Bloodlines and Belonging: Time to Abandon Ius Sanguinis? 79 woman from the UK gave birth to ‘her’ daughter’s child.14 These practices raise obvious questions as to whom these children belong to and they may as well trigger issues of citizenship. Lastly, progress has been made on the creation or ‘artificial’ gametes through the modification of other types of human cells. Apart from opening possibilities for bypassing the heterosexual model of procreation,15 these techniques raise concerns about abuse or reproductive ‘crime’. Imagine a world in which it would be possible to create a child from a tissue sample collected from somebody’s cup of coffee. Those famous actors and footballers would probably think twice before shaking their fans’ hands. Unnecessary One could argue that the main problems do not lie with ius sanguinis citizenship but with the determination of legal parentage. Once we solve issues related to legal parentage, then the ius sanguinis principle will effectively address citizenship matters. However, this view ignores that dilemmas regarding the attribution of parentage are often triggered or complicated by citizenship (and migration) issues. It can also be argued that relying solely on legal parentage to settle citizenship issues disregards fundamental normative questions about who should be a citizen in a political community. Despite much liberal-democratic talk about social contract, democratic inclusion and active citizenship, the overwhelming majority of people in the world acquire citizenship by virtue of contingent facts about birth (descent or place of birth). While ius soli citizenship has received considerable political and academic attention recently due to pressing concerns about the inclusion of children of immigrants, ius sanguinis continues to be taken for granted. In the remainder of this essay, I briefly challenge two main theoretical defences of ius sanguinis: (a) that ius sanguinis citizenship recognises and cements the special relationship between the parent and child; (b) that ius sanguinis citizenship ensures the intergenerational stability of the political community. The main problem of ius sanguinis citizenship is that it is parasitic on external factors concerning the legal determination of parentage. As one of the examples presented above shows, it may only take a choice between a 14 15 Smajdor, A. (2015), ‘Can I be my grandchild’s mother?’, BioNews, 9 March 2015, available at http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_504476.asp. Shanks, P. (2015), ‘Babies from Two Bio-Dads.’ Biopolitical Times, 3 April 2015, Center for Genetics and Society, available at http://www.biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=8418.