Ruth Institute Blog

This article was posted April 28, 2010, at The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. It is a really interesting, quick read and quite the eye-opener. Thank you, anonymous author.

I volunteered to harvest eggs for a friend, whose ovaries had ceased producing eggs in her early 30’s. She bought donated sperm from a California university sperm bank several years prior to my egg harvest and was being counseled about infertility options. This was not an “eggs for money” contract. I volunteered without a compensation obligation.

My experience began with an appointment to determine if I was a qualified egg producing candidate. I was 30 “something,” athletic, bright, employed as a professional, and married, with no children-yet. I talked to my husband and friends about it and their main concern was the medical risks to me. Read more…

Please keep your eggs and sperm inside the body until you are ready to use them.
See what happens when you don’t? According to this article from the UK, errors in IVF clinics have doubled in the last year. Lest you think this is some ordinary error, listen to this:

One couple were told by the University Hospital of Wales’s IVF clinic that their last remaining embryos had been lost during treatment. The pair, identified only as Clare and Gareth, had been trying for a baby for eight years. Clare told the BBC: “I was sat there, gowned up, waiting to go in and have a transfer.

“They said you’ve got one embryo remaining, the other two embryos have gone missing.

“They said in the next sentence I can assure you they haven’t gone into anyone else.”

She added: “Those were two potential babies.”

No kidding. Read the whole article here.

Betsy linked to a story about a study showing that women using IVF have a 4 times greater chance of having a stillbirth than women who conceived naturally. Here is the link to that study. I’m continually amazed at how lightly people take these risks. Read more…

With all the talk on here about artificial insemination lately, I thought I’d throw this brief article in too.

by Jared Yee

Confused by claims and counter-claims about climate change? Can’t decide whether it’s your patriotic duty to be a sceptic or a true believer? Well, you have it easy. How about deciding whether IVF is good for a baby’s health or not? Three similar, but conflicting stories appeared in the media this week. Read more…

My friend, and Ruth Institute Board member, Jennifer Lahl pointed me to this article by the mother of a woman who died of colon cancer at the age of 31. Colon cancer in a person this young, with no family history of colon cancer, is most unusual. The mother’s hypothesis? I’ll let her tell:

As a physician, I have found another way to bring meaning to my daughter’s death. In the absence of a family history of colon cancer, this disease in a young person is extremely uncommon. Jessica was an egg donor for in vitro fertilization (IVF) for infertile couples several years before becoming ill. Egg donation involves repeated self-injection of female hormones Read more…

An article at TheCatholicLeader.com laments that the Parliament of the Australian state of Queensland recently passed a law that extensively liberalized the use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).

Of particular importance to opponents of the bill (such as KidsRightsCount.org) was the issue of surrogacy, especially as it relates to same-sex parenting.

If you go to their website and click on <multimedia> at the top of the page you can find excellent videos that discuss ART and its legal, moral, and social ramifications. (Surrogacy & A Child’s Sense of Identity and The New Stolen Generation, for example.)

Understand that in America, as things stand now, there would be no controversy over any of this. That’s because (what very few people realize is) in the United States there are fewer regulations on ART than probably any other developed nation in the world – or almost any other nation in the world period, for that matter. You can do virtually anything you want reproductively in America without any consideration for how it affects anyone involved, least of all the children conceived.

Does anyone (besides me) have any concerns about that?

Here is a podcast of my debate at Columbia Law School on same sex marriage. Listen for my opponent’s dismissal of the feelings of the Donor Conceived Persons. I can tell you: a chill went through the room when she said that. Even students who generally support ssm were surprised and I sensed, dismayed, by her cavalier response. See what you think.

Thanks to those who participated in February’s marriage quiz. Once again, the question was:

What percentage of Artificial Reproductive Technology patients are married couples, and what percentage are unmarried women?

A. The vast majority of ART patients, about 75%, are married couples.

B. It is split about evenly between married and unmarried women.

C. It is evenly split three ways: about a third married women, about a third partnered lesbians and about a third single women.

D. None of the above.

Click here and scroll down to view the answer.

Great article by a Ruth Institute Academic Advisory Board Member.

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC National Director

Newsweek recently reported a story about a 51-year-old man, who between 1980 and 1994 donated his sperm twice a week in order to make cash for medical school and to nurture his altruistic desires to help infertile women. Kirk Maxey states, “I loved having kids, and to have these women doomed to wandering around with no family didn’t seem right, and it’s easy to come up with a semen donation.”

Don’t get me started. Read more…

What percentage of Artificial Reproductive Technology patients are married couples, and what percentage are unmarried women?

