Biological mom loses custody of child she signed away in traditional surrogacy agreement

The nightmare scenario has happened, and not for the first time. (Read the full story here). This time it is in the UK, but it has happened a few times in the U.S. as well. Here the mom -admittedly psychologically imbalanced and apparently driven by a "compulsive desire to bear further children" - agreed to be impregnanted by the sperm of a stranger, and she signed an agreement to give up the child to that stranger and his wife. But once the child was born, lo and behold she refused to give it up. She kept her son, who is now 17 months old.

Alas, the court found that the boy's "natural father" and his wife would be "better parents" for the boy than his de facto natural mother and her husband. So, the woman now has to follow up on her agreement and give up her own son - a forced adoption, really.

What a convoluted case. This is the twisted world that we are sinking into as surrogacy becomes mainstream and socially acceptable. We are playing fire with natural human emotions, attachments and relationships. When babies are conceived with gametes from two people who wouldn't touch each other with a ten-foot pole, then we are asking for these kinds of problems. When we ask women to sign away their natural right to the child conceived and born of them, we are guaranteeing these kinds of problems.

The biological parents here both want the child, they both love him, and they both have an equal, "natural" (as the court put it) right to the child. But they were never married, they were never in a relationship, they were never physical and possibly they don't even know each other - and at this point they hate each other. So for the child, this is a zero-sum game: he has to lose one to win one, and by winning one he loses the other. It's clear that in such an arrangement, the child is the loser. The only winners here are the adults - the bio mom gets $$$ in her pocket (though she nurses a broken heart) and the bio dad gets his precious baby boy, predictably the "most wanted and loved baby in the world.".

Another "Rotten Apple": An ungrateful donor-conceived adult explains how he feels, and why

One year ago, a young man wrote an article for The Independent in the United Kingdom. He was 23 years old, and his name was Tom Ellis. Two years earlier, he had found out that his he and his younger brother were both conceived using the sperm of two different donors. The following are excerpts from his personal reflection on his conception story:

I had been taught by my parents, and at school, that any family is OK so long as somebody loves you. It's not. I wish it were. I now have a deep need to find out who my father is. I want to know what he looks like, where he is, what he enjoys, which parts of my character I share with him. I need to know who it is that makes me who I am. You can't put a child or an adult into a situation like this and tell them that all you need is love and care, because it's not true. You need the genetic links, too.

My brother was shocked at first, but now he doesn't think about it. It's not something he wants to think about. We're not close. Now my mum and her husband are divorced my brother still sees him, but I don't.

I don't call him Dad any more. He just doesn't fulfil that role for me at all. Looking back, I realise that he never did. If I had known, I wouldn't have put up with some of the things I did. He was not a father figure. He just had these children who were living with him.

The relationship with my mum has been very difficult too, since I found out. We are able to talk about it to a certain extent, but she deliberately put me in a situation where I have little hope of ever knowing my father. It is a terrible and cruel thing to do to somebody, to create somebody, and bring them into existence, with that intention. I think now that she didn't understand what she was doing, and wasn't very well informed, but it was still a selfish act.

She said that at the time she had counselling, but I get the impression that it was minimal. It seems to have been intended to get them both to be OK with the actual procedure, but not to think about the consequences to the person created through it. But it's not just the clinic's responsibility: it is society's in general. This is something that causes a great deal of pain - and that shouldn't be allowed.

It is difficult to say this in a way that doesn't shock people or make me sound psychologically damaged, but I don't think I should have been born. I can't compare living under these conditions and not living at all, but nobody should ever be created under these circumstances.

I expect that I probably have quite a lot of siblings, too, because when my parents wanted to conceive my brother there was no sperm left from my father, so they had to use a different donor. I'd like to find them, but it is not as important as trying to find my father.

I know that not everyone who was donor-conceived feels the way that I do. But I'd be surprised if deep down - however happy their family lives are - they don't all have some desire to know who their father - or even mother - is. Something is missing, and I think they are probably in denial, and they actually do want to know where they came from. Essentially, what people are doing when they donate sperm or eggs is giving away their own children, and if society thinks that's OK, I'd be surprised.

I have done a Master's degree at Cambridge and am reasonably successful, but it doesn't make me feel any better about not knowing who I am.

There is a saying that there are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots and the other is wings. I think donor-conception denies a child both of these. I feel like a tree that has half of its roots missing. And without them, I can hardly stand up.

How many children a year are born from egg donation and artificial insemination?

In case you were wondering - and these figures are from the United States alone:

In 1992...there were just 1,802 attempts by women to become pregnant using someone else's eggs, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Three years later, there were more than 4,738 such cycles; by 2004, the most recent year for which data has been published, there were 15,175 cycles, resulting in 5,449 babies. By comparison, some 22,911 children were adopted from abroad that year, and although there are no official figures, one survey estimated that at least the same number are conceived annually via donor insemination. Donor eggs are now used in 12 percent of all in vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) attempts, making it among the fastest-growing infertility treatments.

This also gives an idea of the exponential growth of these treatments.

And what about births to older mothers?

