Gay Dads, Surrogacy and Portable Parenthood

Here’s a new case from Virginia that turned up on Professor Arthur Leonard’s very fine blog.   The facts are rather complicated and the case presents a variety of interesting question. 

Roberto-Luis Copeland and Philip Spivey are a gay couple.   They wanted to become parents.  In 2003 in Minnesota (where I assume they lived) they entered into an agreement with Tanya Prashad.   It’s described in the opinion as a surrogacy agreement. 

Prashad was inseminated with sperm from both men.   She became pregnant and ACC was born in Minnesota on August 10, 2004.   Now I don’t know offhand what the law about surrogacy in Minnesota is.   But I believe, from the events that followed, that Prashad was and remains the child’s mother.  

Figuring out the father at the time of birth is a different matter. 

The Irresponsible Parent

(This is a continuation of the discussion begun in my last post.  You might want to go and read that first.)

In my last post I argued that it’s misleading to criticize some people’s choices to become parents as selfish, because all people’s choices to become parents are equally selfish.    However, I didn’t mean to suggest that no criticism of individual decision-making was possible.  I suggested that the better question was whether the decision to become a parent was responsible.    

Before I go further down that road, a bit of discussion is necessary.    There’s at least an argument that the decision to become a parent is personal and hence, shielded from public examination of the sort I am suggesting.  

To the extent this is true, it seems to me it ought to be equally true for all people.  Thus, it is as true for a single woman as it is for a married couple. 

The Selfish Parent

Recently I’ve been thinking about the assertion that some people’s decisions to become a parent are selfish.   Of course, being selfish is never a good thing, so asserting that someone’s choice is selfish is one way, and perhaps an effective way, of suggesting that their choice to become a parent is not a legitimate or worthy choice.    

You see this argument deployed in many different contexts.   Some assert that the decision of the fifty-ish couple to become a parents via surrogacy (the topic of a recent post) was selfish.  In comments on posts about sperm donors I’ve seen the assertion that using gametes from an unknown provider/donor is selfish.   I’ve seen similar assertions of selfishness leveled at single parents (perhaps most typically single mothers), lesbian and gay parents, and other not-quite-typical parents.  Though I haven’t gone back to reread all my old posts, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I’d made that point myself in the case of Nadya

Lesbian Mothers and Sperm Donors, Known or Otherwise

Lesbian couples who wish to have children born to one of the women use donor sperm.  Instead of the general discussion about sperm donors (or sperm providers–it is true that since most men are paid “donor” is perhaps misleading) that has predominated on the blog recently, I wanted to focus a bit on this one specific circumstance. 

While some lesbian couples may wish to co-parent with a donor/provider (and perhaps his partner), I’m going to exclude them from consideration for the moment.  Instead I’ll focus on what I believe to be a substantially larger group:  lesbian couples who wish to raise a child with only two legal/social parents–the members of the couple.  

For these lesbian couples, the role of the donor/provider can be a source of some concern.   Most obviously, they want to avoid his recognition as a legal parent of the child.  

Sperm Donors and Fathers

This story appeared in what was once our local paper and is now internet only.   (And it looks like they picked it up from Redbook.)  It’s a fine account of one’s man discovery that he and his wife needed to use a sperm donor and his thoughts about that process.  

I don’t suppose I have all that much to add to it, though it ties back to lengthy discussions on this blog about sperm donors (anonymous and otherwise.)     Like many people who have written here, Gary Blitt wasn’t sure how he’d feel about a child conceived with donor sperm.   But as time passes, there’s no question that he is his daughter’s father.  He’ll be the one to teach her to read box scores and change the diapers.  

Perhaps it is true, as he says, that his sperm wouldn’t even have been as good as the donor’s was.   But what is more important to me, at least, as that every day in real life he is the father of this child.  

Sperm Donors, Egg Donors or Gamete Donors?

Recently there has been a lot of conversation on the blog about anonymous donors.   Sometimes it’s clear that people have meant to use the term inclusively, to cover both egg donors and sperm donors.   But sometimes it seems to have been more specifically about sperm donors, as when sperm donors were compared with ”deadbeat dads.”  

It seems to me that in some respects whatever concerns there are about anonymous donors should be the same for sperm donors and egg donors.   In essence, they donate the same thing–genetic material necessary to create a child.   To the extent it seems like a problem, in both cases a child might not be able to trace back his or her genetic lineage.     

Despite this similarity, the conversation tended to focus fairly specifically on sperm donors from time to time, while it never migrated specifically to egg donors.

For the Good of the Children?

It’s hard not to pause to comment on this story, which is currently on the AP wire.   Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parrish in Louisiana, won’t perform marriages for interracial couples.    His rationale?    

“I don’t do interracial marriages because I don’t want to put children in a situation they didn’t bring on themselves,” Bardwell said. “In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer.”

Now I admit to being shocked at his candor and at his views.   And I am sure he is being rightly pilloried in many places on the web.   His unwillingness to marry interracial couples is outrageous. 

That said, I’d like to pursue a different train of thought.  I want to try to consider the general argument that some people shouldn’t have children because it will be bad for those yet to be created kids if they do.   

News from the UK:New Rights for Donor Siblings

There’s much coverage in UK papers of some new provisions of the law governing ART that just took effect.  (I’ve linked to a couple of different accounts and with a little work, you could find many more.)   These provisions make it possible for people conceived using the same donor’s sperm to locate each other.   They are generally referred to here as either half-siblings or donor siblings.  

It’s worth thinking about donor siblings for a moment.   Siblings generally are minor players in the law–they don’t have  a lot of rights vis-a-vis each other.   This makes recognition of donor siblings more strictly a social/cultural concern and less a legal one.  It also makes it a less complicated issue, since identifying a sibling doesn’t raise autonomy issues that identifying a donor might.  

The Wrong Embryo: Variations on a Theme

I want to continue the wrong-embryo thread a bit longer, but before I do I want to make it clear that I am now fully in the realm of the hypothetical.   The discussion here takes off from the earlier posts, but I’m now changing facts freely just to make myself good questions. 

In the real world, the Carolyn Savage ended up pregnant after an embryo that belonged to someone else was transferred into her uterus.   Now we’ve assumed that the embryo was actually created with the other couples sperm and egg.  But suppose that is not the case.   Suppose the other couple had purchased one of the elements (let’s start with sperm) and then used it to create the embryos that were frozen. 

A Quick Question about Children and Their Sperm Donors

I’m not at all sure this will work.   I’ve never actually used a post simply to ask a question.  But given all the discussion on my blog recently, I thought I might try.  If it’s a disaster I can always take it down, right? 

First, for the sake of discussion here, let’s say I agree that there’s some right for a child to know her/his genetic history, perhaps even actually meet or have access to or have some social relationship with the man who donated sperm.   I want to make two points explicit–1)  I’m only assuming this for the moment and 2) I understand this to be a right or entitlement of the child. 

Now here is my question:  Is there any reason why this requires that the man in question be given the legal rights of parent?  

The reason I’m concerned is this.  As I have discussed on several occasions elsewhere on this blog, legal parents have substantial rights vis-a-vis their children.