by I. Glenn Cohen
Harvard Law School, Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 100, p. 431, 2012, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 11-32
Abstract:
In the United States, a movement urging legally prohibiting sperm-donor anonymity is rapidly gaining steam. In her forthcoming article in this journal, The New Kinship, and in her wonderful book, Test Tube Families, Naomi Cahn is among this movement’s most passionate and thoughtful supporters. Read more…
By Rachel Pepa [Please note the other resources at the bottom of the article when you click "Keep reading."]
A review of Precious Babies: Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting after Infertility By Kate Brian
As an informal guide to having children after fertility problems, Precious Babies has much to recommend it. There is, however, an omission which, as a donor conceived (DC) person, I found particularly troublesome – the book is entirely devoid of DC voices. Read more…
I think conservatives and libertarians err when they refer to “gay marriage” as such. They unwittingly concede a tremendous amount of ground when using that term. If I was on the left I would secretly be quite happy every time I saw a conservative or libertarian use it.
But since I’m not on the left, I cringe. In my view, the issue is really about the redefinition of marriage. Calling it a redefinition is the correct viewpoint since that is what is at stake. The historical definition of marriage included two important concepts.
1. The innate procreative abilities between men and women. No such ability exists in same sex sexual activity. This point alone makes it very clear that sexual activity between a man and a woman is not equal to sexual activity between people of the same sex. Read more…
November 25th, 2011
Betsy
by Damian Adams
Not knowing your biological father is hardly a fit topic for Hollywood slapstick.
Starbuck is a new French-Canadian comedy about what happens when a sperm donor who has fathered 533 children is tracked down by over 100 of them. There is all manner of hilarious slapstick when he anonymously steps into their lives after watching them from afar. According to the Ottawa Citizen, it’s “a sparkling crowd-pleaser”. Read more…
November 25th, 2011
Betsy
by Carolyn Moynihan
Watch the video.
It’s Father’s Day again — that is, Anonymous Father’s Day, a time to become aware of what the children of donor dads think of their absent, unknown progenitors. Read more…
Wonderful! The world is coming to its senses!
FROM THE IONA INSTITUTE BLOG:
In the last year to 18 months the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR, pictured) had handed down several excellent decisions. The most famous is the Lautsi judgement in which it ruled that Italy could place crucifixes on the walls of state classrooms.
In another, it ruled that a prohibition on same-sex marriage did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, and this week it ruled that a ban on the use of donor sperm or eggs does not violate the Convention. Read more…
September 26th, 2011
Betsy
by Karen Clark
Not much unlike Alana’s expereince in the Shark Tank, Jennifer Lahl’s experience was not much different. These people should be ashamed by their uncivil behavior. Thankfully, Diane Allen, of the Infertility Network, was a voice of reason and respect. Read more…
An open letter to the ASRM from Susan Kane, a donor conceived person, in response to Todd Essing’s commentary (Balancing the Rights of Donor Offspring With Those of Donors: But What About Parents? Forbes. June 30/11, http://tinyurl.com/Essig-2011-06-30) which was a response to the commentary that Naomi Cahn and myself placed in BioNews last week (The Birth of Donor Offspring Rights in the USA?, http://tinyurl.com/6ce5kny).
As a donor-conceived adult, I appreciate Todd Essing’s observation that “law is a blunt instrument” for managing the gap between technology and social norms governing its use. (Forbes, see above link)
And yet, law is exactly where we turn when people and industries fail to regulate themselves. And, despite Essing’s feeling that gamete donation — with us for over 100 years — is “new”, we have decades of evidence that the current norms and regulations governing gamete donation in the United States are failing everyone. Read more…
Great article. From start to finish.
by Barbara Kay
A Canadian provincial court rules that gamete donors may not hide their identity.
The British Columbia Supreme Court struck down provisions of the Adoption Act and Adoption Regulations on Thursday. They argued that the legislation denies offspring of sperm and egg donors (gamete donors) their Charter rights, which ought to be equal to those of adopted children with regard to knowledge of the identity and medical history of their biological parents. Read more…
by Elizabeth Marquardt 05.19.2011
A big, big day!
See Karen’s post below.
Here is the Vancouver Sun article:
by Damian Adams
Social acceptance of commercial conception ignores all the hidden costs.
It is often said that we cannot put a price on happiness. However, for those who are medically or socially infertile, happiness has a dollar value. For the first time in history adults can use technology to create their babies, with the only restriction being their ability to pay. Read more…
from Yahoo News:
France’s top court refused Wednesday to allow French citizenship for 10-year-old twin girls born to a surrogate mother in the United States, in a ruling that affirmed France’s legal ban on surrogacy.
