without qualification on opposite‐sex couples, subject only to the constraints of safety and efficacy of the intervention in question.
Protecting Children from Some Possible Parents
As against commentators whose background assumptions throw gay and lesbian parenthood into question, some commentators explicitly reject the idea that same‐sex couples should be parents, at least not in any planned or socially approved way. Sometimes these objections focus on the nature of same‐sex couples as parents; other times the objections focus on the way in which same‐sex couples are able to have children.
As part of her objections to legalising same‐sex marriage, Margaret Somerville has argued that giving the right to marry and to found a family ‘to same‐sex couples necessarily negates the rights of all (sic) children with respect to their biological origins and families, not just those born into same‐sex marriage’.10 She argues that same‐sex marriage violates a sexual ecology important to the welfare of children, and undermines a social symbolism essential in the transmission of life. In general, then, society should not endorse gay and lesbian couples having children through, for example, legal recognition of same‐sex marriage. Somerville wants society to endorse law and policies that enable children to be children of a woman whom they know as their mother and of a man whom they know as their father, as far as this effect is practically possible. This is not the entirety of her position, though, since she also argues that ‘children have a right to be conceived from untampered‐with biological origins, a right to be conceived from a natural sperm from one identified, living, adult man and a natural ovum from one identified, living, adult woman. Society should not be complicit in, that is, should not approve or fund any procedure for the creation of a child, unless the procedure is consistent with the child’s right to a natural biological heritage’.11 This position does not rule out all assisted reproduction, but it would put limits on it, including the use of synthetic gametes by same‐sex couples among others.
In one important way, however, synthetic gametes undo Somerville’s objections to same‐sex couples as parents of children. Relying on synthetic gametes, two men could serve as the genetic parents of a child, one as the source of sperm and the other as the source of ova. A child conceived this way could thus have both genetic parents available to him or her while growing up. Nothing about this circumstance would prevent a child from understanding one parent as its genetic mother and the other as its genetic father, even though both parents are otherwise male. Synthetic gametes give same‐sex couples pretty much everything Somerville expects in terms of identifiable, genetic parents who presumptively have as much respect for the transmission of life as anyone else. If what Somerville wants is, however, that every child have available a genetic mother who identifies as a woman and a genetic father who identifies as a man, then synthetic gametes will not satisfy her, but even so, synthetic gametes raise the question of why fatherhood and motherhood must be understood in terms of genetics alone. As mentioned, Somerville defends a second front against parenting by same‐sex couples: it is objectionable insofar as it involves any kind of modification of gametes. Synthetic gametes are morally wrong on their face, on this account, as much as for homosexual men and women as for anyone else. Somerville asserts the right of children to be conceived only under certain conditions, but since the children cannot have rights before they do – namely before they exist – the merit of this argument turns on the effects of the modifications in question. Somerville offers no evidence that children of gay and lesbian parents are materially harmed by the conditions of their conception and parentage, over and above being violated in their alleged rights. So long as the welfare of children does not suffer meaningful harm as demonstrated by the social sciences, and I submit that they do not,12 it is, therefore, hard to see why parenthood by gay men and lesbians should be ruled out in general, or as an effect of synthetic gametes in particular.
Other commentators have also raised variations on the theme of harm that homosexual parents might inflict on their children. Abby Lippman and Stuart A. Newman worry that same‐sex couples will see embryos produced with their synthetic and naturally produced gametes as ‘assemblages’ and feel less responsibility toward them.13 Giuseppe Testa and John Harris correctly reply to this claim by noting that same‐sex couples who expend the time and effort to have children with shared genetics will likely exhibit a strong sense of responsibility and attachment toward the embryos and children in question.14 Given the moral and social history of suspicion toward homosexuality in general, it is perhaps easy to believe that gay and lesbian parents might have diminished capacities as parents, but the actual evidence shows no such effect, and there is no reason to assume a novel means of conception will change matters.12
David Velleman has put some de facto obstacles in the way of gay men and lesbians having children through ARTs. He raises objections to the use of anonymous donor gametes and embryos, saying that children, in general, should not be separated from their biological parents.15 He holds that access to parents and other relatives, and knowledge about their lives, is a necessary condition of children’s development and fulfilment. On this view, one’s genetic relatives function as experiments of what one can do in life with genetics like one’s own. Without that knowledge, children necessarily suffer a deficit in self‐knowledge that is essential to self‐formation. It is better, then, that children not be dissociated from their genetic parents and relatives so far as practical. Not all ARTs go forward with anonymous gametes and embryos, of course, but some do, and Velleman’s approach raises a bar against any and all parentage by gay men and lesbians that relies on those treatments.
By contrast with anonymous gamete donation, synthetic gametes would give children of same‐sex couples what Velleman wants from parental and familial relationships in general. Barring the loss of their parents through death or divorce, children conceived with the natural and synthetic gametes of a gay couple would have available to them genetic relatives on Partner A’s side, namely grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other relatives. The children would also have available to them the same gamut of genetic relatives for Partner B. Neither partner, in this case, would function as a genetically identified or socially identified female. Yet, both the parents and their relatives would be available, at least in principle, to the child in providing examples of how to live and how the child might put his or her own similar genetic endowment to work in making choices in life. The same outcome holds for a child of a lesbian couple, conceived with natural and synthetic gametes.
Velleman might try and argue that having two fathers (or two mothers) amounts to a deprivation visited upon the children, but this argument will not succeed because his view does not require any specific content to the lives of genetic relatives, only that their lives and strivings be available to the children as kinds of experimental results of living with a similar genetic endowment. A man who uses ova synthesised from his body to have children is no less an instructional blueprint for living than someone living as a woman who uses her natural ova to have children. In the end, Velleman’s arguments about access to genetic parents and relatives lend support to the idea of same‐sex couples turning to synthetic gametes to have children. At the very least, the concern about the supposed ill effects of anonymous gamete donation could be bypassed and rendered moot.
Synthetic gametes used by a same‐sex couple to produce children also answer a complaint that Daniel Callahan lodges against gamete donation, especially anonymous gamete donation. Callahan argues that people have responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their autonomous choices.16 People should not, therefore, take steps to become parents under conditions that disavow all responsibility for the children born with their gametes. Anonymous donation especially, he thinks, sets aside a basic meaning of moral responsibility for the welfare of children conceived with their gametes. Although Callahan does not mention it, embryo donors should have the same presumptive responsibility too. Same‐sex couples who turned to their own natural and synthetic gametes to have children would have no need for donor gametes or embryos, and would, therefore, bypass this entire line of objection; they would not, that is, be complicit in the (alleged) lapses of parental, responsibility because their children involve no parents external to their relationship.
I will mention one last possible objection to the use of synthetic gametes