Surrogacy in the NYT Magazine

The New York Times magazine has a cover story today called “Her Body, My Baby.” It’s an obvious story for me to blog a out, given my many past postings about surrogacy.

I’m having a very hard time focusing on the bulk of the story because I have a fairly strong, visceral reaction to the title, the cover photo and the opening.   (I’d guess this is exactly what the author/editors intend, right?  Provocative is good in this sort of an article.) Anyway, for the moment the best I can do is to try and sort out that visceral reaction.  I think there are several components to that, and if I throw them out here, maybe I’ll be able to tell if I’m right.  (This is definitely in the category of thinking out loud.)

First off, there is this pregnant   woman.   I really do not care one bit about the specific genetic make-up of the developing embryo, she is quite clearly the one who is pregnant.   Let me put aside for a moment (as I have frequently done) the question of whether the developing embryo is a baby.   Instead I’ll say that if all goes well, she will in time give birth to a baby.   The assertion of the title and the picture is that the baby is not hers, but instead belongs to someone else who has paid her to provide services. 

Lesbian Mothers and Gay Fathers–getting a little more specific

This picks up from yesterday’s post and you’ll find it a whole lot more comprehensible if you read that first.

At the close of that post I promised that I’d next turn to considering the more charitable answer to the question about why lesbian mothers and gay fathers meet such resistance in law.  I’m sorry I said that because first I want to point briefly to a specific instance of the less charitable answer before leaving that topic.  Which is to say, I’m putting off the discussion of the more charitable answer.    As I said–sorry.   (It’s actually going to be a little bit before I get to the more charitable answer.   I know tomorrow’s NYT magazine has a big story on surrogacy and surely I’ll have something to say about that, right?   So the more charitable answer discussion is on hold for a little bit.)

Now for the more specifics.   I mentioned yesterday that for the second time the Florida court’s have ruled the state’s ban on lesbian/gay adoption unconstitutional.    (The ban dates from the Anita Bryant campaign in the 1970s.)   Here is a link to the full opinion, but as it is long I will also   I’ve been trying to find a copy of the opinion–even a redacted copy–to link to because though it is pretty long it is fascinating.   Alas, I cannot find one.   So instead I refer you to Arthur Leonard’s blog discussion of the opinion, which is as always, excellent.  

Lesbian mothers and gay fathers

[Sorry I've been gone for a while--life intervened.  I'm back now.]

A while back I started this thread on lesbian and gay parents. I think I made a decent start of it, but then, as so often happens, I dropped the ball.  This time I mean to pick it up.   I do suggest you go back and read that earlier post.  Also, as you can see from the earlier post, there are a bunch of individual entries that related to lesbian and gay parents–the tags can take you there.

I was moved to resume this thread by the recent news that another court in Florida has struck down that state’s ban on adoptions by lesbians and gay men.   Of course, you have to balance news like that with the fact that voters in Arkansas chose to bar unmarried couples from adoption/fostering, a move aimed specifically at lesbian and gay people, who of course cannot marry in Arkansas.    I suppose the safe conclusion to reach is that the law regarding the capacity of lesbians and gay men to be legal parents is variable, both over time and over space, and that it remains in flux.

Notice, of course, that I said the capacity to be legal parents.   It’s clear that lesbians and gay men, as a category, are not only capable of being parents, they are in fact functioning as parents.   Consider the facts of the Florida cases–the recent one and also an earlier one striking down the same bar.  The families involved in those cases are real families.   The parents love their children and care for and protect them.   The judges in these cases responded to the reality of the facts before them.  To have done otherwise would be frankly brutal. 

Suffering Loss

On one level I cannot believe that I am going to start yet again with something about Nebraska.   But this is to raise a much broader point.

There’s been a bit of coverage of the hearings to change Nebraska’s safe haven law.   What struck me about the story I linked to is the discussion of the harm done to children who are abandoned by their parents.    It seems to me there are two parts to this harm.  One is the knowledge that the parent has abandoned the child–has chosen to separate from the child.   The other is the actual disruption of the parent/child relationship.   As the article notes, many of the parents are not acting lightly.   They are not acting because they do not love their children.  To the contrary, they are leaving the children because they do love them and cannot think what else to do.

