The emerging phenomenon of genetic paternity testing shows how good
science and useful social reform can run off the rails. Genetic
paternity testing enables us to sort out, in a transparent and decisive
way, the age-old but traditionally never-quite-answerable question of
whether a child is genetically related to the husband of the
child's mother. Given the impossibility of settling this question
for certain, British and American law has long held that a biological
relationship must almost always be assumed to exist. According to what
is known as the “marital presumption” or “presumption
of legitimacy,” a child born to a woman within a marital
relationship is assumed to be the biological child of the woman's
husband unless he was absent, impotent, or sterile. In other words, if
paternity was not a physical impossibility for the husband, there was a
nearly irrebuttable presumption that he was the father of the
child. The husband was locked into the role of
fatherhood.I am grateful to the
participants of Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family, a research
project run conjointly by The Hastings Center and the Institute for
Bioethics, Health Policy, and Law at the University of Louisville
School of Medicine. Discussions held in the course of this project have
influenced this paper in various ways. I am especially grateful to Mary
Anderlik for detailed comments. An earlier version of this paper was
presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Society of
Bioethics and Humanities and at a colloquium at Oxford University on
Genetic Technologies and the Family, and the paper has benefited from
comments offered on each of those occasions. Funding for Genetic Ties
and the Future of the Family is provided by the National Institutes of
Health (grant #HG02485).