Gay couples and women over 40 to receive fertility treatment through NHS

by Edmund Broch
22 May 2012
Pinknews.co.uk

Same-sex couples and women over 40 will be entitled to free in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment through the National Health Service (NHS), for the first time according to guidelines to be published today.

The recommendations, which puts same-sex couples on par with heterosexual couples when it comes to fertility treatment, is issued by the government watchdog for cost-effective treatment in the NHS, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Then new guidelines also call on health authorities in England and Wales to fund intra-uterine insemination (IUI), which uses donor sperms to help same-sex couples conceive. If IUI should fail for six cycles in a row, then, they should be considered for the more costly, and medically complex IVF, the guidelines will say.

These consequences follow the implementation of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, passed by Labour in 2008, which put same-sex parenting and heterosexual parenting on equal footing in the eyes of the law.

That there has been a concomitant increase in demand from gay couples for fertility services is confirmed by figures: for example, in the three years from 2007 to 2010, the number of lesbian couples undergoing IVF nearly trebled from 178 to 417. Till now, gay couples usually had to resort to private treatment, which cost up to £8,000 per couple, with a reduction in the chances of successful conception with increase in age.

To read the complete article, click here.

in In the News / IVF / Legislation  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

What today’s US Supreme Court ruling in Astrue v. Capato might mean for children of LGBT parents

May 21, 2012 – by Nancy Polikoff – Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage

 

In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the US Supreme Court today weighed in on how the Social Security Act defines “child” for purposes of receiving survivor’s benefits when a covered employee dies.  Karen Capato was seeking such benefits for twins born 18 months after the death of her husband, Robert.  The twins were conceived by IVF after Robert’s death using semen he had frozen before this death specifically for that purpose.
Karen claimed the children were entitled to benefits because they inherently met the definition of “child” since they were the biological children of married parents.  The Social Security Administration (SSA) looked to a separate statutory provision and ruled that the determination of eligibility rested in state intestacy law; if the children could inherit from Robert if he died without a will then they were eligible for benefits.  Under the law in Robert’s domicile at the time of his death  — Florida — children conceived post-death do not inherit without a will, so the twins were not Robert’s children for purposes of receiving benefits.
In Astrue v. Capato, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the SSA.  Although I generally favor expansive distribution of benefits and novel claims as to what makes a parent, I found the opinion satisfying on a number of levels.  First, Karen’s claim was that the children were so obviously Robert’s children that it was inappropriate to look at any other part of the statute, including the intestacy test, for a definition.  Why was this so obvious? Because, Karen argued, they were the biological children of married parents.  I took great pleasure in Justice Ginsburg’s criticism of that argument.  Karen tried to claim that it was unconstitutional to distinguish between children conceived pre- and post-death, but Justice Ginsburg virtually chastised Karen for arguing that the SSA should “eliminate the intestacy test only for biological children of married parents.” (emphasis in original!) Justice Ginsburg clearly did not think highly of Karen asking the Court to distinguish between “children whose parents were married and children whose parents’ liaisons were not blessed by clergy or the State.”

Click here to read the complete article.

in In the News / IVF / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Dr. Doyle of CT Fertility Calls for Ethical Surrogacy Standards in Groundbreaking Paris Conference, Challenging the French to Embrace the Practice

  9.28.2011 – PRWEB.com

American experts, a surrogate mother, French parents and academics weighed in on a topic that divides France, where surrogacy is still illegal. Instead of pros or cons, they concentrated on providing guidelines on how surrogacy can be carried out ethically. The ethical principles Dr. Doyle outlined include fully informing and protecting surrogates and donors from medical and psychological risks, treating them with dignity and respect, and considering the long term well being of all involved, including the surrogates’ families, and the children they help create.

