Bioethics

New Paper on Sperm Donor Anonymity and Mandatory Paternal Testing for Coital Sex

I have a new peer-commentary paper in the American Journal of Bioethics, entitled “Of Modest Proposals and Non-Identity: A Comment on the Right to Know Your Genetic Parents.”  This is a response to An Ravelingien and Guido Pennings’s very interesting article “The Right to Know Your Genetic Parents: From Open-Identity Gamete Donation to Routine Paternity…

I have a new peer-commentary paper in the American Journal of Bioethics, entitled “Of Modest Proposals and Non-Identity: A Comment on the Right to Know Your Genetic Parents.”  This is a response to An Ravelingien and Guido Pennings’s very interesting article “The Right to Know Your Genetic Parents: From Open-Identity Gamete Donation to Routine Paternity Testing” in the same journal, wherein they argue that the same arguments underlying mandatory sperm donor identification should support a regime of mandatory routine paternity testing to deal with the phenomenon of misattributed paternity.

My new piece is behind a pay-wall, but if you’d like to read it shoot me an email as I have a limited number of “free passes” from the publisher. I have also written about these issues in greater depth in this article in the Georgetown Law Journal which is available for free download. Finally, I hope to soon blog about a new paper forthcoming in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies and co-authored with Travis Coan, where we use experimental methods to examine whether reluctance to become a sperm ‘donor’ where identification is required can be overcome with increased payments to potential ‘donors’.