It’s not hard for me to see that the disruption/destruction of the parent/child relationship is a terrible thing for the child (and the parent, but let’s focus here on the child.)   Sometimes–as when a parent dies–it is simply unpreventable.   Though even then there can be a sense of abandonment.   But it seems especially tragic (and perhaps especially consequential) when it doesn’t have to be that way.

Now I think the harm occurs because of the nature and depth of the relationship disrupted.   That’s why it is different to abandon a 30-day-old and a ten-year old.   If we were to discover that one of the parents in the article wasn’t actually genetically related to the child in question, I don’t think we’d therefore say that there really wasn’t any harm done.   Indeed, I don’t think we know anything at all about the genetic relationship between the parents who testified in Nebraska and the children they left.   We know their social relationships.  In their eyes and in the eyes of the children, these people were parents.   And therein lies the pain and the tragedy. 

A very short last (maybe) look at Nebraska

One last follow-up on the Nebraska safe-haven law.    The legislature htere is in special session now.   They are trying to figure out the right age limit–since clearly 18 years is not it.   I think they’ve settled for the moment on 30 days as opposed to three days.   I thought this story was worth a look.   The rationale for 30 rather than 3 days is that at three days you really don’t know how hard it is going to be.

That’s true, of course.   The reality of caring for an infant does take a while to set in.   But it strikes me that the passage of time really cuts in two opposite ways here.  The longer you serve as a parent, the more problematic abandoning the child seems.   It’s easier to contemplate at 3 days because there’s so much less time for the person to have been/become/be a parent.   The problem with dropping off a much older child is that the person really has been a parent and so there’s a different consequence to abandonment.

I’m not saying that the thirty day rule is wrong.   Perhaps it is the right balance.   It’s just interesting to note that you are balancing here, between compassion for the child and understanding for the parent.

Sperm Donor Shortage, continued: Canada

Just a little while ago I wrote about the sperm donor shortage in the UK.   At the time (at the very end of that post) mentioned that I’d also discuss a similar situation in Canada.   Now, I cannot head this one “news” because the story I have to work off is not current.    But here it is–a couple years old–about a sperm shortage in Canada.   And then in response to my last post Nellie (a commenter) also referred to the law of Canada.

So here is the deal (and I welcome any Canadians to expand on or correct what’s here.)   In Canada you cannot pay an egg donor or a sperm donor for their donation.   Nellie notes (and I’m going to go with her facts here) that it is criminal, punishable by five years in prison, to buy sperm.   Ten years for the purchase of eggs.  Although I might wonder about how regularly these crimes are prosecuted, the message is quite clear.   These are serious crimes.

I do not possess expertise here, but as I understand it, Canada has taken a stance against the commodification of reproductive materials.   In other words, the law reflects an assertion that sperm and eggs are not just common commodities, like bread or toasters.  

UK Sperm Donor Shortage, II

This is really a continuation of yesterday’s discussion.   A different version of the story is in today’s New York Times.   It makes a couple of different points.

Among other things, it refers to being placed on a waiting list at fertility clinics.  This feeds in to a question I had–if there is a sperm shortage, how is the supply they do have allocated?   It appears (though it doesn’t outright say) that it is first-come, first-served.   There could, of cousre, be other possibilities, but some of these might be terribly problematic.  (One could, for example, prefer married couples over unmarried couples or singles.   Or you could prefer older couples who might be more harmed by waiting.)

The article also makes it clear that while donors are paid for their time and trouble, you cannot pay them for the actual sperm.   This is consistent with UK policy as to surrogacy, I think.   I don’t really understand how you define whether the amount paid is too much and therefore implies that you are actually paying for the sperm, but I do get the point.   Sperm itself is not a commodity in the UK.   (It is in the US.)

What interests me most are the comments of the spokeswoman for the patients’ rights group.  Her suggestion is that it isn’t anonymity per se that has caused the shortage.  It is the failure of the medical establishment to change the pool from which the recruit donors in light of the indentification requirement.    As she says, different men will give now who had given before.  I take the implication to be that even as some men will no longer give, other men who might not have given will give under this system.   I don’t know if that is true or not, although it would seem that it must be true at least in part.   The real question is whether the number of newly available donors could offset the lost donors.    And if you don’t go out and look for the new-type donors, they likely will not, which could explain what is happening.   Again, her point emphasizes that how men understand their potential relationship to the resulting child is important.   That ties back to many of my larger concerns.