A. The vast majority of ART patients, about 75%, are married couples.

B. It is split about evenly between married and unmarried women.

C. It is evenly split three ways: about a third married women, about a third partnered lesbians and about a third single women.

D. None of the above.

Click here to take the quiz.

Babies conceived through IVF are at higher risk for disorders.  For my libertarian friends who read this blog, please notice the Hayekian strain to this issue.  Not only are there unintended consequences of human action, as F.A. Hayek warned. First, look at the physical problems of IVF, that no one anticipated:

Scientists have discovered that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other children, putting them at greater risk of diseases Read more…

A donor conceived person tells her story.  My comments are in italics.

The concept of egg and sperm donation, donors procreating with the intention of not assuming any responsibility or feelings towards the person they have helped create, is a curiously artificial construct conjured by the infertility treatment industry. which has a financial stake in promoting one “choice” over others.  It is the complete opposite of how parents normally feel towards their biological children.  that irresponsibility and alienation caused by egg and sperm donation would not be possible without legal Read more…

Heather MacDonald has an outstanding article in National Review on the impact of artificial reproductive technology on the family.

Every time a homosexual couple conceives a child, there is another parent offstage somewhere whose sperm or egg has allowed conception to occur (and, in the case of male homosexuals, whose womb has allowed gestation to occur). In some homosexual families, that parent will be involved in his child’s life; in others, he will remain completely anonymous and unknown. Read more…

Yet another example of how selfish people can be. So much for what’s best for the child. I want it, and I can get it, so I will. And of course the doctors aren’t willing to turn down a buck. So sad. Poor kids with moms who will likely die while the kids are in college. How kind. I’m willing to bet old women are doing this because their grown children are too selfish to provide grandchildren. And what 20-year-old wants to spend his time caring for his mom after her hip replacement surgery or while she’s dealing with dementia?

Michael Cook

Senior fertility specialists in the UK have rejected calls for an age cap on IVF eligibility. After 59-year-old Sue Tollefsen featured in a BBC documentary about her desire to get IVF in Britain so that she could give birth at 60, there were howls of indignation from the public. But doctors backed up Ms Tollefsen’s claim that she was fit to be a mother even though she would be 70 when her child was ten. “I agree there should be a cut-off point,” she told the London Times. “Perhaps 65 is too old, but I’m still so healthy I don’t see why I shouldn’t be treated.” Read more…

is now available from iMAPP.   The Digest is a summary of significant legal developments concerning marriage during the month of December. Edited by Mr. William Duncan, who is also a member of the Ruth Institute’s Academic Advisory Board, this month’s edition includes cases from around the English-speaking world. This is a valuable resource for anyone who wants links to the important cases. The cases this month include: Read more…

From this article we learn that there are even more problems with invitro fertilization and surrogacy than are common knowledge. Problems arise when playing God? Shocker!

Jared Yee, BioEdge.org

Different regulatory approaches to surrogacy in the US can result in legal tangles, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine. The “lax atmosphere” of surrogacy regulation “means that it is now essentially possible to order up a baby, creating an emerging commercial market for surrogate babies that raises vexing ethical questions.”

The Times gives three disturbing examples.

Continue reading: http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8791/

This article by an intellectual property lawyer reviews many of the issues surrounding genetic screening and anonymous sperm donors. If you think these are simple issues, you haven’t thought about them enough. Here is one of my favorite passages:

Anonymity itself comes with a cost. One need only spend a little time on the website created by a donor child searching for her father and half-siblings to understand the pain some of these children feel Read more…

is the subject of this article in BioNews.  I completely disagree with this author, on every point except that we shouldn’t abuse childless women. Other than that, well, look for yourself to see if you think this person is coherent.

Faith groups (and I am a member of one) have a poor, at times appalling, record of abusing childless women. Made to suffer for and keep secret the fertility problems of their menfolk, it is a human rights issue and it is right in our midst. Colluding with secrecy is not the answer. …There is no returning to a mythical golden age in which donors donated and patients were inseminated and everyone was told to carry on as if nothing had happened. Read more…

An Irish court ruled that the biological dad who donated sperm to a lesbian couple still has some rights.

the five judges of the Supreme Court today found that, while man was not entitled to guardianship of the three-year-old boy at this time, it would be in the child’s best interest for his father to have access to him.

This case illustrates the coming conflict between lesbian couples and the father of their children. Read more…

Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet.com

We are used to the sad stories of children who have never known their fathers, and of those whose fathers become estranged through divorce; but there are a growing number of children who risk losing the only father they have ever known because he discovers he is not their father after all. Read more…