Reproduction and Regret

What is the legal significance of regret following a reproductive decision or outcome? In Gonzales v. Carhart, a Supreme Court majority offered one answer to this question, famously invoking the regret of some women for their past abortions as a reason to uphold a federal law criminalizing a particular abortion procedure. But Gonzales is not the first case to confront what I call “reproduction and regret,” and the Court’s approach in Gonzales ignores the contrasting judicial responses from these other cases. This Article supplies the missing analysis—contextualizing Gonzales’s treatment of reproduction and regret by identifying and developing five additional models. These additional models come from disputes about adoption surrenders, the performance of surrogacy arrangements, support obligations arising from children born of unplanned pregnancies, the use of previously frozen embryos, and the status of sperm donors. Each model depicts a different understanding of reproduction and regret, supplementing Gonzales and the ensuing commentary on that case with a more expansive inquiry into the work courts have used regret to perform and the unarticulated assumptions or normative commitments that might explain the doctrinal and rhetorical inconsistencies. This wider lens illuminates regret’s regulatory function across the range of cases. This Article’s examination of regret as a regulatory tool in turn has three analytical payoffs. First, it disrupts Gonzales’s depiction of regret as a natural and self-generated emotion, clarifying the role of the state in producing regret. Second, it reinforces the critiques of Gonzales’s use of maternal stereotypes † Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law. This project benefited enormously from the comments of Adrienne Davis, Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, Emily Hughes, Melissa Murray, and Laura Rosenbury, who generously reviewed successive drafts. I also appreciate the contributions from participants in Washington University School of Law’s Incubator Workshop series, its Faculty Seminar series, the University of Missouri School of Law’s Colloquium series, the “New ‘Illegitimacy’” conference at Washington College of Law at American University, and the 2011 meeting of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health in Berlin. Finally, for research assistance I thank Elizabeth Dillon, Alexis Farris, Elizabeth McDonald, and Caitlin McGarr (all now graduates of Washington University School of Law); for insights from other disciplines I thank Susan Stiritz and Ian MacMullen; and for support I thank Washington University’s John S. Lehmann Research Professorship, Washington University School of Law’s summer stipend program, and Dean Kent Syverud. 256 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 23:2 with a more robust account of gender that not only includes stereotypes of fatherhood but also exposes a specific link among regret, heterosexual intercourse, and unexamined beliefs about sexual pleasure. Finally, it highlights deep policy rifts in family law, a field that continues to prioritize the regulation of sex in particular, despite rhetoric to the contrary. The importance of the jurisprudence of reproduction and regret transcends the particular disputes that exemplify it. As a general matter, contemporary family law celebrates what the Supreme Court has called “the private realm of family life” and scholars have called “the republic of choice.” This vision not only puts a premium on individual decisionmaking; it also complicates the question of what the legal significance of an actor’s own second thoughts about such decisions should be. An analysis of reproduction and regret thus offers a window into family law’s foundational values and contests writ large, providing insights into the principles, themes, and clashes dominating family law today. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 257 I. GONZALES’S INVITATION ............................................................................. 261 A. The Evidentiary Basis: Sandra Cano’s Brief ............................... 263 B. The Meaning of “Regret” ............................................................. 265 C. Capturing Autonomy and Gender Equality: Regret as Reproach ...................................................................................... 268 II. REPRODUCTION AND REGRET BEYOND GONZALES .................................... 272 A. Surrenders of Infants for Adoption: Regret as Redemption ......... 274 1. Evidence of the Practice of Surrender.................................... 275 a. Then ................................................................................ 275 b. Now ................................................................................. 278 2. The Law of Surrender, Regret, and Revocation ..................... 279 B. “Surrogate-Mother” Arrangements: Regret as Resistance ........... 286 C. The Case of the Accidental Father: Regret as Responsibility ...... 293 D. Controlling Frozen Preembryos: Regret as Reconsideration ....... 301 E. Sperm Donation: Regret as Respect ............................................. 307 III. REPRODUCING REGRET ............................................................................ 312 A. The State’s Role: Before and After Regret .................................. 315 1. Regret’s Antecedents ............................................................. 315 2. Regret’s Progeny.................................................................... 319 3. Reshaping Regret ................................................................... 322 B. Engendering Regret ..................................................................... 323 1. Regret and Gender Scripts ..................................................... 323 2. Re-examining the “Price of Pleasure” ................................... 325 C. Family Law Fault Lines: Dependency, Autonomy, and Sex ....... 329 IV. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 333 2011] Reproduction and Regret 257