The birthrate among women ages 40-44 has risen 62 percent since 1990, while the rate among those in their late 40s has more than doubled. Among those who used I.V.F. in 2004, about a third of the 43-year-olds used someone else's eggs; by 47 years old, 91 percent did.

Where does your baby come from?

A recent article reports on where Japanese couples who needed third-party eggs or sperm got these gametes:

Of those who donated ova, 87 were the wives' sisters, including 3 sisters-in-law, 12 were relatives, including cousins, and 12 were friends and acquaintances. 23 of the men who donated sperm were the husbands' brothers, including 1 brother-in-law, 24 were fathers and two were friends.

How fascinating. How will the children feel when they learn that their real mommy gave them away to be raised by their aunt? How will they feel when they realize that their grandfather is really their father?

Parents and doctors don't let themselves be bothered by such disturbing thoughts. The children will be happy of course, because all they need is love! It doesn't matter who loves them - strangers are fully welcome to take on the parental role. A parent is whomever the adults INTEND to be the parent - and thinking makes it so! The children will be fine as long as they are cuddled and pampered and have appropriate role models of both genders.

Why would they want their "real" mommy and daddy? Puh-LEEEEZE. Biology is so passe.

Those little IVF brats should be grateful for their medical problems! Without them they wouldn't even be alive.

A new article reports on a study that children conceived via IVF are more likely to have health problems even later in life. It says among other things:

A study of 3,980 articles in medical and scientific journals between 1980 and 2005 has shown significantly higher risks of long-term medical problems for children conceived through artificial procreation such as in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic sperm injection, a method in which a selected sperm is injected into the ovum.

...Most recently, a study published in the June 21, 2007 issue of Human Reproduction showed that children conceived through IVF visit hospitals significantly more times (1.76 vs. 1.07 times) than naturally conceived children.

This is news which confirms what many who are involved or seriously interested in the industry already know. But when has the truth ever stopped us? After all, this kind of news would only be important if we really thought about the children more than about ourselves.

Of course, a "risk" is merely that; it is not a certainty. And we are already way past that. Today, we are INTENTIONALLY creating children who have problems. For instance, with the afore-mentioned intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), we are knowingly and intentionally creating children who are as infertile as their fathers - this is a proven fact and the doctors and the fathers know this, and yet they do it anyway. Moreover, ICSI may also pass on other genetic problems such as a predisposition to cancer. But who cares?

What I hear from the parents who do this is that well, creating children who have problems is still better than not creating them at all - after all, they get to LIVE, even though they are flawed! Isn't existence better than not existing? Isn't a life with problems better than no life at all?

Indeed, children are being tailor-made with disabilities that suit the parents. Children have already been intentionally created (through PGD and IVF) to be midgets, because their parents are midgets, and children have been intentionally created deaf, because their parents are deaf.

And all these parents are supposedly doing these children a favor by creating them, because a deaf life or a midget life or an infertile life is still better than no life at all. Those darn kids should be grateful! Right?

Egg co-parenting

The Seattle Times had an interesting article recently on two moms - the social mom and the "egg mom" who have maintained contact so that the twin daughters are growing up knowing the female source of their genes - the woman whom normal people would still call the "real mother."

Of course, this "egg mom" doesn't think of herself as the real mother of these girls - and of course, in our relativist, subjectivist world, that would indeed seem to "make it so," as Captain Picard used to say.

Except, there is a little glitch. Biology says that the "egg mom" is in fact the MOTHER, the ONLY one, regardless of what she may think of that or whether or not she agrees with it. Biology doesn't ask for personal opinions, and doesn't change based on social trends, opinion polls or political correctness.

And the girls may in time agree. They can't be expected to necessarily stick to the neat little story their "co-parents" have invented. Many donor-created children don't necessarily agree that their mother's egg is just a helpful little insertion into their social parents' reproduction - they know very well that the egg is identified with the person whose name in the real world is always "mother." They know very well that they have been half-adopted, and that they are being raised by a woman who is, in fact, a stranger. To quote "Son of a Surrogate", who explains how such children may feel:

What do we think about what you think? What you think doesn’t even make sense to most of us. It doesn’t make sense to the majority of people...Do you expect us to have this sort of delusional thinking that you do or do you expect us to think like 99.9% of the general population...

Read the article here.

I'm baaack

Though I have not been blogging for the past 3 months (family vacations, work comittments, etc.), I have not become less interested in the area of assisted repro tech. There is just so much to cover! And even though I've been away, I've noticed that quite a few people actually read this blog...so I want to continue getting the word out on children's rights!

Here is an interesting link: http://www.cbc.ca/toronto/features/infertility/index.html
CBC Radio One in Toronto did an extensive series on infertility and infertility treatments, and you can listen to the whole series online. Especially worth hearing is the interview with Olivia Pratten, who explains how the children of donor insemination actually feel - hello, is anyone listening?

I've also finished reading the Baby Business, and am making my way though Everything Conceivable by Liza Mundy. Both books are quite good. The Baby Business was a quicker read, but it had fewer stories. Everything Conceivable is a bit wordy and slow, but on the other hand, packed with individual portraits that are endlessly interesting - and disturbing. Both books are highly worth reading for anyone who is interested in this area.