Science and Family in the Great Embryo Debate

Abstract

The public debate following the Warnock Report has furnished the interpretative context in which embryo research and the technology of assisted reproduction have begun to be institutionalised in Britain. Social scientists have been quick to examine this debate and to assess how far it has fostered changes in the established patterns of, and ideals of, kinship and family relationships. In the present study documentary evidence is used to argue that the central theme of the public debate was not so much the new forms of social parenthood made possible by assisted reproduction, on which analysts have tended to concentrate, as the supposed threat to the continuation of ordinary family life posed by what many people saw as the creation of real, living persons outside the kinship system. Widespread controversy over this issue was generated by the existence of long-standing and contrasting definitions of family membership. Nevertheless, all the major groupings involved in the controversy justified their views and their practical proposals by linking them to the maintenance of the conventional, small scale, heterosexual family unit. Thus the overall effect of the public debate has not been to promote widespread consideration of new kinship patterns, but to ensure that the research and technology of assisted reproduction have been accepted and bureaucratically organised as social practices consonant with a conservative ideal of normal family life.