REBIOLOGIZATION IN FAMILIES BY CHOICE? LESBOMATERNITY AND USE OF REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

This article looks at an apparently paradoxical trend in chosen families: a new focus on biology. In contrast to the previously prevailing view of biological and genetic ties as secondary or even irrelevant to the act of will involved in choosing who to form a family with or who to love, the growing use of assisted reproduction technologies in the forming of same-sex parent families seems to evidence a current tendency toward revaluing those aspects. As more and more same-sex couples resort to such methods (including artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, implanting an embryo fertilized with eggs from one's partner, and surrogate pregnancies), in choosing to use their own biological material over other ways of becoming parents they would appear to be attributing a central importance to genetic ties in the definition of family. Such a perspective would mean that same-sex parent families were not so much an alternative to biological families as an imitation of them. This article argues instead that assisted reproductive technologies are not so much chosen out of a need to provide genetic ties on which to base filiation and are rather resorted to for a number of different reasons, including, among others, the easier access to or greater availability of such methods.