Paris, France (PRWEB) September 28, 2011

Surrogacy in France is illegal and still controversial, yet an increasing number of French people who cannot have children on their own are turning to various surrogacy and egg donation arrangements abroad. Attempts to change the law are hotly debated and even presidential candidates are taking sides. Yet in a recent groundbreaking Paris conference hosted by the French organization ADFH, several American and French experts weighed in for the first time not on the merits of the practice, but on how it could be done in a more ethical manner. While political debates often over-simplify, “every surrogacy journey is different,” said Dr. Michael Doyle, an American IVF and surrogacy expert, as he laid out the ways clinics, agencies and prospective parents can assert control and shape their surrogacy journey in line with their moral convictions.

The “Ethical Surrogacy Journeys” seminar took place on September 19, 2011, in a packed wedding hall at Paris’s 3ème municipal building. In addition to Dr. Michael Doyle, the panel also included Karen Synesiou of Center for Surrogate Parenting, Dr. Kim Bergman, a psychologist who works with parents and surrogates at the Growing Generations agency, Colleen Iversen, an American surrogate mother, Alexandre Urwicz and Hervé Lancelin, co-presidents of ADFH, Dominique Mennesson, a French parent and the president of CLARA, and the French sociologist Irène Théry.

“We must remember, realize and embrace that this is not just a financial transaction, that this is much more than a sequence of medical procedures, since we are creating new families and bonding existing families to each other,” said Dr. Doyle. “The role of the medical clinic is to maximize the efficiency and quality of the services, minimize the risk that each party is subjected to, and to control the costs of that process. It is essential that the physician fully informs everyone involves concerning the medical steps, alternatives and risks”, he added, “even though fortunately these risks are now extremely rare and can be further minimized with adequate screening, tests and treatment protocols.” For instance, “minimizing the risk for surrogates involves transferring the fewest number of embryos of the highest quality, which increasingly in the United States is a single embryo transfer. It is also important that we support and consider the well being of all the parties, including the surrogate’s entire family, and the future children that will result from the decisions that we make today,” said Dr. Doyle.

Colleen Iversen shared her experience being a two-time gestational surrogate for a couple that with severe infertility problems. As one of the CT Fertility’s staff she witnessed the couple’s failed attempts have a baby on their own, until she finally stepped up and offered to become the couple’s surrogate herself. “I didn’t do this for financial gain,” said Colleen. Similarly to many gestational surrogates she met working at the clinic, Colleen had several easy pregnancies carrying her own children, and felt empathy towards this couple and a strong urge to help fulfill their dream of becoming parents. “Was I compensated? Yes. But was I putting my body through risks? Yes. My 5th and final pregnancy resulted in hospital bed rest where I was unable to care for my children, unable to go to work, and the health of the baby inside of me became my sole focus until the birth,” she recounted. Indeed she understands why the financial compensation is something that intended parents insist on: “if they hadn’t paid me I think they would have felt terrible putting me through all those cycles, and would have given up prematurely.” Despite the medical risks and hardships, looking back at her experience Colleen stated that she was honored to be a surrogate and “knowing that I have forever changed the lives of one family will never lead me to regret my decision to do this.”

Questions from the audience included requests for practical advise, but also concerned that surrogates may be exploited, perhaps by business women who may wish to hire a surrogate just to avoid disrupting their careers. Both Karen Synesiou of CSP and Dr. Doyle clarified that such women will not be accepted to their program, as prospective parents are also screened for their motivation and their willingness to support and treat the surrogate with respect. “There will always be unscrupulous people who may wish to exploit and take advantage of others, and it is the responsibility of those of us in the practice to maintain the highest possible ethical and professional standards and refuse to cooperate in these individuals,” replied Dr. Doyle and was greeted by applause from the audience. He challenged the self-declared feminist who asked the question not to doubt the ability of other women to make decisions that are in their best interest. “I speak from my experience with the numerous women I have worked with, as Colleen has just articulated, who say surrogacy has been one of the most empowering experiences of their life.”

