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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I am flattered by the attention from Daily Kos blogger, Dante Atkins. Sadly, this post is short on substance, and long on ad hominem attacks and innuendo. I will leave aside for now, his silly attack on our logo, of all things. I will ignore his mangling of the Biblical story of Ruth, except to note one thing: I chose Ruth because she is a unifying figure, loved by all the major faith groups. Catholics love her; Jews love her; Evangelicals love her; Mormons love her. Everybody loves Ruth, it seems, except for leftist bloggers. I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine how leftists like Dante expect to build a coalition when they alienate every major faith tradition in America. Read more…
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…
As mentioned in previous posts, Time Magazine is spotlighting America’s 50 Years on the Pill through somewhat rose-colored glasses. Really? No negative effects? Even sliced bread can’t compete with that prognosis.
As part of Dr J’s series on 50 Years of the Pill, we’ve included a podcast of her interview on Issues, Etc., where she discussed the topic. Has the Pill accomplished what its defenders promised? What other effects has it had on the way we view sex, fatherhood, babies, careers, and families?
This podcast is also available on our podcast feed or through iTunes.
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.
A professional journal reports on the experiences of Donor Conceived Persons searching for their anonymous dads, and/or half-siblings. One fact that I have been interested in for some time: how many people using Artificial Reproductive Technology are actually infertile, and how many have normal fertility, but do not have opposite sex partners? This study is obviously quite preliminary, in that it only looks are the subset of DCP’s who have chosen to use the Registry to search for their donors. However, among that set of 165 people:
Fifty-eight percent (96) of offspring reported their parents to be a heterosexual couple, 23% (38) a single mother and 15% (25) a lesbian couple.
In other words, nearly half of the mothers in this sample had no male partner. We don’t know whether they had medically impaired fertility.
I have no idea how representative this would be. And I don’t know of anyone else who is even asking this question. This article deals with only a very limited set of issues surrounding the DCP’s decision to search, and how satisfied they were with it. We definitely need more research, before we go careening off, making the purchase of human gametes an entitlement for anyone who has the money or the insurance coverage….
Continuing the social trend of separating sex from procreation, we are taking the next logical step after having sex without babies, (which many people thought would be great fun.) We now are entitled to have babies without having sex, (which I’m pretty sure is not as much fun.) The Illinois Dept of Insurance has declared that infertility treatment is available to women who do not have sex. Formerly, for infertility treatment to be covered, a woman had to show that she had had unprotected sexual intercourse for a year. Now, a woman with “the same medical condition” can be treated, whether or not they have had sex. As a practical matter of course, some women seeking infertility treatment have nothing medically wrong with them at all. They just do not want a male sex partner.
Naturally, Lambda Legal applauds this bold new step toward creating an entitlement for Manufactured Babies for All.
My article on the incentive effects of same sex marriage was posted on Catholic Exchange yesterday. In case you missed it the first time, here’s a quote:
Permitting people to form same-sex unions will not be the last change to the legal landscape. The entire culture, including the coercive apparatus of the state, will be pressed into service to promote same-sex relationships as wholly unexceptional. …
This is significant because it will reduce or even eliminate the stigma attached to forming a same-sex union. Therefore, choosing a partner of the same sex will be a live option for everyone, not just for the 3% of the population that currently defines itself as gay or lesbian. We can safely predict that some women will decide that it is easier, all things considered, to team up with a girlfriend for parenting purposes. Think of it: You could have a child through artificial means and an anonymous donor. You can have the legal rights and benefits of a state-sanctioned relationship with a compatible friend. You can avoid the headaches involved with dealing with a pesky man, who, if actually the child’s father, might have his own opinions about the child’s upbringing. The baby can be entirely your project, with a little help from your friend and an accommodating legal and social environment.
A woman in this situation might very well continue to have sex with men. She could have a stable non-sexual relationship with her female partner and cycle through a series of male sex partners with whom she might or might not have kids. The stability of her non-sexual “marriage” with the girlfriend could allow her to have kids with multiple fathers. Instead of marriage being something that attaches mothers and fathers to their children and to each other, this new form of “marriage” will become the vehicle for “multi-partner fertility,” a family form that is fraught with difficulty and complications.
All the incentives for this behavior are being put into place. It is very curious that the economists are not curious about this.
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…
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