child of the woman's husband unless he was absent, impotent, or sterile. In other words, if paternity was not a physical impossibility for the husband, there was a nearly irrebuttable presumption that he was the father of the child. 1 The husband was locked into the role of fatherhood. Some now argue that this presumption is outmoded. 2 Science makes certainty possible, and family members should be able to use this science to gain knowledge about their true family relationships, to extricate themselves from relationships that have been scientifically undermined, and to establish new relationships on the basis of the scientific evidence. This position now permeates the media 3 and has given birth to a mini-industry. 4 Additionally, it is beginning to wrest American law away from its traditional presumptions: an increasing number of states are introducing and approving legislation that makes it easier to use genetic paternity testing in court. 5 As the testing establishes itself in society, divorce lawyers could end up recommending that their clients obtain genetic paternity testing. 6 The pressing conceptual issue behind paternity testing is the nature of parenthood. Paternity testing encourages us to suppose that a parental relationship to a child is fundamentally a genetic relationship, or at least necessarily includes a genetic relationship. Paternity testing also encourages us to I am grateful to the participants of Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family, a research project run conjointly by The Hastings Center and the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy, and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Discussions held in the course of this project have influenced this paper in various ways. I am especially grateful to Mary Anderlik for detailed comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and at a colloquium at Oxford University on Genetic Technologies and the Family, and the paper has benefited from comments offered on each of those occasions. Funding for Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family is provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant #HG02485).

Paternity fraud and compensation for misattributed paternity

“…However, there have been cases where husbands have colluded with their wives in misattributed paternity, either because they want to keep the family unit together, or because, in at least one case, the husband was infertile and wanted to have a baby with his wife. 23 Given that, as Kaebnick notes, 12 it is difficult to displace a social father once he is established, where this kind of misattributed paternity is discovered it is consistent with the arguments in the previous section to honour the claims for compensation of progenitors who, as a result of deception, are unable to become social fathers to their children (assuming a willingness to concede that genetic relatedness gives a man a claim on becoming a social father).…”

“…It is a feature of his relationship with his wife''. 12 What about a claim for financial reimbursement for bringing up the non-genetically related children? In many countries, ii Since then the Child Support Agency has been forced to repay more than 3000 men who used paternity testing to show that they had been falsely named as a father (see Hencke 6 ).…”

“…It is a feature of his relationship with his wife''. 12 What about a claim for financial reimbursement for bringing up the non-genetically related children? In many countries,…”

Challenges for Corporate Ethics in Marketing Genetic Tests

“…Facilitated by the rapid and global expansion of the Internet, the last decade has seen a burgeoning consumer marketplace for health care information and products, and genetic tests are now just one of a plethora of health care services being marketed to medical professionals and consumers alike. Consumers can now purchase genetic tests for health and nutritional status (Chadwick, 2004), paternity (Belluck, 1997;Kaebnick, 2004), disease susceptibility and drug response (Gollust et al, 2003;Williams-Jones, 2003), and these tests are often marketed as being no more worrisome than other, much more traditional, commercially available diagnostic kits (Lewis, 2001).…”

The making and breaking of paternity secrets in donor insemination

“…It has the capacity to reveal knowledge that can change forever the way people and families relate to each other. For purposes of clarity, the terms ‘pater’ and ‘genitor’ will be used throughout the paper to refer respectively to either the social or rearing father5 or the biological father.…”