Another questioner voiced concerns about babies that may be abandoned due to birth defects, and that surrogacy could lead to more questionable practices like cloning. “It is easy to take a topic like surrogacy that may seem different and challenging, and link it to things like cloning, birth defects, or embryo biopsy, that are not specific to surrogacy,” replied Dr. Doyle. “These may be worthy topics for ethical discussion some other time, but should not be used to attack the very valid notion of surrogacy which we hope you can as a culture and as a nation embrace.”

in IVF / Legal / Legislation / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

New Numbers, and Geography, for Gay Couples

By SABRINA TAVERNISE – New York Times – August 25, 2011

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — So much for San Francisco.

The list of top cities for same-sex couples as a portion of the population does not include that traditional gay mecca, according to new census data. In fact, the city, which ranked third in 1990 and 11th in 2000, plummeted to No. 28 in 2010. And West Hollywood, once No. 1, has dropped out of the top five.

The Census Bureau data, finalized this week and analyzed by Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, gives the clearest picture to date of same-sex couples in America. In absolute numbers, they jumped by half in the past decade, to 901,997.

Most surprising is how far same-sex couples have dispersed, moving from traditional enclaves and safe havens into farther-flung areas of the country.

Consider, for example, the upstarts on the list: Pleasant Ridge, Mich., a suburb of Detroit; New Hope, Pa.; and this beach town in southern Delaware. All three have been popular destinations for gay people locally but had never ranked in the top 10.

The No. 1-ranked town is Provincetown, Mass., at the tip of Cape Cod.

The reordering reflects a growing influence of baby boomers, who became adults in the 1960s and 1970s, when the social stigma was starting to ease, and are more willing than previous generations to stand up and be counted, Mr. Gates said.

Now that generation, arguably the first in history with such a large contingent that is out, is beginning to retire, and its life transition is showing up in the data, with older cities as the new popular choices.

“As the baby boomer generation ages into retirement,” Mr. Gates said, “we see its impact really strongly in the geography.”

The pattern was in evidence in Rehoboth Beach, a family resort town of 1,300, which was fourth on the list of same-sex couples per capita and did not figure in the top 10 rankings in 1990 or 2000.

“The change was pretty dramatic,” said Rick McReynolds, 58, a resident. “It used to be all these boys,” but now, he said, the gay population in town is older and has less of a singles scene.

But people who used to party here, like Bob Moore, a retired communications professor from Pennsylvania, have since returned with their partners to live. Mr. Moore, who came out in his 40s, after two children and a divorce, said he and his partner were looking for a place that was gay friendly, but not an exclusive enclave.

“We liked the fact that it was gay without being the Castro” neighborhood of San Francisco, said Mr. Moore, 59, who was sitting with his partner, Steve Ortleib, in Rigby’s Bar and Grill on Tuesday night.

He said they had visited four top retirement destinations for same-sex couples — two in California and two in Florida — before settling on Rehoboth.

In interviews in San Francisco on Tuesday, several gay people said the city attracted people who did not always want to become part of a couple. The census does not ask about sexual orientation.

“You settle down in small towns because there is not much to choose from,” said Nick Meinzer, 41, a hairstylist who works on Castro Street. “In urban areas we wait longer to settle down. I’ve been single for two years. They’re not counting those of us who are single.”

Of the top cities like Pleasant Ridge, Mr. Meinzer said: “I’ve never even heard of those places. You’d think if they were so great you’d have heard of them.”

Dennis Ziebell, 61, the owner of Orphan Andy’s, a Castro neighborhood diner he opened 35 years ago, said he did not believe the count was accurate. “Take another survey, that’s all I can say,” he said. “I’ve been in a relationship for 36 years and nobody from the census asked me about it.”

Last year was the third time the Census Bureau counted same-sex couples. The count included people of the same sex in the same household who said they were spouses or unmarried partners (spouses were not included in 1990). Mr. Gates calculated how many same-sex couples there were for every 1,000 households within towns and cities across the country.

New York is too big to figure prominently in top city rankings for same-sex couples per capita (it was 67th in 2010, Mr. Gates said), but it does rank by county, alongside more the more traditional locations. Manhattan is No. 5, after San Francisco County, Hampshire County, Mass., Monroe County, Fla., and Multnomah County, Ore.

