The short 'Religion and Reproductive Technology' by I. Glenn Cohen in Holly Fernandez Lynch, I. Glenn Cohen, Elizabeth Sepper (eds)
Law, Religion, and Health in the United States (2017, Forthcoming)
examines
places where law, religion, and reproductive technology conflict. It examines four particular intersections: The first involves religiously motivated denials of service, in particular as they pertain to single and gay and lesbian couples. The second involves embryo adoption, where the largest providers of the service in the United States are religious organizations. The third is a bit of a dog that didn’t bark (at least so far): the “personhood movement” and its attempts to gain state constitutional protection for zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. Finally, the chapter will close by discussing relatively new attempts by religious organizations to bring forward objections to embryo destruction in pre-embryo disposition disputes between private individuals, in particular a recent case in Missouri that is currently being litigated.
'Selective Procreation' by Dov Fox in (2016) 64
UCLA Law Review Discourse appraises
emerging powers to choose genetic traits in future children. It sets forth a comprehensive new way to think and talk about the ethics and law of offspring selection, and applies this framework to live legal controversies over efforts to single out characteristics including sex, race, deafness, and donor compatibility. I adapt the methodological lens of ambivalence developed by Robert Burt to advance conditions under which to pursue a complex regime of ambiguous or even contradictory strategies between the extremes of compulsion and prohibition. These include protection or promotion, as through public subsidies, tax breaks, mandated insurance, and private causes of action, combined with restriction or discouragement, as through sin taxes, required counseling, limits on advertising, and prenatal choice architecture.
