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The Case of Baby M: Love's Labor Lost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

George P. Smith II
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Extract

It has been estimated that in the United States some twenty thousand babies are born through artificial insemination by donor (AID) each year. With the startling new advances in reproductive technology, or what has been termed collaborative conception, it is now possible for a child to have up to five parents: an egg donor, a sperm donor, a surrogate mother who gestates the fetus, and the couple who actually raises the child. What we now face, then—not only in considering the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision In re Baby M but in the whole area of the new reproductive biology—is, in the words of a popular columnist, a mess.

Interestingly, the enormity of this complex, multiparent scenario—which Kerns to be on its way to becoming a reality with Baby M and its anticipated progeny—was totally lost on Mary Beth Whitchead. I just can't see how four peeple loving [Baby M], five people loving her, can hurt her, she said recently.

Type
Case Review Essay
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 121 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1988

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