by Elizabeth Marquardt
A scruffy man, tanned and good-looking, dressed in an old leather jacket and snug jeans, is on a motorcycle zipping through a neighborhood near you. He’s a restaurateur into “local” everything, a man whose produce vendor is one among many sexy women who want to hook up with him. He was also, years ago, a sperm donor who, unbeknownst to him, achieved reproductive success. Read more…
Let’s play a little game. A husband and a wife have a baby via, er, natural insemination. For some reason, a court needs to determine parentage. What objective standards could the court use to make that determination?
Well, DNA tests can be used. That gives an objective answer.
There are other scientific tests that can also be used. These tests may be less reliable than DNA, but these tests are a tool that can give an answer that is accurate to a given degree.
Then there’s the presumption that any child born to the woman during the marriage belongs to her husband. This rule takes advantage of a phenomenon that is well known– that a wife’s most frequent (usually only) sex partner is her husband. This is a clear rule founded on observable reality. One can objectively determine whether the rule has been followed. Furthermore, the presumption is rebuttable to take care of those situations in which there have been some, um, indiscretions. (Some would say not nearly rebuttable enough, but that’s beside the point). So, objective facts can counteract the rule when warranted.
Okay. Let’s try a different scenario. Two women come to the same court. They have been raising a child together. Read more…
For whose benefit are these children created? Their own? Or their parents?
Two stories concerning the donation of gametes – sperm and ova – appeared recently in the media.
One related that a “virtual” sperm and egg bank is being established that will only accept offers to donate from “beautiful” people. Internet polling will determine who is beautiful enough to do so. The goal – informed by the principle that “everyone deserves a beautiful child” – is to enable “ugly” people to have beautiful children. Read more…
Alana S, who blogs at the Family Scholars blog offers this testimony about some of the ambiguities, complications and stresses of being a conceived through anonymous sperm donation:
I decided to tell my mom about my blogging. I decided to explain to her how extensively I plan on combating commercial conception. Read more…
I am responding to the inquiry of a student who wanted to know, in effect, whether it would be desirable to somehow get the government out of the marriage business altogether. Couldn’t we sidestep a lot of the conflict over marriage, by eliminating the default relationship contract currently known as marriage, and allowing any couple or other adult grouping to create any contract they found mutually agreeable? Read more…
Also right on cue, after noting how many women would be willing to freeze their eggs, comes this story on the risks of birth defects associated with IVF. Please note: these data are from IVF, and are almost certianly mostly more or less “fresh” eggs. We don’t know yet the impact of freezing and thawing out eggs after 10 or more years.
Scientists carried out a survey of 33 French centres collecting data on more than 15,000 births from 2003 to 2007. Read more…
Just this past weekend, I told the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers that the use of Artificial Reproductive Technology is the newest threat to marriage as the lifelong fruitful union of a man and a woman. I argued that the very existence of the ART option is distorting women’s marriage decisions. They believe that they can postpone marriage indefinitely, and if Mr. Right never shows up, they can still become a mother on their own, artificially.
As if on cue, Time magazine steps up to the plate with corroborating evidence:
New research from Belgium and the U.K. suggests that women may increasingly be considering freezing their eggs as a way to prolong fertility as they pursue a career — or find the right romantic partner. A survey of nearly 200 female students found Read more…
We here at the Ruth Institute have been saying for quite some time that Artificial Insemination technology can and will be used to push men out of families, and in so doing increase fatherlessness.
It almost boggles the mind that there is any dispute about this proposition. Witness the strange and unexpected changes in the law that Kay Hymowitz documents in this article:
Unfortunately, in the absence of any other authority, answering these questions has fallen to family court judges, who are—and I mean no disrespect—not always the sort you’d expect to be on the short list for the Louis Brandeis Award for Cautious Jurisprudence. Read more…
By W. BRADFORD WILCOX
In “The Switch,” coming later this summer, Jennifer Aniston plays an attractive 40-year-old professional who has given up on finding Mr. Right for marriage and decides instead to move straight on to motherhood with a donor father. The movie offers a largely celebratory treatment of donor insemination, as do two other movies out this year, “The Back-up Plan” and next month’s “The Kids Are All Right.” Indeed, one of the bottom-line conclusions these movies are pushing is that the children turn out “all right” with donor dads. Read more…
Brad Wilcox weighs in on the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study. Brad is a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, and lectured at our ITAF conference last summer.
Seventy-one percent of the adult offspring of these single mothers agree that: “My sperm donor is half of who I am,” and 78% wonder “what my sperm donor’s family is like.” Half report that they “feel sad” when they see “friends with their biological fathers and mothers.” Donor offspring with single mothers also are much less likely Read more…
Is Father’s Day going to become obsolete? I guess those for whom it is actually celebrated are a dying breed.
By Van Helsing
Father’s Day is coming up a week from Sunday. MSNBC has begun to honor it already — by proclaiming that fathers are needed only for their sperm: Read more…
My last post dealt with the sampling and reporting problems associated with the latest study purporting to show that the children of lesbians are doing just fine. The fact is, that the study claims that the children of lesbians are doing better in every dimension than the children in the general population. The underlying message of this story is not simply, “leave us alone to have kids the way we want.”
Herewith, are the 3 Really Pernicious Messages behind the “Lesbians Make Better Parents” Story line:
1. Women are better parents than men. Therefore, Read more…
You’ve all seen the headlines by now: “Children of lesbian parents do well.” These headlines are based on a new study published in the journal Pediatrics. I actually read the study, which is my custom before commenting. I also read the letters to the editor on this study.
Here are 8 reasons why this study does not prove anything about the functioning of the children of lesbians.
1. The sample is extremely small: 78 children of lesbian mothers and 93 children in the control group.
2. The sample of lesbian mothers is unlikely to be representative of the general population of lesbians. This is a sample of people who volunteered for the study, not a random sample. The most motivated and high-functioning people are the most likely to volunteer for a politically charged study.
3. The “results” are intrinsically unreliable. The results are nothing but the mothers’ reports of their childrens’ behavior and functioning. There is no cross-checking with objective outcomes, Read more…
Crazy!
by Jared Yee
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is once again under fire following a string of new IVF blunders. These have included losing embryos, placing them in the wrong woman, fertilising eggs with the wrong sperm, or, as reported in BioEdge in November, inadequately screening sperm later found to possess severe genetic abnormalities. Read more…
by Elizabeth Marquardt
A revealing new study shows that, for donor offspring at least, being wanted isn’t everything.
Experts estimate that there could be around one million young people alive in the world today as a result of sperm donation. How are they doing? Elizabeth Marquardt of the Institute for American Values and colleagues have done a unique study based on a large, representative US survey and, in a report published today, tell us that the kids, many of them, are not okay. In this interview with MercatorNet during a recent conference hosted by the Social Trends Institute in Barcelona, she talks about some of her findings. Read more…
Wow. Powerful title.
by Michael Cook
Is it high-tech child abuse to rob children of their biological heritage?
A 51-year-old Michigan man may have fathered as many as 400 children by donating sperm to an IVF clinic between 1980 and 1994. At the time Kirk Maxey saw this as a way to pay his way through medical school and to help infertile women. “You would get a personal phone call from a nurse saying, ‘The situation is urgent! We have a woman ovulating this morning. Can you be here in a half hour?’,” he told Newsweek last year. Read more…
By ROSS DOUTHAT, New York Times
If you want to adopt a child in the United States, you’ll face an array of bureaucratic roadblocks and invasive interrogations. Adoption agencies will assess your finances, your relationships, and your fitness as a potential guardian. The interests of the child, not the desires of the would-be parent, will be treated as paramount throughout. Read more…
by Michael Cook
In the US alone an estimated 30,000-60,000 children are born each year through sperm donation, yet no entity is required to report on these vital statistics. Until now, no reliable evidence has been available on the experiences of young adults who were conceived in this way. A report released this week by the Institute for American Values, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, is the first-ever representative, comparative attempt to learn about the identity, kinship, well-being, and social justice experiences of these adults. Read more…
While I was over at the My Daddy’s Name is Donor site, I came across this entry, called Debt and Donation, by a woman who was donor conceived herself, and who “donated” her eggs for the money. Poignant, painful, powerful: I can’t begin to do it justice. Go read it yourself.
The Institute for American Values has just published a new study, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, of how donor conceived persons are doing in comparison with those who were born and raised by their biological parents and in comparison with those who were adopted. I have not read the report yet, just the Executive Summary. But I was struck by one of the exchanges that has already occurred on the site.
FamilyScholar blogger Olivia Pratten writes:
I have been speaking out publicly about my donor conception for many years. I am always very critical of the anonymity, the means to which I was brought into the world and I’m almost always disapproving of the infertility industry.Inevitably someone will say to me “but you were so wanted.”
My answer is always, “yes, and your point?”
Responding to this post is a gay man, called “T.”
Read more…
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