Family-Building in the Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART) Era

Jen is a 40-year-old single women who has for many years dreamed of having biological children of her own. To her knowledge, there are no medical obstacles preventing her from conceiving and carrying a baby to term. Her only impediment is that she does not have a spouse/partner with whom to participant in the process. Moreover, she has no intentions of getting married in the foreseeable future. She decides to meet with a local reproductive endocrinologist (RE) to pursue donor insemination. After four attempts, Jen is successful in becoming pregnant and soon learns that she will be giving birth to a boy.

1. What are the key considerations in conceiving a child under these circumstances?

2. What are the key considerations in parenting a child conceived in this manner?

3. What does the scholarly literature have to say about single parenting under these circumstances?

4. What does the scholarly literature have to say about parenting children conceived via ART?

*** Your responses should draw from the background reading materials for this module as well as additional scholarly sources identified in the course of your research (as opposed to your personal opinion). The essay needs to be approx 1-2 page.

Required readings:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/6/1655.long
http://adopting.adoption.com/child/what-is-adoption.html
http://www.resolve.org/family-building-options/surrogacy.html
http://www.resolve.org/family-building-options/donor-options/using-donor-egg.html