"What Role for Government and Private Industry Regulating ART"

The federal regulation of ART could be described as anemic at best. Ironically, a series of cases that involve high order multiple births followed almost immediately by the babies' deaths has not spawned a more robust regulatory response. This absence could be characterized as clearing the way for more aggressive, creative, and possibly coercive reproductive treatments.

Most notably absent from debates about ART are the tort law implications. Is there nothing tort law has to say about the serious medical harms that befall ART babies and children? Tort law may in fact provide a desirable, muscular framework for addressing an area largely unplumbed by legal scholars and severely under-regulated by the government. This gap could be attributed to the conventional view that familial immunity should apply only to negligently and intentionally inflicted parental harms (thus narrowing the types of cases permissible within tort law), or the mistaken view that multiple births are generally safe and isolated.

This project explores the public and private realms of ART regulation.