In a case straddling international legal rights and bioethics, the Court of Cassation ruled a California county went too far by ruling that a French couple are legally the twins’ parents.
Keep reading…
“Surrogacy is also banned outright in most European countries, including Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy, and Switzerland. But the French have articulated the reasons for this rejection most eloquently”: Read more…
Yesterday there was a segment on NPR titled Taming The Twin Trend From Fertility Treatments. They talked about how various forms of ART have caused an increase in the incidence of twin pregnancies:
Twins, once a rarity to marvel over, are now a common part of American culture, thanks in large part to increased use of reproductive technology. Twins are conceived naturally just 2 percent of the time; for those who get pregnant with fertility treatments the rate is more than 40 percent.
They also discussed some of the health risks associated with twins: Read more…
Categories: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Babies, Children, Donor Conceived Persons, egg donation, ethics, Health Care, Infertility, Invitro Fertilization, motherhood, Pregnancy, Surrogate Mothers Tags: artificial reproductive technologies, babies, Children, Donor Conceived Persons, ethics, Health Care, invitro fertilization
Yet more evidence that Anonymous Sperm and Egg Donation is Over (and not soon enough, if you ask me).
newsweek.com:
Currently, in the United States, you need a license to sell a condo or cut hair in a salon, but not to broker human life. The $3 billion fertility industry goes largely unregulated, offering blank pages to those searching for information where the rest of us are free to access vital statistics of public record. “I’m not a treatment, I’m a person, and those records belong to me,” says Pratten.
On top of the serious risk of inbreeding and the medical and health concerns associated with anonymous sperm and egg donation, we all should be entitled to know our biological heritage for the sake of the effect it has on our self image and identity: Read more…
Categories: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Canada, Donor Conceived Persons, egg donation, ethics, Infertility, Invitro Fertilization, morality, popular culture, Surrogate Mothers Tags: artificial reproductive technologies, Donor Conceived Persons, ethics, invitro fertilization
by Carolyn Moynihan
The story of Carlina White, the American woman who was abducted as a baby and has only just found her mother and her own identity, has made world headlines. But how many journalists are drawing the obvious moral of the story: kids need to know who they are.
Right now, babies are being concocted in laboratories around the world from the ova and/or sperm of anonymous donors and in some cases carried to birth by surrogate mothers — all to satisfy the desires of adults to have a child. Their successes will be written up with sentimental approval. Read more…
First Ever Story-Collective for People Involved in Reproductive Technologies
“Not all the kids are doing all right,” says Alana S., founder and curator of AnonymousUs.org, “Anonymous Us is a place for all participants in the fertility industry to share their own truths in a way that retains dignity and privacy for our loved ones, while also sharing valuable perspectives and life experiences.” Read more…
Posted by ceridwen
“One of my least favorite things is sperm donor jokes, which are also inexplicably common. The only thing I hate more than sperm donor jokes is when someone calls their absent dad/child’s father a sperm donor… I literally have to walk away in order to not to get incredibly angry at whoever is saying it. ” Read more…
by Elizabeth Marquardt
” … I don’t want to be on his family’s Christmas cards or to take up an inordinate amount of his time. I just want to know who he is.”
“I feel like half a person.”
“I wish he simply knew I exist.”
If you are a man who gets a woman pregnant after meeting her in a bar, you cannot legally hide your identity from your child, nor walk away from at least minimal responsibility as a father. Yet if you wish anonymously to sell your sperm to a sperm bank, you can remain hidden from your child forever. Read more…
November 16th, 2010
Betsy
CBC’s Jennifer Lahl and Wesley J. Smith are occasional writers for ToTheSource.org. Recently ToTheSource interviewed Jennifer.
To The Source: How did you become interested in egg donation? What brought this to your attention?
Jennifer Lahl: I became interested in it as a broader issue within the various reproductive technologies. I’ve been writing and speaking on reproductive technology for close to a decade, and through my work, egg donors in the U.S. have found me and contacted me to tell me their stories. These were women whose stories had a negative outcome, and the donors had nowhere to go. Also, being involved in the stem cell debates, I was concerned with the growing demand for human eggs which will be needed to do the research. Read more…
Thirty-two invitro fertilized children gather at the Swedish Medical Center in 2003 in Denver. The Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Center gathered the children from each of its 16 years of work in the field. Guests included Payton Kline, 4 1/2 months, the 5,000th invitro fertilized baby born at the center. – Kevin Moloney/Getty Images 
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