Through our documentary film work we have told the stories of women harmed from their decision to “donate” their eggs, we’ve interviewed young men and women who are speaking out about their being born of anonymous sperm donation, and we’ve told the stories of surrogate mothers who were treated like Breeders and bonded with the babies they carried for others. What most people forget in their desire to see infertile couples and same-sex couples “build a family” are the children born of these modern technologies.

As one young woman, born of a surrogate pregnancy says, “I am a product.”  As Hollywood insists, the kids born of these third-party arrangements are all right.  This article tells another Hollywood story, where certainly one can see that these kids are not all right.

Rich Hollywood celebrity meets boy and falls in love. Couple makes plans to start a family and live happily ever after. However, this story had no fairytale ending but rather a nasty breakup splattered all over the tabloids.

In 2010, Sofía Vergara met prominent businessman Nick Loeb, fell in love, and began making plans to have a family together. This was not your typical “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby carriage” story. It was more like Modern Family, complete with multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization whereby embryos, with Vergara’s eggs and Loeb’s sperm, were created and frozen for later use with a surrogate who was an employee of Vergara’s.

Per the complaint filed in California Superior Court in the Santa Monica Courthouse, Loeb and Vergara retained counsel to draw up the gestational-surrogacy agreement and were advised against excessive compensation as well as not to use an employee of Vergara’s to carry the pregnancy to term. Loeb maintains that Vergara moved forward while ignoring the legal counsel and demanded that her employee, a 44-year-old woman, serve as her surrogate. The surrogate’s payment — which included gifts worth $200,000, and Vergara made some of her mortgage payments — was at least four times the compensation that surrogates typically receive. Twice the surrogate was impregnated with their embryos, and twice no pregnancy was achieved.

While much of this public debate has been over the disposition of their remaining frozen embryos, glaringly absent from the media noise has been concern that an employee of Vergara served, or perhaps was pressured and coerced, to be impregnated, twice, with the frozen embryos. It would not be hard to imagine that providing your body to your employer, especially a wealthy, powerful actress, when asked to do so, might come with a high level of pressure to comply for fear of losing your job.

As Vergara’s case demonstrates, surrogacy often depends on a wealthy individual’s exploitation of a woman of lower socioeconomic status. Rarely is this a free decision on the part of the surrogate, and it’s almost impossible to ensure informed consent. It’s hard to imagine that the gifts and incentives provided by Vergara didn’t influence her surrogate to act against her own self-interest and ignore some of the serious medical risks and consequences that she was signing up for in this endeavor.

Conflicts of interest are of serious concern when a third party is brought into a contract to make a baby for someone else. No one in this process seemed bothered that they were participating in a practice that is effectively a market for the buying and selling of children.

Canada prohibits payment to women who serve as surrogates, because it is concerned about the exploitation of poor women by the wealthy and about creating a for-profit market for surrogacy. In California, there are no payment restrictions to paying women to have babies for another.

In the court of public opinion, this case should serve as exhibit A for how assisted reproductive technologies, while being marketed as a way to help people have babies, often present us with complex ethical problems that exploit some for the gain of others. These problems can be compounded as relationships between the parties who created the embryos break down. Also, these novel technologies work their way into our courts, and without federal laws set up to address disputes, legal remedies vary from state to state.

Until the court decides if Nick gets to keep the embryos, or Sofia gets to have them destroyed, their “daughters” remain in a frozen suspended stated in a fertility clinic in Beverly Hills. Loeb’s battle hinges on several counts, one being that California recognizes that an unborn child has “potential interest.” Also, according to the California civil code, a “child conceived, but not yet born, is deemed an existing person, so far as necessary for the child’s interest, in the event of the child’s subsequent birth.” What remains to be seen, though, is how this code, which clearly imagines a baby in utero, not in a cryopreservation tank, will be applied to this particular case.

Key to Loeb’s case however, may be the violation of this provision in the California health and safety code: “When providing fertility treatment, a physician or surgeon or other health care provider shall provide a form to the male and female partner . . . that sets forth advanced written directives regarding the disposition of embryos.” The code explicitly states that the parties must be able to choose what will happen to the embryos if the couple separates:

In the event of separation or divorce of the partners, the embryos shall be disposed of by one of the following actions:

(a) Made available to the female partner;
(b) Made available to the male partner;
(c) Donation for research purposes;
(d) Thawed with no further action taken;
(e) Donation to another;
(f) Other disposition that is clearly stated.

From the filed complaint, it is clear that Loeb was never given these options, or any options, in the event that he and Vergara separated.

Here in the United States, we have well over 600,000 embryos — or “souls on ice,” as journalist Liza Mundy calls them — and no federal policy on their treatment or disposition. Time will tell who will prevail; the case is making its way through the courts. At the moment, these embryos, who were created as wanted children, seem to be caught in a custody battle that sadly may be fought and won as if they were products. The irony is that if Loeb wins and is given custody of the embryos, he will need a surrogate in order to bring them to birth.

This article originally appeared at ToTheSource.
Image by Yahoo via flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.