ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors show that in the United States and other Western countries the New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs) have highlighted efforts to make the procedures and results resemble biogenetic kinship as closely as possible, and at the same time, have brought out a cultural emphasis on choice as a foundation for kinship. In trying to create new forms of kinship and family, lesbian couples are not so much rejecting biology as a basis for kinship as making use of the NRTs to bring their situation in line with biologically based kinship. The other context in which efforts are being made to reconcile the NRTs with core cultural notions, especially American ideas about kinship, concerns surrogate motherhood. Legally speaking, what Raymond called "ejaculatory fatherhood" does appear to be gaining ground—in part, perhaps, because ideas about biological fatherhood have not been fundamentally changed by the NRTs whereas ideas about motherhood most definitely have been.
