Publisher's Synopsis
This book offers a comprehensive study of contract as a legal response to developments in human reproductive technology. At the same time, it supplies a basis for grasping and effectively responding to the societal choices the new technology of reproduction poses. It anchors its study of contract in an original conceptual map, which synthesizes relevant issues of fact and value and sets out society?s current options. It explores the meaning of existing American law and proposals for legal reform within the conceptual framework to which it contributes, with special regard to contract?s role, analyzing the history of the law of the marriage contract, artificial insemination by donor, and 'surrogate motherhood'. The work advances arguments for respecting the human meaning of lineage and nurturance as setting at least broad limits to the role of contract and, more generally, to the scope of individual intention and state power, as society gives legal shape to its response to reproductive technology.
