Baby Steps
How Lesbian Alternative Insemination is Changing the World

Each year, hundreds of children around the world are born to lesbian mothers, who conceived through alternative insemination. This book provides a discussion of the issues and questions raised by lesbian insemination. It is useful for teachers and students in women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, sociology, legal studies, and bioethics.

Each year, hundreds of children around the world are born to lesbian mothers, who conceived through alternative insemination. This unique form of family-making creates families with no legal or psychological father, and challenges some of our most basic assumptions about what it means to be a family. How and why do lesbians use insemination to build their families? How best could it be protected by law? Is it a feminist issue? Is insemination the ultimate in lesbian liberation or a sell-out to nuclear family norms? How are race, class, and human engineering involved? Drawing on legal findings and personal interviews, as well as medical and psychoanalytic research, sociologist Amy Agigian looks at the impact and potential of this form of reproduction. "Baby Steps" is the first in-depth discussion of the issues and questions raised by lesbian insemination, and the book has been designed to serve the interests of general readers and health care providers, as well as teachers and students in women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, sociology, legal studies, and bioethics.