1. Another Surrogacy Nightmare

Yesterday’s New York Post profiled a young California mother who served as a surrogate mother for a Chinese couple. When she saw the twin boys she’d delivered she said, “Wow! They look different.” One of the boys was Chinese, the other was half-white, half African-American, the child of Jessica and her boyfriend. Click through to read what happened and see why we continue to work to #StopSurrogacyNow. (See also: “Georgia man accused of being unfit parent in legal battle with surrogate mom”)

2. Assisted Suicide Legalization Efforts Stalled at Every Level

In a piece of very good news this week, the Washington Post reports, “Legalizing assisted suicide has stalled at every level.” To date, “none of the 27 states where such measures were introduced this year passed them into law . . . The bills were either quashed in committee or passed one legislative chamber but not the other.” In New York, the state Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on assisted suicide, “ruling unanimously that the terminally ill patients who brought the case don’t have a constitutional right to obtain life-ending drugs from a doctor.” #StalledAtEveryLevel

3. Georgia State Supreme Court Rules Girl Has No Legal Father

Donor eggs, donor sperm, reproductive tourism, divorce, a three-year legal battle, and now a state Supreme Court ruling that a child has no legal father. It’s unclear from the news report how broadly the Georgia state Supreme Court intends this ruling to be interpreted. For today, however, a child in Georgia is without a legal father.

4. Eggsploitation in the News

Both Redbook and The Atlantic this week covered the issue of egg donation, which we have for many years been calling #Eggsploitation. Redbook reveals “The Scary Truth about Donating your Eggs” saying, “donor experiences read like dark, seedy horror stories and supposedly virtuous baby makers sound more like greedy egg snatchers.” Indeed, indeed. In a short video documentary/essay featuring our good friend Dr. Jennifer Schneider, The Atlantic highlights the fact fact that the only reason anyone can say that there are no known risks of egg donation is “because nobody has ever looked into it.” Here’s the full video, six minutes well spent:

5. Sperm Donation: Only Half of the Puzzle Pieces

In Australia, a donor-conceived woman speaks out on why, even in the face of her own fertility struggles, she would never consider using a sperm donor.

It feels like you’re given half of the puzzle pieces and you’re left to make sense of yourself without any roadmap. I would love to know my father and my siblings. I just want to make sense of my own heritage and history.

Lagniappe

Jennifer spent Tuesday of this week with Maggie, from our film Maggie’s Story. Both were being interviewed by Dutch TV crew working on a four-part documentary series that includes a segment on egg donation. If you haven’t seen Maggie’s Story, or if you haven’t seen it in a while, it’s now available on Amazon, and it’s FREE for Prime Members.

This Week in Bioethics Archive

Image by AndrewBain via flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

 

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Matthew Eppinette, Director of Programs