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For example: > Artificial insemination by donor (AID), or a woman being inseminated by a donor's sperm, has been widely practiced since the 1960s and has led to about 250,000 births in the U.S. alone, but the law is only gradually accepting it. A New York court ruled in 1963 that a child born by AID was illegitimate even if the mother's husband consented; another New York court ruled the opposite a decade later. Now 25 states, including New York, have statutes governing AID babies, recognizing them as the legitimate children of mother and her husband (providing the husband has consented to the procedure). Elsewhere, all kinds of consequences remain unsettled, however. After a divorce, can a sterile husband deny financial responsibility for an AID baby? Conversely, can such a husband be denied visitation rights?
> In-vitro fertilization (IVF) now accounts for about 100 babies in the U.S., but there are virtually no new laws to deal with this method of conception. In the wake of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, however, many states passed laws forbidding or limiting "experimentation" with fetuses. Of the 25 such state laws, eleven specifically apply to embryos; doctors in some of these states fear that they might be prosecuted for carrying out the IVF, particularly if the technique fails, as it does about four times out of five. And six states have laws that seem to forbid freezing an embryo, on the ground that this would constitute illegal experimentation.
> Surrogate mothers have been bearing other people's children since the late 1970s, and the number of such births in the U.S. so far totals at least 100, perhaps 150, but the law here is even more ambiguous. No state has a statute specifically dealing with surrogates, but about a dozen have been considering measures ranging from permission to an outright ban. At least 24 states have old laws generally forbidding payment to a woman who gives up a child for adoption, as surrogate mother is expected to do. Moreover, private contracts between prospective parents and surrogate mothers may not be legally binding. Thus, if the surrogate refuses to give up the baby, or if the would-be parents refuse to accept it, the law offers no certain solution to the dispute.
These are only the basic complexities; the refinements are myriad. If a married couple can use a donor to help create a baby, for example, should a single woman who wants a child be allowed the same right? What about a lesbian, or a transexual or a homosexual male couple? If a surrogate mother contracts to bear another couple's child, does she have the right to smoke and drink in defiance of their wishes? Does she have the right to an abortion? And what of the baby born through such methods: Does it have a right to know its biological parents? Or even a right to inherit their property?