The Technological Family: What's New and What's Not

Marsha Garrison, Brooklyn Law School

Abstract

New technologies now make it possible to conceive a baby without sex and to both predict and witness the process of fetal development. Both commercial and delayed parenthood present difficult questions relating to the ownership of genetic material and the status of preembryos that may-or may not-become human lives. Courts and legislatures have only begun to grapple with these genuinely novel aspects of the technological revolution in reproduction. This essay briefly explores both faces of technological conception-what's new and what's not.