The city ranking is a barometer of the changing demographics among the population of same sex couples, which has grown more diffuse throughout the country over the past 20 years.

In interviews here this week, several couples said that social attitudes had softened overt time and that living farther afield was now easier to do. Mr. Gates compared the phenomenon to immigrants who no longer sought the safety of an enclave.

Steve Elkins, who runs a nonprofit community center called Camp Rehoboth, which acts as a liaison with the gay community, said cultural training classes for the summer police force would be met by stony stares in the early days. More recently, when he asked the police officers if they knew a gay person, two people in the class raised their hands to say they were gay.

“It’s a generational change in thoughts and attitudes,” he said. Rehoboth, he likes to say, used to be an island of tolerance in a sea of homophobia, and now is an island of tolerance in a sea of outlet malls.

Further evidence, Mr. Elkins said, was the quick passage of a civil unions bill that is set to take effect in Delaware on Jan. 1.

TO READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE, GO TO: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/us/25census.html

in Adoption / IVF / Parenting / Second Parent Adoption / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Who’s on the Family Tree? Now It’s Complicated

July 4, 2011 – New York Times –
By LAURA M. HOLSON

Laura Ashmore and Jennifer Williams are sisters. After that, their relationship becomes more complex.

When Ms. Ashmore and her husband, Lee, learned a few years ago that they could not conceive a child, Ms. Williams stepped in and offered to become pregnant with a donor’s sperm on behalf of the couple, and give birth to the child. The baby, Mallory, was born in September 2007 and adopted by Ms. Ashmore and her husband.

Then the sisters began to ponder: where would the little girl sit on the family tree?

“For medical purposes I am her mother,” Ms. Williams said. “But I am also her aunt.”

Many families are grappling with similar questions as a family tree today is beginning to look more like a tangled forest. Genealogists have long defined familial relations along bloodlines or marriage. But as the composition of families changes, so too has the notion of who gets a branch on the family tree.

Some families now organize their family tree into two separate histories: genetic and emotional. Some schools, where charting family history has traditionally been a classroom project, are now skipping the exercise altogether.

Adriana Murphy, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at the Green Acres School in Rockville, Md., said she asked students to write a story about an aspect of their family history instead. At Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, KC Cohen, a counselor, said the family tree had been mostly relegated to foreign language class, where students can practice saying “brother” or “sister” in French and Spanish.

“You have to be ready to have that conversation about surrogates, sperm donors and same-sex parents if you are going to teach the family tree in the classroom,” Ms. Cohen said.

For the last six years, according to United States census data, there have been more unmarried households than married ones. And more same-sex couples are having children using surrogates or sperm donors or by adoption. The California Cryobank, one of the nation’s largest sperm banks, said that about one-third of its clients in 2009 were lesbian couples, compared with 7 percent a decade earlier. Even birth certificate reporting is catching up. New questions are being phased in nationally on the standard birth certificate questionnaire about whether, and what type of, reproductive technology was used, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tracing a family tree, though, is more than just an intellectual exercise. There are medical and legal implications, particularly when it comes to death and inheritance. Families, said Melinde Lutz Byrne, president of the American Society of Genealogists, are mostly concerned with who inherits property when a biological relative dies.

Ms. Williams and her sister, though, had other issues to resolve. Ms. Williams, who has a lesbian partner, had a biological child, Jamison, 6, who was conceived through a sperm donor, too. And the sisters wondered how to describe the relationship between Mallory and Jamison, who are not only biological half-siblings, but also cousins. And where did the sperm donors fit in?

After months of discussion, they came to a resolution: “Mallory is my daughter and Jennifer is her aunt,” said Ms. Ashmore, 38, who lives close to her sister near Minneapolis. At home, Jamison sometimes refers to Mallory as his sister. But at school, said Ms. Williams, 40, “she’s his cousin.” The sperm donors, they agreed, had no place on the family tree.

