Would You Make It to the Future? Teaching Race in an Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law Classroom

• Author: Sonia M. Gipson Rankin
• Pages: 1-30

1

Would You Make It to the Future?

Teaching Race in an Assisted

Reproductive Technologies and the Law

Classroom

SONIA M. GIPSON RANKIN*

Introduction

Would you make it to the future? For the last ve years, I have started

my Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) lecture in Family Law

with this question. Students take the query seriously. They ponder their

lived experiences such as home training, medical history, education,

nancial well-being, personality traits, work ethic, and social graces when

determining if they would have the “model DNA” someone might select in

a future society. The good-natured jokes about being nearsighted, having

a pitiful jump shot, and wearing Invisalign turn reective when someone

raises the question: Would someone in the future select my race?

* Associate Professor of Law, University of New Mexico School of Law. Professor Gipson

Rankin received her J.D. in 2002 from the University of Illinois College of Law; and a B.S. in

computer science in 1998 from Morgan State University. Professor Gipson Rankin’s scholarship

and activism combine her computer science background with her passion for racial justice. She

offers these words: I would like to thank my husband, Eric Rankin, for his support. Thank you to

my colleagues, Maryam Ahranjani, Charles Becknell Jr., Camille Carey, David Gipson, Vinay

Harpalani, Jamal Martin, Nathalie Martin, Alfred Mathewson, and Naomi Rankin, for their

careful review, insight, and encouragement in developing this course and my paper. I thank the

AALS Family and Juvenile Law Section and editors of the Family Law Quarterly, Jessica Dixon

Weaver and Lisa Grumet, for their support. I am grateful to Fatin Assaf and my research assistant,

Zachary Grant, for their sharp insight. This paper is in honor of my children, Naomi, Sarai, and

Isaac, and is dedicated to the memory of my third baby, “French Fry,” and my niece, Zinnia. You

are loved and we will see you again.

Published in Family Law Quarterly, Volume 56, Number 1, 2022. © 2022 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may

not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

2 Family Law Quarterly, Volume 56, Number 1

Eight million children worldwide have been born via ART.

1

In 2019,

out of every 100 babies born in the United States, two were created

through assisted conception.2 And by some estimates, this percentage is

expected to drastically increase in the next two decades, with scientists

and epidemiologists predicting that by 2040, most babies will be born

using assisted reproductive technology.3 The study of ART introduces

students to the essentials in science, medicine, law, and ethics that form

the law of reproductive technologies. With innovations in germline genetic

technologies adding new opportunities for disease prevention, the impact

and import of the eld cannot be overstated. Courts will continue to

address complicated claims regarding parental rights and responsibilities

in an era where reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and

surrogacy distribute conception, gestation, and parenthood among a variety

of participants, with decidedly racial implications. Family law, which may

1. Marte Myhre Reigstad & Ritsa Storeng, Development of In Vitro Fertilization, a Very

Important Part of Human Reproductive Medicine, in the Last 40 Years, 5 i

nt

’

l

J. W

omen

’

s

H

ealtH

& W

ellness

, no. 1, 2019, at 1, https://www.clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijwhw/

international-journal-of-womens-health-and-wellness-ijwhw-5-089.php?jid=ijwhw.

2. State-Specic Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance, CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/

art/state-specic-surveillance/index.html (last visited Jan. 31, 2022).

3. Some researchers boldly predict that by 2040, embryo selection will replace sex as

the way most people conceive children, whether because of choice or environmental factors.

See, e.g., Jamie Metzl, By the Year 2040, Embryo Selection Could Replace Sex as the Way

Most of Us Make Babies, Q

uartz

(May 6, 2016), https://qz.com/677335/by-the-year-2040-

embryo-selection-will-replace-sex-as-the-way-most-of-us-make-babies/. See generally Zoë

Corbyn, Shanna Swan: “Most Couples May Have to Use Assisted Reproduction by 2045,”

G

uarDian

(Mar. 28, 2021, 5:00 PM), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/28/shanna-

swan-fertility-reproduction-count-down. Dr. Shanna Swan, epidemiologist and professor of

environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, sees

an even more pressing reason for awareness related to fertility; as she argues, the environment

is fundamentally changing reproduction in people. See sHanna sWan, Count DoWn: HoW our

m

oDern

W

orlD

i

s

t

HreateninG

s

perm

C

ounts

, a

lterinG

m

ale

anD

F

emale

r

eproDuCtive

Development, anD imperilinG tHe Future oF tHe Human raCe (Simon & Schuster 2022).

That said, not everyone is convinced. See David Sable, Babies Without Sex in 2040? Say It

Ain’t So!, F

orbes

(May 6, 2016, 9:40 AM), https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsable/2016/05/06/

babies-without-sex-in-2040-say-it-aint-so/?sh=3d243b942029.

Published in Family Law Quarterly, Volume 56, Number 1, 2022. © 2022 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may

not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.