Law Commons^™

Using Genes To Define Motherhood - The California Solution, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Sometimes (although not often) new forms of medical technology raise unique legal and social-policy issues that require new laws. In vitro fertilization, followed by the transfer of the embryo to a woman who did not contribute the ovum, is such a technique, because when the child's gestational mother is not the child's genetic mother, society must decide which is the child's legal mother. A California Court of Appeal, the first appellate court anywhere in the world to rule on this issue, decided in late 1991 that genes determine motherhood.