MULTIPLE MOMS, DUELING DADS: From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The surrogate triplets born in Erie nearly a year ago now have two mothers.
One is the egg donor. The other is the womb donor.

An Ohio judge decided last week that the egg donor has a mother-child relationship with the triplets. Three months earlier, in another genetic-donation case, