First Comes Marriage
Jennifer Roback Morse on Why No One Has a Right to a Child
In Vista, California, an infertility clinic with a policy of artificially inseminating only married women is being sued by a lesbian woman for sexual orientation discrimination. In Indiana, a law was introduced and quickly withdrawn that would have confined the use of artificial reproductive technologies to married couples.
The superficial appeal of the lesbian’s case is that having a baby is a right, from which no one can be excluded, no matter what their marital status. The ill-fated Indiana law was shot down because its opponents appealed to the same intuitive sense, widely felt by Americans, that people have a right to have a baby.
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Jennifer Roback Morse is the author of the recently published Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World and Love & Economics, both published by Spence Publishing. A research fellow at the Acton Institute, she is also founder of Your Coach for the Culture Wars, a business helping organizations take a stand in the culture wars. She can be contacted through her website: www.jennifer-roback-morse.com.
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more from the online archives
32.2—March/April 2019
on Properly Rendering Things to Caesar & to God by Peter J. Leithart
33.3—May/June 2020
Bach's Cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbesteZeit (God's time is the very best time) by Ken Myers
36.1—Jan/Feb 2023
A History of the Protestant Debate over Contraception by James A. Altena
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