Pamela Laufer-Ukeles (University of Dayton - School of Law) has posted The Lost Children: When the Right to Children Conflicts with the Rights of Children (Journal of Law and Ethics of Human Rights, Vol. 8, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In this essay I will consider the tension between a state’s pronatalist drive toward the use of ART and the state’s failure to protect the best interests of children born of ART. Through examining the Israeli issue of compromises that ART can cause to personal status in Israel, which can affect a person’s ability to marry, I demonstrate how state fostered pronatalism can be directly at odds with children’s interests. This tension is particularly stark in Israel, where procreative support by the state is extreme and relatively easy fixes could relieve much of the problem. But, the same tension plays out in other nations in which the use of ART leads to the creation of children whose basic needs are not sufficiently addressed. I argue that while procreation is a valid goal it cannot come at the cost of the social and basic civil rights of children. State policy and laws should not support ART without taking care that children born of ART will be full citizens upon their birth. And, where ART is being used by a state’s citizens even without direct support, the state must take care to provide for those children. In particular, in this article I discuss the state’s obligations to ensure, to the best of its ability, that children have the right to marry within their communities, have access to health information and have a state of citizenship. The desire to parent may be related to creating genetic progeny, but must also be about raising and caring for children. Social parenting entails much more than procreation, it is involves raising a child, focusing on their well-being and doing so in their best interests.
