A Different Division

This is a follow up on those earlier posts on dividing ART.  You can find those here and here.

I’ve been thinking about the second split I proposed–the high-tech ART (most if not all using IVF) on one side and the low-tech or no-tech assisted insemination and sexual intercourse on the other.   The thing about the first category that I mentioned was that it already includes a certain amount of bureaucratic entanglement (primarily via the medical establishment) and thus, you could perhaps justify treating it differently

But there’s a flaw in this reasoning, or at least, a little niggling problem.   While donor insemination can be quite low tech–done at home with a turkey baster or some equivalent–it can also be (and often is) embedded in medical/legal bureaucracy.   This being the case, the line I was suggesting isn’t really terribly well-drawn, given the rationale offered.  What I mean is that the line I suggested doesn’t actually fit the rationale terribly well.

This has lead me to consider a different line–one which is actually drawn exactly where the rationale suggests it ought to be drawn.  On the one hand you would have the forms of (or instances of?)  conception that are intensively engaged with the medical establishment.  On the other you could have the forms of (or instances of?) conception that are essentially DIY.    Remember, I’m not saying what the different rules would be, just that this might be a way to have two distinct (and purposeful) sets of rules.  

There are two things about this that (at least at first blush) seem interesting to me.  First, in all instances on one side of the line (the medically complicated one) there would be professional medical services.  So for these instances you could have specialized rules and require that involved service providers ensure understanding of whatever legal rule were in place or ensure that counseling was provided or whatever you liked.  There might be a decent chance you could ensure all parties arrived at the same understanding and so minimize subsequent disagreements, for example.  (This is not a cure all.   Medical service providers might not be great explaining legal consequences and, given the welter of state law approaches, this are quite complicated.)

The second thing is that on the DIY side you could group both home insemination (the turkey baster) and  “amicable sexual intercourse” –that would be sex with a man intending to be a donor.   These two things are already treated the same way in states where all donors are fathers just as men who have sex are fathers.  But you could also lump the two together in a different way–essentially grouping assisted insemination by sex along with the turkey baster on the donor is not father side of the line.

I don’t feel I’ve put this very clearly, probably because it isn’t all that clear to me yet.  But using this sort of dividing line does seem to me to open some possibilities.   If I can get it a bit more clear in my own mine, I’ll write more about it soon.