Prisoners and Procreation: What Happened Between Goodwin and Gerber?

Abstract

This comment examines what happened in the years between Goodwin and Gerber and how the current Supreme Court should come down on this controversial legal issue today. This comment will review the Supreme Court's framework for analyzing prisoners' constitutional claims in Part I. Part II outlines the lower courts' responses to inmates' requests for procreation rights, including an overview of the Goodwin and Gerber opinions, which were based on the same analytical framework. Part III examines the social shift in public perceptions about procreation and the term "family." The traditional notions of family life faded in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century and, ironically, society has urged science to assist it in the area of reproductive technology in the hopes of creating a family unit. In Part IV, this comment will analyze the current Supreme Court and the jurisprudential factors that might weigh into the Court's ruling if Gerber reaches the Court. Finally, Part V examines the legal, public, and moral repercussions of the decision to extend reproductive rights to prisoners.