Conclusion

We’re used to blaming randomness or cosmic injustice when we don’t get the child we want, or when we get the one we don’t. Now cutting-edge interventions promise to deliver us from the vagaries of natural conception and the genetic lottery: Birth control and abortion prevent parenthood; gamete donation and IVF make procreation possible; and prenatal testing can detect debilitating offspring diseases even before pregnancy. These undertakings are still riddled with uncertainty—sometimes things just don’t work out; but that’s no reason to turn a blind eye when bad behavior is at fault. The American legal system protects against professional negligence in other inherently risky activities, from riding in a car to preparing a meal. Courts lay off when fate or accidents are responsible—when deer pop out onto dark roads, or homemade chicken is undercooked. But the law doesn’t hesitate to respond when auto crashes are traced to defective brakes, or food poisoning to unsanitary farming. Reproductive medicine and technology shouldn’t be any different—the stakes are high, and important interests hang in the balance. Just because would-be parents are accustomed to disappointment—because many of us have resigned ourselves to spontaneous miscarriage, or unplanned pregnancy, or an unexpected roll of the genetic dice—doesn’t make those outcomes any less serious, or misconduct that produces them any less worthy of recovery. Reproductive negligence today goes undeterred, unreported, and unredressed—the architecture of rights for procreation deprived, imposed, and confounded equips us to rethink and resolve the controversies that lie ahead.