and/or gestation of an implanted embryo by a genetically unrelated mother. All of this is said to have the effect of devaluing marriage and delinking, as it were, coitus from procreation.
Consequences of successful human IVF technology since 1978--not all of them anticipated--have included the phenomena of sperm banks and surrogate motherhood, which in turn have given birth to a body of new law. Stanworth (19) posits dire social consequences of ambiguity about a child's genetic connections, declaring that "clarity about who your parents are . . . [is] the indispensable foundation[] of a sound family life." Whatever one's moral opinion of IVF may be, the fact is that it has the effect of "a legal construction on genetic ties" (Stanworth 22). The "Baby M" case, which in the mid-1980s pitted a surrogate mother against the couple who had hired her to carry their IVF embryo to term, vividly illustrated the legal complexities in the background of human reproductive technology (Crandall, et al. 189ff).
Writing in 1985, Krause deplores "scientists who charge
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