ABSTRACT
The development and availability of the new reproductive technologies have challenged traditional concepts of the ‘family’ while the meaning of ‘parent’ has been unravelled into its constituent elements. A genetic parent may or may not be a social parent and involved in raising his/her child; a genetic mother is no longer necessarily the gestational mother, and neither may be the child’s social mother. Even genetic parentage is no longer certain. The development of a procedure known as ooplasmic transplantation raises the possibility of a child having three genetic parents. The procedure involves using the nucleus of one woman’s egg and donated cytoplasm from the egg of another woman. Since the offspring inherit mitochondrial DNA from the donor as well as from the recipient the offspring would, in effect, have two genetic mothers and a genetic father (Barritt et al. 2001). Of course, the separation of genetic and social parenthood is not unique to the new reproductive technologies. For a variety of reasons, including adoption and divorce, many children have one or more parents to whom they are not genetically related (Charo 1992-93: 22). To a large degree, it is the potential for using sperm and ova in assisted conception procedures that has opened up new possibilities and that has forced us to rethink the meaning of ‘parent’ and ‘family’.