For some children, having to explain their family tree can be alienating.

“It can cause kids pain in unexpected ways,” said Peggy Gillespie, a founder of Family Diversity Projects, a family education advisory group.

At Green Acres last year, Ms. Murphy said, two kindergartners were playing outside when a boy, the son of a single mother, told a classmate that he had an older sister. “You can’t have an older sister; you don’t have a dad,” Ms. Murphy recalled the girl saying. The boy protested; he said he knew his sperm donor, who had a daughter of his own.

Sue Stuever Battel and Bob Battel of Cass City, Mich., will soon have four children. The oldest, Addy, 8, was conceived naturally; Dori, 5, was conceived via a sperm donor. They are adopting two toddler boys. “All four of our kids are 100 percent in our family tree,” Ms. Battel said. “The genetic connection has never mattered.”

But the Battels understand that their children may have questions. So they have prepared two sets of baby books: one outlining life with the Battels, the other about each child’s birth parents. The children can choose which details they want to share.

Ms. Battel and her husband also debated whether to include other children born using their donor’s sperm. After all, those children would be biological half-siblings to Dori. Their verdict: “We decided they are not half-siblings, but donor siblings,” Ms. Battel said. “We honor them, but they are not part of the family.”

Jeannette Lofas, founder of Stepfamily Foundation, a family counseling service based in New York City, eschews the traditional family tree for a network of circles (females) and squares (males), with dotted and straight lines to connect married and blood relatives. A live-in lover or nanny can be included, too, though with no connecting lines.

“That is how complex we have to think,” Ms. Lofas said.

Rob Okun, a 61-year-old magazine editor from Massachusetts, agreed to donate his sperm to a lesbian couple 16 years ago. Mr. Okun already had two biological children with a longtime female partner and two stepchildren with his current wife. He wanted no role in parenting the children born with his donated sperm, but did want them to know who he was.

The couple, Patricia Kogut and Lynne Dahlborg, agreed, and Ms. Kogut gave birth to Lucyna and Nathaniel. Ms. Dahlborg then adopted both children.

“There is the family tree and there is the day-to-day structure of the family,” Ms. Kogut said.

She described the family as having a “triple family tree” that included her, Ms. Dahlborg and Mr. Okun.

For a long time, though, Mr. Okun was uncomfortable with the connection, largely because his mother disapproved. It wasn’t until after her death in 2004 that he considered including the children in his tree. Now, he said, “I make no distinction between my biological and stepchildren.”

For now, Ms. Williams and her sister said they were happy that Mallory and Jamison shared a special bond. But what if one day the two children want to place themselves as brother and sister on their family tree?

“I think I’m fine,” Ms. Ashmore said, tentatively.

Then she added, “But we’ll have to think about it.”

in Adoption / Anonymous/Known Donation / IVF / Legal / Parenting / Second Parent Adoption  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Octomom Case Rattled Fertility Medicine

June 3, 2011
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The case of the doctor who lost his license for helping “Octomom” bear the world’s largest-surviving brood of babies has rattled the field of fertility medicine — a $3 billion industry with little regulation.

When the Medical Board of California revoked the license of Dr. Michael Kamrava on Wednesday, it was a rare outcome that came more than two years after his patient Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets.

He’s allowed to keep practicing until July 1.

There are no laws that prevent doctors from implanting multiple embryos and possibly producing another “Octomom”-type case, but national guidelines have been tightened in the wake of the case to restrict how many embryos can be implanted in patients.

in In the News / IVF / Legal / Legislation  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Human Egg Donor Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit Complaint Filed Over Alleged Price Fixing Of Human Egg Donor Services.

