ABSTRACT
The status of the contract figured in Johnsonv. Calvert as well, but the principal issue was framed as the question of gestation versus genetics. Johnson's lawyers argued the uniqueness of childbearing and the fact that from time immemorial the woman who bears a child has been regarded as the mother of that child. In developing intentionality as the test for motherhood, the majority opinion, written by Justice Edward Panelli, cited for support a series of three recent commentaries dealing with the determination of parentage in the context of surrogacy arrangements. The line of thought that the majority employed had thus been developing for some years in the law journals in response to the dispersal of biological roles that results from advances in reproductive technology and the consequent abstraction of the notion of biological conception. As even a cursory invocation of the representation of authorship as analogous to procreation suggests, authorship is a gendered category.
