From Volume 84, Number 1 (November 2010)
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Responding to Courtney G. Joslin, Protecting Children (?): Marriage, Gender, and Assisted Reproductive Technology, 83 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1177 (2010).
In her article, Courtney G. Joslin persuasively argues that the children born via assisted reproductive technology (“ART”) are placed at a serious financial disadvantage under the law. Joslin is right to point out that parentage provisions that apply only to children born to heterosexual married couples disadvantage nonmarital children of ART financially as well as emotionally and developmentally. Joslin’s solution is to propose extending to such children what she terms the “consent = legal parent” rule, meaning that “any individual, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or marital status, who consents to a woman’s insemination with the intent to be a parent is a legal parent of the resulting child.” Such a rule removes a period of time during which a child is unprotected by the lack of legal recognition of a parent. This response identifies an ambiguity in and proposes a clarification of Joslin’s consent = legal parent rule with regard to conception, and with regard to consent during the period after conception and before birth.
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