title: Sex before the State: Civic Sex, Reproductive Innovations, and Gendered Parental Identity.
abstract: Certain changes in the way that states classify people by sex as well as certain reproductive innovations undercut the rationale for state identification of people as male or female in signifying gendered parental relationships to children. At present, people known to the state as men may be genetic mothers to their children; people known to the state as women may be genetic fathers to their children. Synthetic gametes would make it possible for transgender men to be genetically related to children as fathers and transgender women to be genetically related to children as mothers, even if they have otherwise relied on naturally-occurring gametes to be genetic mothers and genetic fathers of children respectively. Synthetic gametes would presumably make it possible for any person to be the genetic father or genetic mother of children, even in a mix-and-match way. Other reproductive innovations will also undercut existing expectations of gendered parental identity. Uterus transplants would uncouple the maternal function of gestation from women, allowing men to share in maternity that way. Extracorporeal gestation ((ExCG)-gestation outside anyone's body-would also undercut the until-now absolute connection between female sex and maternity. In kind, effects such as these-undoing conventionally gendered parenthood-undercut the state's interest in knowing whether parents are male or female in relation to a given child, as against knowing simply whether someone stands in a parental relationship to that child, as a matter of rights and duties.
authors.forename: Timothy F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Murphy
mesh_terms: D005191:Family Characteristics; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D005854:Germ Cells; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents; D012099:Reproductive Techniques; D058615:Synthetic Biology; D063106:Transgender Persons; D014189:Transsexualism / Q000235:genetics; D014599:Uterus / Q000637:transplantation
keywords: gender; parental identity; parenthood; synthetic gametes