Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking Reproduction and the Law

Today, tens of millions of Americans rely on reproductive advances to help them carry out decisions more personal & far-reaching than almost any other they will ever make: They use birth control or abortion to delay or avoid having children; surrogacy or tissue donation to start or grow a family; & genetic diagnosis or embryo selection to have offspring who survive & flourish. This is no less than the medicine of miracles: It fills empty cradles; frees families from disease; & empowers them to plan a life that doesn't include parenthood. But accidents happen: Embryologists miss ailments; egg vendors switch donors; obstetricians tell pregnant women their healthy fetuses will be stillborn. The aftermaths can last a lifetime, yet political & economic forces conspire against regulation to prevent negligence from happening in the first place. This text examines this important topic.

This book lifts the curtain on reproductive negligence, gives voice to the lives it upends, and vindicates the interests that advances in medicine and technology bring to full expression. It charts the legal universe of errors that: deprive pregnancy or parenthood of people who set out to pursue them; impose pregnancy or parenthood on those who tried to avoid these roles; or confound efforts to have a child with or without certain genetic traits