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…
The current battles over the fate of thousands of babies conceived via in vitro fertilization would confound even King Solomon.
Sensational news reports surrounding the $180,000 price tag for Ukrainian black-market babies shocked the determinedly secular segments of society, and few remain unmoved by the story of the FBI’s round-up of “baby-brokers.” Beyond the initial horror of children clinically conceived and sold as a commodity, investigators discovered that these babies have dozens of full and half siblings that were sold elsewhere. This opens the possibility that, in 25 years, a young man might unknowingly marry his sister. Read more…
by Charlie Butts
The Nebraska Supreme Court has granted child custody rights to the former lesbian partner of a biological mother.
Susan Schwerdtfeger broke up with her lesbian partner five years after the birth of her son through in vitro fertilization. She told the court that her former partner did not pay to help support the youngster — while Teri Latham, the former partner, sought visitation rights because she shared in the cost of the IVF procedure and had tried to visit the child since the breakup. Read more…
My first response to this story Betsy posted earlier this week about “Twin Reductions” at IVF clinics was to be appalled. But as I have reflected on it, there is more to the story than the outrageousness of it all.
To be sure, twin reduction is intrinsically appalling. Fertility doctors routinely implant multiple embryos in a woman’s womb, in the hopes that at least one of the babies will survive. “Selective reduction” is routine in the fertility industry, if “too many” babies survive.
“Twin reductions” is the next step in the process of killing for convenience. Women abort one of a pair of twins, not for medical or health reasons, but for “social reasons”, that is, for convenience. There is no particularly terrible risk to carrying twins. These mothers just can’t quite imagine taking care of two babies. They feel like they are too old to handle twins.
And by and large, doctors perform these abortions. The procedure itself is slightly creepy. Read more…
What a mess, and, of course, these children, wherever they are, IF they are, will have no idea WHO they are.
Alex Walterspiel and Melanie Waters, a married couple in their 30s, conceived their 3-year-old son through in vitro fertilization and hoped to get pregnant again with one of the remaining frozen embryos.
But when the California couple returned in 2011, they said, the clinic told them the fertilized embryos were gone. Read more…
What’s it like to have a child with someone who’s a friend but not a lover? More and more people are doing just that, to satisfy their broodiness. Helen Croydon investigates.
Seven years ago, when Sabrina Morgan, 33, was single and desperate for a child, she found herself chatting to Kam Wong, 41, a gay man who was longing to be a father, in an online fertility forum. ‘I instantly thought he was genuine, down-to-earth, laidback and flexible,’ says Sabrina. Read more…
Wow. Where does it end?
by RUTH PADAWER
As Jenny lay on the obstetrician’s examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound tech had turned off the overhead screen. She didn’t want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment — and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted the needle into Jenny’s abdomen, aiming at one of the fetuses, Jenny tried not to flinch, caught between intense relief and intense guilt. Read more…
Posted on July 1, 2011 by wendykr
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…
By Michelle Laque Johnson
Click here to view a video of Dr. Morse speaking.
People who promote same-sex marriage say the Catholic Church’s stand that marriage is a sacrament that must be between one man and one woman is gay-bashing. Why, they ask, should it matter to you if two people of the same sex get married? Love is love, right? Read more…
A follow-up to Betsy’s post on pre-natal DNA testing:
That knowledge has a flip side. “How much responsibility are we expecting people to take for the genetic makeup of any child they might have?” asks Josephine Johnston, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank near New York City.
If a child is born with a condition that could have been detected, the presence of the test changes that outcome “from something that happened to you, to something that you participated in,” she says. Read more…
By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President
Pacific Reproductive Center (PRC) of Southern California (AKA, the reproductive tourist capital of the world) has just announced the opening of an on-site laboratory with breakthrough technology that has the ability to analyze all 46 chromosomes (23 from the mother and 23 from the father) of a human embryo within 24 hours. It is billed as “fresh hope for would-be moms at risk of miscarriages and birth defects.” Read more…
Great article. From start to finish.
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:
VANCOUVER — A B.C.-born woman has won her court battle, resulting in a judge striking down the B. C Adoption Act as discriminatory and unconstitutional for offspring born as a result of anonymous sperm, egg and embryo donors. Read more…
About ten years ago, I set the goal for myself to perform a one-arm pullup.
Working diligently and using a variety of training techniques, I got very close to that goal. Agonizingly close. Despite years of effort, the feat eluded me. Yet I never gave up.
Finally, I got the idea to radically restrict my carbohydrate intake, lose the belly I was developing and thereby increase my strength-to-weight ratio. I cut out sugar, grain and other starchy foods. Fifteen pounds came right off, and I was able to get my chin over the bar using one hand. This makes me very happy.
You might ask, Ari, what the heck does this have to do with anything that the Ruth Institute stands for? Are you just writing this to brag? Read more…
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…
by Terrence McKeegan Co-authored with Tyler Ament
WASHINGTON, April 27, 2011 (C-FAM) – Costa Rica must legalize in vitro fertilization or face penalties for alleged violations of human rights protected by international law, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In 2000, the Costa Rican Constitutional Court ruled that IVF in the country was unconstitutional because it violated the right to life of the embryo. Four years later, the Center for Reproductive Rights petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to accept a case claiming that the human rights of two Costa Rican couples were violated by the ban. Read more…
An antitrust suit is filed against America’s fertility clinics
Competition for eggs is fierce: is it fair?
FERTILITY assistance is a big and profitable business in America. Those needing help to conceive—infertile couples, older women, gay men using surrogate birth mothers—may be charged steep prices by the mostly privately owned clinics. In turn the clinics pay egg donors fees that often run into thousands of dollars. In contrast, an egg donor in Britain can legally be compensated by only the same amount as someone serving on jury duty—£61.28 (just under $100) a day. Read more…
Jennifer Lahl, CBC President—and Executive Producer, Director, and Writer of Eggsploitation—recently interviewed Linda about her egg donation experience.
Lahl: You told me you saw the ad on Craigslist’s posting by the fertility center, looking for Asian egg donors. What made you answer this ad?
Linda: I thought I fit the description very well: Great grades, college educated, great looks, and genetics. The list could go on for all the ego reasons I would want to do this. 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.
“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…
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