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Full-Text Articles in Law

Price And Pretense In The Baby Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec Jan 2009

Price And Pretense In The Baby Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Kimberly D. Krawiec

Throughout the world, baby selling is formally prohibited. And throughout the world babies are bought and sold each day. As demonstrated in this Essay, the legal baby trade is a global market in which prospective parents pay, scores of intermediaries profit, and the demand for children is clearly differentiated by age, race, special needs, and other consumer preferences, with prices ranging from zero to over one hundred thousand dollars. Yet legal regimes and policymakers around the world pretend that the baby market does not exist, most notably through prohibitions against “baby selling” – typically defined as a prohibition against the …


Why We Should Ignore The "Octomom", Kimberly D. Krawiec Jan 2009

Why We Should Ignore The "Octomom", Kimberly D. Krawiec

Kimberly D. Krawiec

Thanks to the “Octomom” – a single, low-income, California mother of six, who recently gave birth to octuplets conceived through IVF -- the American public this year turned its attention to assisted reproductive technology. In this essay, I take issue with one set of proposals to arise from the controversy: embryo-transfer limits, variations on which have been proposed in Georgia, Missouri, and, most recently, by Naomi Cahn and Jennifer Collins. Examining national and international multiple-birth rates, as well as similar limits in other countries, I argue that government mandated embryo-transfer limits would produce fewer benefits and higher costs in the …


Sunny Samaritans & Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing In The Gamete Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec Jan 2009

Sunny Samaritans & Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing In The Gamete Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Kimberly D. Krawiec

This Article considers the market structure of the human egg (or “oocyte”) donation business, particularly the presence of anti-competitive behavior by the fertility industry, including horizontal price-fixing of the type long considered per se illegal in other industries. The Article explores why this attempted collusion has failed to generate the same public and regulatory concern prompted by similar behavior in other industries, arguing that the persistent dialogue of gift-giving and altruistic donation obscures both the highly commercial nature of egg “donation” and the benefits to the fertility industry of price control over a necessary input into many fertility services – …