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 by same‐sex couples: that the very desire to have children with shared genetics reflects a dubious understanding of parenthood, namely that one is only a parent if one is a genetic parent, that it is genetic relatedness that entitles anyone to the moral status of parenthood. By contrast, some commentators argue that moral commitment creates parenthood, not genetic relatedness, not ‘biologism.’ For example, Thomas Murray has said ‘Genetic parenthood is incidental to parent‐child mutuality’. (see page 32 from Murray17). From a perspective like this, same‐sex couples lack for nothing as parents, and their children lack for nothing as children simply because they might be genetically unrelated in whole or in part. From this perspective, synthetic gametes would only open up same‐sex couples to a mistaken view that presently can only affect opposite‐sex couples: that full genetic relatedness is the morally relevant threshold of parent‐child relations. Even if we grant that prospective parents can be mistaken in about the importance of genetics, it is not clear why same‐sex couples should be singled out and possibly excluded from the use of synthetic gametes in the name of protecting them from that mistake. Closing off synthetic gametes to same‐sex couples would close off an important means by which families, in general, consolidate and express their identities. If the treatment of genetic relatedness as a desideratum in children is tolerated in opposite‐sex couples, it is unclear why it should not be tolerated across the spectrum of adults looking to have children in the context of their chosen relationships. In any case, same‐sex couples having children via synthetic gametes would represent only a miniscule fraction of the total number of parents looking to have children with their shared genetics. To the extent that ‘biologism’ is a moral problem, its solution will not be meaningfully advanced by closing off synthetic gametes to gay and lesbian couples. Treating the use of synthetic gametes by gay and lesbian couples as morally suspect would, moreover, leave those couples vulnerable to objections against their use of other ARTs, objections that synthetic gametes silence. In this sense, invoking worries about biologism against gay and lesbian couples seems entirely out of proportion to the nature of the supposed problem, which is hardly remediable by focus on those couples alone.
Conclusions
In some quarters of bioethics, homosexual men and women do not enjoy a strong presumption of equality in regard to social goods and relationships. Some commentators presuppose this inequality in the questions they raise about the prospect of synthetic gametes and the children of same‐sex couples, questions that imply burdens of proof that do not apply to others. Other commentators express this view directly in claims that gay and lesbian parenthood compromises the rights and welfare of children, so much so that gay men and lesbians should refrain from having children altogether (according to the more stringent arguments) or should avoid using certain methods to have children (according to the less stringent arguments).
To be fair, some commentators have expressed strong support for the use of synthetic gametes as a way for same‐sex couples to have children with shared genetics. Testa and Harris have defended this use on four main fronts: (1) that the idea of ‘nature’ cannot sustain an argument against it because the ‘whole practice of medicine is a comprehensive attempt to frustrate the course of nature’, (2) that claims that children are harmed by coming into existence this way cannot be sustained because existence is preferable to non‐existence in terms of the value of children’s lives to themselves, (3) that ARTs are currently available to homosexual men and women in a way that would make it idiosyncratic to forbid synthetic gametes and (4) that, in any case, the evidence is lacking that children of gay and lesbian parents fare worse than the children of others.18 Not only do they criticise objections to the use of synthetic gametes as unfounded,
