THE UNBEATABLE INFERTILITY ARGUMENT: Maggie responds to Michael Triplett

[Sorry for the delay--this got buried in my inbox--but I think the issue is well worth revisiting. --Eve]

The heart of the problem (or disagreement) is what I consider an impoverished image of the relationship between law and marriage.

Marriage is a pre-liberal institution. It was not and cannot be created merely by law and cannot be reduced to its legal incidents. Lawyers have a hard time with this concept.

For a discussion of how and why family law became inarticulate about the relationship between marriage and children--and alternatives to a punitive/incentives view of how marriage law protects children, seem my law review article (PDF) in the Notre Dame Journal of Law and Public Policy.

To say that law works solely by directly punishing or creating disincentives (or incentives) is to misunderstand the law's role in many things, but especially marriage.

To imagine that punishing infertility or requiring couples to make fertility oaths would strengthen the capacity of marriage to protect children is also to misunderstand in just a big core way, how social institutions function. Especially one like marriage.
posted by Eve at 3:49 PM | link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home