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I. INTRODUCTION
In numerous legal cases dealing with artificial insemination through sperm donation, courts have elevated sperm, a substance that alone cannot result in a child, to the status of a potential life.1 Unlike rulings on the control or sale of blood, bone marrow, organs, or even faces, rulings on sperm have often privileged sperm as a substance that is something more than a body part or product. Courts and commentators that make this distinction refer to sperm's "potential to produce life"2-in effect, elevating it to a status that ultimately treats sperm as equal to a life. More than half the states in the United States have no legislation to direct judges in cases dealing with sperm used in artificial insemination.3 Without legislative guidance, judges have allowed personal and religious values to influence their rulings. These judicial rulings may negate the right to contract, placing men willing to donate sperm for artificial insemination at risk of enforced financial support of numerous children, and placing women- whether single or part of a lesbian couple-at risk of losing parenting rights by granting custody rights to sperm donors.4 Clearly, such rulings introduce unintended consequences into cases involving sperm donation.5 The unpredictability of judicial interpretation in cases involving artificial insemination is particularly magnified in situations involving single women or lesbian couples; these women lack other legal protections, and they may face additional prejudice in child custody matters arising from artificial insemination procedures using donated sperm.6 Furthermore, in light of recent state referenda attempting to legislatively set the point at which life begins,7 such rulings could lead to serious limitations on the use of donated sperm for anyone other than married, infertile, heterosexual couples for which a donor "stands in" for the husband.8
Without clear policies regulating contracting for sperm, legal cases have been decided by reference to sperm's status as potential creator of life, ultimately resulting in courts treating sperm as if it were the child itself.9 However, treating sperm as life or potential life in the legal context requires an erroneous conceptual leap in both property law and science. By elevating sperm to a "higher" status of property law, courts have, in legal effect, established that life begins at ejaculation.
This Article reviews the religious contexts that...