Policy and Practice

Abstract

In this chapter, the author argues that even though creating children with anonymously donated gametes is (usually) morally wrong, people should be legally allowed to do it. This is partly because the failure to use an open donor is on a par with other permissible parental failures. But it is also because legally prohibiting anonymous gamete donation without simultaneously working to disrupt the bionormative schema of society will have negative expressive effects. This last point leads to a longer answer to the question of whether anonymous gamete donation should be prohibited: if legal prohibition should be pursued, it should only happen in the context of combating the bionormativity of society so as to minimize the expressive effects of simply outlawing anonymous gamete donation.