Human Egg Donor Services Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit ComplaintApril 13, 2011

 

A class action lawsuit has been filed against American Society For Reproductive Medicine (“ASRM”), Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (“SART”) and Pacific Fertility Center (collectively “Defendants”) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (styled Lindsay Kamakahi v. American Society For Reproductive Medicine, Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology and Pacific Fertility Center, Civil Action Case No. 11-Cv-1781) challenging, as allegedly per se illegal under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, an alleged horizontal price fixing agreement among purchasers of human egg donor services (“Donor Services”) in connection with ASRM’s alleged promulgation of certain rules setting forth the maximum compensation its members should pay for donor services (“Maximum Price Rules”), SART’s alleged adoption of such Maximum Price Rules and SART-member fertility clinics’ alleged agreement to follow such rules, according to the Human Egg Donor Services antitrust class action lawsuit complaint.

The Human Egg Donor antitrust class action lawsuit complaint is reportedly brought on behalf of a putative class of persons (the Plaintiff Class), as follows, unless otherwise excluded:

All women who, at any time during the time period starting four years prior to the filing date of the complaint to the present (the “Class Period”), sold Donor Services for the purpose of supplying AR Eggs to be used for reproductive purposes, within the United States and its territories, to any Defendant Class member.

The Human Egg Donor antitrust class action lawsuit complaint reportedly refers to Donor Services as the time, inconvenience, labor and discomfort incurred by women who agree to supply their own human eggs for assisted ferility and reproductive procedures (“AR Eggs”).

The Human Egg Donor antitrust class action lawsuit complaint is also reportedly brought against a putative class of defendants (the Defendant Class), as follows, unless otherwise excluded:

All SART-member Fertility Clinics and all AR Egg Agencies that agreed to comply with SART/ASRM rules on donor egg compensation and who paid for Donor Services at any time during the time period starting four years prior to the filing date of the complaint to the present.

For more information on the Human Egg Donor Services antitrust class action lawsuit complaint, read the Human Egg Donor class action lawsuit complaint.

in In the News / IVF / Legal  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

New Social App Helps Lesbians Find Sperm Donors

Mombian.com, Friday April 1, 2011

Lesbians seeking to get pregnant now have a new tool at their disposal: Dōnr, a new app for mobile devices that lets women check out the credentials of potential sperm donors. Like Grindr, the social app that helps gay men find potential mates nearby, Dōnr lets lesbians access profiles of men in close proximity to see if they might be suitable candidates for providing genetic material.

“Lesbians have long used cutting-edge science to create their families,” said Elizabeth Bean, the CEO of Dōnr, Inc., herself the mother of twins. “It’s time that the search for sperm donors catches up with the rest of the family creation process and takes advantage of modern technologies.”

After their phone alerts them to the presence of a potential donor, lesbians can use the app’s extensive profile information to check out details such as education, hobbies, health, and whether the man wants contact with the child. They can then connect with the man to talk in person.

Bean says her company will soon be coming out with several related apps: Bāstr, which allows lesbians to find the nearest LGBT-friendly fertility clinic, and Lawyr, which helps them find an attorney to do the legal paperwork necessary to protect their families.

in Anonymous/Known Donation / IVF / Parenting / Resources / Services  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Pioneer of In Vitro Fertilization Wins Nobel Prize

October 4, 2010
New York Times
By NICHOLAS WADE

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded this year to Robert G. Edwards, an English biologist who, with a physician colleague, Patrick Steptoe, developed the in vitro fertilization procedure for treating human infertility.

Since the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, on July 25, 1978, some four million babies worldwide have been conceived by mixing eggs and sperm outside the body and returning the embryo to the womb to resume development. The procedure overcomes many previously untreatable causes of infertility.

Dr. Edwards, a physiologist who spent much of his career at Cambridge University in England, spent more than 20 years solving a series of problems in getting eggs and sperm to mature and successfully unite outside the body. His colleague, Dr. Steptoe, was a gynecologist and pioneer of laparoscopic surgery, the method used to extract eggs from the prospective mother.

Dr. Steptoe, who presumably would otherwise have shared the prize, died in 1988. Dr. Edwards, who born in 1925, has now retired as head of research from the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, which he and Dr. Steptoe founded as the world’s first center for in vitro fertilization.