News in Brief: UK Faces Sperm Donor Shortage

It seems the UK is currently facing what is described as a severe sperm shortage.   Of course, no one really means that the UK is actually short of sperm.  What they are short of is sperm donors.   This story states that in 2006 there were but 307 donors nationwide where the number needed to satisfy demand was 500.  (I think the number of donors may have dropped since that time.   Here’s an earlier story on the same topic that suggests that the problem is growing worse.)

It’s rather a striking story since I’ve never heard any concern about a sperm donor shortage in the US.   The story explains what the cause of the drop off is:  Since 2005 the UK has prohibited anonymous sperm donation.

Now under UK law, donors are not legally recognized as fathers.  They do not have rights or obligations vis-a-vis the child.  But they must be identified.   Children produced with donor sperm may ask for (and will receive) identifying information about the donor when they turn 18.  The same rules apply to imported sperm–which is to say if you get sperm shipped in from another country, the donor of that sperm must be identified.  (Britain also limits the amount that a sperm donor can be paid, but the reporters discount this as the cause of the shortage.)  

News in Brief: Frontiers of Technology

This is one of those news stories that gives me much to think about.   The story is from the Guardian (UK).   You can read the original here.  Here’s a serviceable summary:

A young woman lost her ovaries at 15.   Some years later, when she wanted to have a child, she received an ovary transplant from her identical twin sister.   The transplant was successful and she is now in the very late stages of her first pregnancy.

So many things raised in such a short story.  First, a note about the specialness of the case–the two women involved–ovary donor and ovary recipient–were identical twins.   That means they have (essentially or actually?) identical DNA.   And that means two things.   The first I am guessing at–I have no special expertise here).   I would think that there must be a better chance of the transplant being accepted–after all, the tissues match.    The second, and this is indeed mentioned in the article so I’m more sure of it, is that the eggs produced by the donor ovary are identical (in terms of the DNA) to the eggs that would have been produced by the woman’s original ovaries. 

News In Brief: Transgender Parenthood

On Sunday’s the New York Times Style Section has this column called “Modern Love.”  The essays printed there vary widely in terms of content.   This past week’s column was written by a woman and was about her twin,  once her twin sister, now her twin brother, and his desire to be a parent.   As a transman he takes testosterone.   As the essay recounts, this has serious implications for his ability to use his own reproductive material (in this case, eggs) to create a child.   Similarly, at least as I understand it, it would impair his ability to become pregnant even via IVF–though it wouldn’t preclude it.   Remember the story from earlier this year about the pregnant transman.

Anyway, what the essay makes me wonder about is what it means to the brother (Eli) to be a parent.   That is, what is the experience of parenthood he craves?   It could be the experience of being pregnant–the author refers at one point to Eli’s ability to “bear” children, and I think that’s generally understood as a reference to actually being pregnant.  That’s interesting to think about because it is (generally) an experience denied to men.

Then again it could be that what Eli is considering is the experience of contributing genetic material to the creation of a child.    Eli might still be able to do that, if there are eggs that could be frozen.  Or the sister could donate her eggs which would at least be reasonably similiar.   To the extent one cares about having a child that looks like you, the sister’s eggs might suffice.

Or it could be that Eli contemplates the experience of raising and being responsible for a child.  While it is very likely (and very regrettably) true that transmen might have a more difficult time being recognized as a suitable parent, there are still ways to raise children (to be a parent to children) who are not genetically related to you and to whom you did not give birth.   Adoption is one (also mentioned in the essay) and raising a child conceived by/carried by/using DNA from a partner is another.

And then there is the possibility of combining one or two or all three of the above–raising a child with whom you have a genetic link and so on.

I don’t mean at all to diminish the gravity of the implications Eli is considering.  I just want to elaborate a little to show how complicated they really are, and how much our definitions of what it means to be a parent have to take account of.