Ruth Institute Blog

by Alana S.

[Editor's note: Alana uses "3PR" here short for "third party reproduction," which refers to conceiving a child via sperm or egg donation or surrogacy]

Last night I went to a lecture by Robert P. George on What is Marriage?  and I wanted to share some of the thought nuggets I found helpful and pertinent. We often talk here about the culture wars going on in this country. We fight about gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, 3PR… I go to a luncheon and hear a woman speak of her and her lesbian partner and their deep, passionate desire to get married. In defending why they should have the right to do so they first and most forcefully reveal that they have a son they’re raising, born using one woman’s eggs, the other woman’s womb, and someone else’s sperm- a man that has been excluded and banished from the family. Read more…

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President

In the world of commercialized conception, it seems we’ve decided the freezer is a great place to keep eggs, sperm, and “spare” embryos until we need them. We think they do pretty well in the freezer, but the verdict is still out on what happens over the long haul when you freeze and store human reproductive material and nascent human life. Commercial conceivers simply assume that because we can freeze and thaw our reproductive cells or progeny, it causes no harm or danger.

And not only can we do it; it has become big business. Read more…

More craziness from California:

California, the battleground state for the arguments for and against same-sex marriage, is now considering an unconventional law that would allow children to be legally granted more than two parents. Read more…

By Jennifer Lahl and Matthew Eppinette

Recently, Dr. Summer Johnson McGee, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics, posted on the journal’s blog a very brief and highly dismissive review of / comment on our film, Anonymous Father’s Day. The substance of her criticism, entitled “Are ‘Anonymous Fathers’ Really A Problem?” is that our organization, The Center for Bioethics and Culture, is on a “crusade against artificial reproduction,” and that our film is simply another entry in our greater efforts at opposing anything and everything that involves biotechnology.

She concludes: Read more…

by Ian Smith

Victoria can be a world leader with information on donor conception.

CLEM Newton-Brown (The Age, March 29) has it right when he says of donor conception as practiced in the 1980s that this was an experiment that we got wrong and which we now need to correct. Read more…

by Wesley J. Smith

The Center for Bioethics and Culture has a good film out called Anonymous Father’s Day, which deals with the emotional impact on children of sperm donors from not knowing anything about their biological fathers.  This too is a form of reproductive commodification and the consequences in the lives of the people created are more intense than I certainly would have thought.  Of course, that isn’t the only way of being an “anonymous father,” but the film brings up issues I had not considered before seeing it.  It is well worth your while. Read more…

by Alana S. Newman

March 1, 2012 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/03/4628

The fertility industry is booming because we desire genetic and memetic immortality–the preservation and reproduction of our bodies and ways of life.

Twenty-five years ago, I was born to a woman married to an infertile man. His infertility motivated their purchase of anonymous sperm. My biological father’s lifetime contribution to me and my existence arrived in a nondescript box, courtesy of our local mailman. The circumstances of my conception have inspired me to think about certain things that many people take for granted. Sex was not necessary for me to exist. I was not the natural fruit of a marriage. I was a very clear decision, an economic transaction and exchange of services rendered by buyers and sellers who did not know each other–not even as acquaintances. Read more…

The one resolution originating from the Diocese of Albany to go before the 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church will be the one titled “A Right to Human Identity” sponsored by the Rev. Mark Diebel.

As reported in this blog when it came before the 2009 diocesan convention in Albany, the resolution aims to address the loss of history for both adoptees and persons born through artificial reproductive technology, including surrogacy parenting. Read more…

Dr. Michael L. Brown

According to a popular 2010 movie, the children of anonymous sperm donors are often successful at tracking down their donor dad(s), and in the end — to use the movie’s title — “The Kids Are Alright.” The AnonymousUs.org website, which features the real-life stories of “voluntary and involuntary participants in these [reproductive] technologies,” paints a very different picture. Read more…

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…