Though in vitro fertilization is now widely accepted, the birth of the first test tube baby was greeted with intense concern that the moral order was subverted by unnatural intervention in the mysterious process of creating a human being. Dr. Edwards was well aware of the ethical issues raised by his research and took the lead in addressing them.

The objections gradually died away, except on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, as it became clear that the babies born by in vitro fertilization were healthy and that their parents were overjoyed to be able to start a family. Long-term follow-ups have confirmed the essential safety of the technique.

The deliberations of the prize-giving committee at the Karolinksa Institute in Sweden are confidential, and it is unclear why it took so long to acknowledge Dr. Edwards’s achievement. The committee routinely ignores the stipulation in Alfred Nobel’s will that the prize should be awarded for a discovery made the preceding year, because it takes longer than that to evaluate most scientific claims, but delays of 30 years or more are unusual. The Lasker Foundation in New York, whose jurors often anticipate the Nobel Prize committee, awarded Dr. Edwards its prize in 2001.

Dr. Edwards’s research proved too controversial for the Medical Research Council, a government financng agency that is the British equivalent of the National Institutes of Health. In 1971 the council rejected an application from Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe to work on in vitro fertilization, but they were able to continue with private funds.

“In retrospect, it is amazing that Edwards not only was able to respond to the continued criticism of in vitro fertilization, but that he also remained so persistent and unperturbed in fulfilling his scientific vision,” Christer Höög, a member of the Nobel Prize committee, writes on the Nobel Foundation’s Web page.

in In the News / IVF  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Who’s Your Daddy? Or Your Other Daddy? Or Your Mommy?

Reproductive contracts and the best interests of children

Reason.com, January 5, 2010 by Ronald Bailey

The question of what it means to be a parent has never been simple. But three recent cases highlight just how complicated things can get—and how inconsistent the courts have been in weighing genetic parenthood against the deals struck by would-be parents (gay and straight) with their partners.

Case 1: Sean Hollingsworth and Donald Robinson Hollingsworth are legally married in California and are registered as civil union partners in New Jersey. The two husbands arranged for Donald’s sister, Angelia Robinson, to serve as a gestational surrogate carrying embryos produced using sperm from Sean Hollingsworth and donor eggs. In October 2006, Ms. Robinson bore twin girls whom she turned over to their two fathers. In March 2007, Ms. Robinson sued for custody alleging that she had been coerced into being a surrogate. A New Jersey court ruled last week that Ms. Robinson, who has no genetic tie to the twins, is their legal mother and can sue for primary custody later this year.

Case 2: A November 17, 2009 New York Times magazine cover article described the case of a man identified as Mike L in Pennsylvania who discovered through genetic testing that the 5-year-old girl he thought was his daughter was in fact the child of his wife’s co-worker Rob. Their marriage dissolved immediately but the cuckolded husband Mike L testified that he agreed to child support when his cheating former wife said that the girl’s genetic father Rob would not support the girl. Two years later, his former wife married Rob, but continues to receive child support for her daughter from her former husband.

Case 3: Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2000. In 2002, Miller bore a daughter, Isabella, by means of artificial insemination. The couple broke up in 2003. Now Miller, the biological mother of their child, has become an evangelical Christian, and refuses to allow Jenkins visitation rights with their daughter, claiming that such visits violate her new Christian principles.

Issues related to genetic ties of the various parties run through these cases. In the New Jersey case, one of the gay men is the genetic father of the twin girls, while the surrogate has no genetic relationship to them. The court ignored this factor and chose instead to follow the 1988 precedent set by the state’s famous Baby M case. In 1986, William and Elizabeth Stern had contracted with Mary Beth Whitehead to bear a child for them by means of artificial insemination using Mr. Stern’s sperm. Once Whitehead gave birth, she broke the contract and decided that she wanted to keep Baby M. Ultimately, the New Jersey Supreme Court invalidated surrogacy contracts as against public policy, but sent the case to a lower court. The lower court eventually decided on the basis of the “best interest of the child” to award custody to the Sterns while giving visitation rights to Whitehead. In 2004, the Sterns’ daughter Melissa formally terminated Whitehead’s parental rights.

