I googled "same-sex conception" and found lots of my own posts on other blogs, where I have tried to introduce the bloggers to issue of same-sex conception, usually to no avail. These arguments are all pretty similar, you might want to read some of them to see how they usually end up with the other person "bowing out".
Balkinization (and an old one here)
Blue Mass Group (and here and here)
Alas, A Blog
Creative Destruction (and here and here)
Marriage Debate (Maggie has refused to talk about same-sex conception)
Greater Boston Blog
Althouse Blog (and her only response here)
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2 comments:
John,
Just so you know folks are thinking about you...even if you're too daffy to talk to: At least it looks like this meets the "egg and sperm" criterion.
Hi Robert. I think we ould need to define "egg" and "sperm" as "the gamete of a woman" and "the gamete of a man", respectively, rather than as "a big round gamete" and "a squiggly-tailed gamete". The "a" is important, the child has to be from "a" man and "a" woman, meaning specific actual people. A gamete has to have a person that would be reproduced by it, and if it doesn't reproduce that person because it has been modified, then it isn't a person's gamete, it is a manufactured product, not a sperm or an egg at all.
So, a cow egg, even if it has been renucleated with the nucleus of a human being, is not the gamete of a woman, it is a renucleated cow egg still containing 1% cow mitochondrial DNA, and not containing the woman's mitochondrial DNA. It is not the delivery vessel of the genes that counts, it is the genes themselves, all of them, including the mitochondrial DNA. If there were some way to get all the genes of a woman into some sort of egg casing that worked like an egg, and there was no other difference between that resulting product and what her natural gamete would be, then that might qualify as a woman's gamete. But if there is some way to tell them apart, or rather some possibility that they could be differentiated somehow, then they can't be considered a person's gamete. Only if they actually are a person's gamete could they be considered a person's gamete, and therefore, an egg or a sperm.
The law is intended to preserve natural conception, not just make it a challenge to circumvent the law so as to begin human design and manufacture.
Also, stem cell research is not intended to create children, so the egg and sperm law itself would not stop labs from using cow eggs and human dna for whatever they felt like. I do think such research is unethical because it harms animals and wastes money and
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