Reproductive Rights Law

Reproductive Rights Law

In the area of reproductive rights, two main legal issues arise.

The first legal issue arises when an individual or couple may be unable to have a child on their own. Or a same-sex couple or a single parent may want to have child. There are a number of methods for dealing with this problem:

• Artificial insemination: A man donates his sperm to a woman, and the sperm is used to fertilize the woman's eggs. The fertilization occurs without sexual contact between the man and woman. The woman may or may not know the man who donates the sperm.
  
• In vitro fertilization: A woman's eggs are harvested and fertilized with sperm. The resulting embryo is then implanted either in her or in another woman.
  
• Surrogacy: A couple contracts with a woman who agrees to carry a child for them. The woman is either artificially inseminated with the man's sperm, or an already fertilized embryo is implanted in the woman.

As many of these methods are still developing, there are few laws governing this area. What law that does exist is constantly evolving.

The second issue arises when a woman has an unwanted pregnancy and wants to terminate the pregnancy. Though highly controversial, abortion is legal under certain circumstances.