DADDY PLANTS A SEED - PERSONHOOD UNDER PATRIARCHY

In her essay, Professor Rothman challenges the ability of the legal st ructure to address adequately the problems created by the new reproduc tive technologies. She argues that conceiving of such issues in terms of rights or individual liberties denies our interconnectedness. Rothm an fears the new technologies promote patriarchy by emphasizing the ge netic tie over the nurturance, the connection people experience during gestation. Patriarchal social theories operate on the premise that pe ople spring forth out of nowhere, self-interested and ready to form so cial contracts. Such theories deemphasize the connection with which hu mans enter the world-after nine months cradled in their mothers' wombs -and the relation that connection bears to our need to form social con tracts. Rothman predicts that as the new technologies develop, defined as they are by the notion of individual liberties, we will be remade in partriarcy's image-separate individuals springing forth from artifi cial wombs without that preceding connectedness and trust that allows us to be social.