In the messier case of Mike L, Pennsylvania courts decided that he must continue paying child support and that the girl’s genetic father, Rob, now his former wife’s husband, was not legally obligated to do so.

When Miller and Jenkins joined in civil union and decided together on having a child by artificial insemination, it was clear that both would be parents regardless of genetic ties. Now Miller apparently wants to make the claim that genetics should have priority when it comes to child custody. But what if it had been the case that Jenkins was the biological mother and now wished to deny Miller any parental rights on the grounds that she had become an evangelical Christian?

In the case of the runaway former lesbian, Vermont’s civil union laws are explicit that the laws regarding child custody and support apply to civil unions in just the same way that they do in the case of heterosexual marriages. Consequently, after a lot of legal wrangling, a Vermont court ruled in November that given Miller’s antics, Jenkins should be given sole custody of Isabella. Miller has now fled with Isabella and is in hiding.

Rather than wading into questions of genetics, why not apply an ethical analysis of contractual obligations to these cases? In the New Jersey surrogacy case, the sister agreed to bear children using donor eggs and sperm from her brother’s partner for the male couple. After the court ruled that she was the legal mother of the twins, Ms. Robinson reportedly said it is “one more step in helping to insure stability and peace in the lives of our girls.” The claims of the two Hollingsworth dads should not turn on genetic ties; in the absence of a showing of coercion or fraud, the surrogate should honor her contract in which she agreed that the gay couple would be the parents of the children she bore them. Imposing the outdated notion that the woman who bears a child is necessarily his or her legal mother without regard to actual contracts agreed upon by consenting adults, the courts are abetting emotional and financial instability for children rather than preventing it.

In the case of Mike L, his wife broke their marriage contract when she cuckolded him and bore a child that was not his. As reported by the Times, when he discovered that the girl was not his daughter he immediately sought a divorce. In a similar Pennsylvania case, Mark Hudson discovered that he was not the father of the boy for whom he was providing child support. Hudson immediately ceased contact with the boy and filed to stop child support payments. In Hudson’s case, the court ruled that Hudson’s former wife had defrauded him and dismissed the child support payments.

By violating their marriage contracts, women who cuckold their husbands already have increased the chances of financial and emotional instability affecting the lives of their children. This instability is augmented by laws which require men to cut ties in order to avoid child support, thus making them choose between their desire for retribution against the cheating spouse and their desire to maintain a relationship with the child.

It could be argued that in Mike L’s case, he “negotiated” a new contract when he agreed to pay child support and maintained his relationship with the girl he once thought was his “natural” daughter. On the other hand, perhaps Mike L fraudulently was induced into the new contract by assertions by his former spouse that the girl would not be supported by her genetic father, Rob. Was the new contract violated when Mike L’s former wife married Rob so that her daughter was now living with her genetic father whose own financial obligations are lightened as a result of Mike L’s court enforced child support payments? Just as in the Vermont and New Jersey cases, the decision should turn on interpretations of contractual obligations, not genetic ties.

Wives who violate their marriage contracts by cuckolding their spouses should not be awarded child support payments for those children. One suspects that the advent of widespread paternity testing at birth will reduce the instances of this kind of contractual violation and thus also shrink the number of children who will be affected by the emotional and financial instability it causes.

Notions about the importance of genetic ties clearly inform the negotiations and the expectations between parties in various reproductive contracts, be they old-fashioned marriage contracts or newfangled surrogacy contracts. But courts should look beyond genetics to the reproductive contracts to which the parties actually agreed. In general the best public policy for looking out for the interests of children will be to enforce the contracts under whose terms they were brought into being.

Ronald Bailey is Reason‘s science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is available from Prometheus Books.

in IVF / Legal / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments