Principal Investigator: Dr Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, Durham University

The regulation of reproduction and parenting in the UK has reinforced traditional biological sex roles, but emerging reproductive technologies challenge this binary understanding of biological sex.

In her forthcoming monograph, Biotechnology, Gestation, and the Law, Chloe explores how future technologies that assist with or replace gestation could promote equality for pregnant people, women, and sexual/gender minorities.

As a part of this book, she considers the impact that novel forms of assisted gestation might have on our understanding of gender/sex in reproducing and parenting. This work addresses important gaps in the literature by highlighting how uterus transplantation and artificial wombs pose a conceptual challenge to contemporary understandings and regulation that cements biological sex as a binary.

Furthermore, Chloe investigates the legal rule ‘the legal mother is always the person who gestated’ and how assigning legal parenthood based on gestation will become more complicated with uterus transplantation and artificial wombs.

Chloe’s objectives during a funded visit at The Future of Human Reproduction project include sharing her existing work and considering how it might contribute to the bigger question of how novel reproductive technologies may impact, and disrupt, binary conceptions of biological sex.

Elizabeth Chloe Romanis is Associate Professor in Biolaw at Durham University. Her research is on healthcare law and bioethics with a particular interest in reproduction and the body (abortion, gestation, pregnancy and birth).