Why Donor Insemination Requires Developments in Family Law: The Need for New Definitions of Parenthood

This book examines the legal framework and practices surrounding licensed donor insemination in Britain at the end of the twentieth-century, together with a detailed consideration of the legislative and policy based changes in the early years of the twenty-first century. Drawing on interviews with single women, lesbian couples and heterosexual couples, this analysis focuses on the practical effects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 for women and men who had sought access to and used this procedure. This qualitative study explores the complexities and significance of the legal construction of parenthood and ‘the family’, together with the (re)configurations of biogenetic ties in the context of families with children conceived through donor insemination. ‘The family’ is, and remains, a powerful normalising presence negotiated by subjects seeking to make sense of ‘assisted’ kinship. Nevertheless, as this study shows, the multiple ways of being or doing ‘the family’ suggests it does not embody an essential truth.