Life’s continuation: repro-tech, biogenetic affinity, and racial capitalism

This paper examines the affinity ties of biological and familial whiteness in ART as evident in the 2014 Illinois Northern District Court case of Cramblett v. Midwest Sperm Bank—where a white mother filed a wrongful birth suit and sought legal compensation for the loss of perceived genetic similarity and giving birth to a ‘black’ child via donor insemination. Applying critical legal and critical race studies to the case and engaging its surrounding media, the paper considers what Cramblett can tell us about loss—as it is related to notions of value and property within an overarching system of racial capitalism. This paper considers how race, value, and property inter-articulated in Cramblett through notions of biogenetic relations and familial whiteness within the organization of family; how these ideas travel through to investments in life—and its continuation—as a form of racial property (for some); and what this case can tell us about broader operations of structural racism and the role of biomedicine (and law) within these operations. Ultimately, the paper shows that biogenetic affinity in ARTs condition life’s continuation in ways that resecure the disparities of racial capitalism.