Reproductive Technologies and Modern Family

Abstract

Recent reproductive technologies, such as surrogate motherhood and sperm bank, will have a grave impact on our ideas of life, human being, and family. Our desire to have a child has been segmented into a set of particular sub-desires, and the norms of modern family are shaken by these segmented desires. Such segmented desires are, for example, (1) “we want a child whatever method we may use, ” (2) “we want a child of the same blood, ” (3) “I want to give birth myself, ” (4) “we want such-and-such a child, but we don't want such-and-such a child, ” and (5) “we want a child with the same genome as someone.” Some of these desires are well known to modern family, but others are completely new. Egg donation, womb rental, and human cloning might transform the norms of modern family into new ones.