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91 Tul. L. Rev. 473 (2016-2017)

handle is hein.journals/tulr91 and id is 513 raw text is: Fathers and Feminism: The Case Against Genetic Entitlement Jennifer S. Hendricks* This Article makes the case against a nascent consensus among feminist and other progressive scholars about ments parental nrghts. Most progressive proposals to arfon parentage law focus on making it easier for men to assert parental nghts, especially when they are not married to the mother of the child These proposals may seek, for example, to requir the state to make more extensive efforts to locate biological fathes, to requre pregnant women to notify men of theirimpendingpatemity or to require new mothers to give biological fathers access to infants. These proposals disregard the mothers existing parental nghts and tiansfer too much power from women to men. Although they directly affect only a particular class of legal disputes about genetic fathers and adoption, their implications stretch not only to other kinds of custody disputes but also to the lawk treatment of sex and gender differnces in reproduction more broadly The principle of genetic entitlement that underlies these proposals is male- centered and therefore an undesiable basis for the law ofreproduction and parntage. I. INTRODUCTION.....................................474 II. THE RIGHTS OF GENETIC FATHERS ......................477 A. The Supreme Court and Unwed Fathers .... .....477 B. States'Responses. .................... .....485 1. Genetic Essentialism and the Expansion of Fathers' Rights.. ........................486 2. The Denigration of Low-Income Fathers and the Quest for Adoptable Infants ... ................491 III. THE COST OF GENETIC ENTITLEMENT ....................495 A. Sex Equality (Expansively Considered) ..... .....496 1. Does Formal or Substantive Equality Require Genetic Entitlement? .............. ......497 2. Do Antisubordination Principles Require Genetic Entitlement? .............. ......501 B. Accounting for the Cost of Genetic Entitlement..........506 IV. FATHERS' RIGHTS AND FEMINIST AGENDAS .....................514 * C 2017 Jennifer S. Hendricks. Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School. For their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, many thanks to Katharine Baker, Brad Bernthal, Ayelet Blecher-Prigat, Fred Bloom, Jessica Clarke, Rick Collins, Justin Desautels-Stein, Kendra Huard Fershee, Carla Fredericks, Derek Kieman-Johnson, Sarah Krakoff, Jill Hasday, Mark Loewenstein, Maya Manian, Susan Nevelow Mart, Scott Moss, Carolyn Ramsey, Naomi Schoenbaum, Andrew Schwartz, Anna Spain, and Ahmed White. 473

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