Too Many Mothers? Surrogacy, Kinship and the Welfare of the Child

Wallbank, Julie

doi:10.1093/medlaw/10.3.271

Cited by 16 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Section 33 preserves the legal definition of the mother contained in s 27(1) of the 1990 Act, which defines the legal mother as the woman who gestates and gives birth to the child, regardless of whether she has a genetic connection. It thus maintains the rule that legal maternity is restricted to one woman (Wallbank 2002), and in stipulating that there can only be one 'other legal parent', it reinforces a traditional dyadic, heteronormative family form (McCandless and Sheldon 2010). There is a rebuttable presumption that a husband or civil partner is the other parent (ss 35, 42).…”

Section: Key Changes In the 2008 Actmentioning

confidence: 92%

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008: Tinkering at the Margins

Fox

2009

Fem Leg Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This note suggests that, viewed from a feminist perspective, the reforms contained in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 represent a missed opportunity to re-think the appropriate model of regulation to govern fertility treatment and embryology research in the UK. It argues that reform of the legislation was driven largely by the government's desire to avoid re-igniting controversies over the legal status of the embryo and abortion and to maintain Britain's position at the forefront of embryo research and related biotechnologies. It also highlights the importance of media debates, which were highly selective, to the reform process, and suggests that in order to inject feminist values into the process of legislative reform, feminists need to become more media savvy. In the short term, it suggests that there is little prospect of a radical re-thinking of the appropriate ethico-legal response to the wide variety of family forms that reproductive technologies potentially enable, much less of considering our ethical obligations to the new forms of embryos that are now permitted by the 2008 Act. In the meantime, however, it argues that these issues provide productive opportunities for feminist legal theorists to address questions that have been erased or obscured in the course of the 2008 reforms.

show abstract

Section: Key Changes In the 2008 Actmentioning

confidence: 92%

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008: Tinkering at the Margins

Fox

2009

Fem Leg Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Families created by surrogacy differ from the traditional families in two important ways (Wallbank, 2002). First, the gestational mother and the social mother are not the same.…”

Section: Parenthood and Renting A Uterus: Commercial Or Altruistic?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasing infertility rates and also in the demand for reproductive technologies have challenged some of the family's traditional functions. With the advances in reproductive medicine, couples that in the past would not have been able to reproduce are now offered an opportunity to have children (Wallbank, 2002). The introduction of new reproductive technologies has questioned the status of motherhood and parenthood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contractual Transaction: How Renting a Uterus Makes the Human Body a Commodity in Nepal

Subedi

2015

Dhaulagiri

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The sperm came from Israel. It was frozen in Thailand. The egg donor from South Africa. The embryo traveled to Nepal where an Indian woman was the surrogate mother. Nine months later as the Greengolds were headed to a Kathmandu hospital where the mother had given birth, the earthquake struck… One day when the Greengolds tell their little Yaari about how he was born in the middle of a terrible earthquake, it will be a unique and thrilling story. (Sandip Roy: April 30, 2015

show abstract

“…Surrogacy is notorious for being an ethically problematic, and potentially exploitative, reproductive arrangement (Morgan 2001;Wallbank 2002). As such, having the State involved in closely supervising it is not necessarily at odds with feminist goals.…”

Section: Comparison and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lesbian and Gay Parents and Reproductive Technologies: The 2008 Australian and UK Reforms

Zanghellini

2010

Fem Leg Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyses the laws that govern the allocation of parental responsibility for children conceived through non-coital reproduction by lesbians and gay men in England/Wales and Australia. In 2008 both jurisdictions introduced important reforms affecting this area of law, providing new options for the legal recognition of parent-child relationships in lesbian and gay households. However, the practical usefulness or effectiveness of the reforms may be limited by the excessive complexity or obscurity of the system of parental responsibility thus introduced. Furthermore, the reform Acts encourage the formation of some family structures-especially homonuclear families-while discouraging the emergence of more imaginative and cooperative parenting configurations at odds with heteronormative parenting scripts. Only through a clearer commitment to intentionality as a ground for the allocation of parental responsibility will future reform be likely to adequately protect the interests of lesbian and gay parents and their children.

show abstract

Too Many Mothers? Surrogacy, Kinship and the Welfare of the Child

Cited by 16 publications

References 1 publication

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008: Tinkering at the Margins

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008: Tinkering at the Margins

Contractual Transaction: How Renting a Uterus Makes the Human Body a Commodity in Nepal

Lesbian and Gay Parents and Reproductive Technologies: The 2008 Australian and UK Reforms

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About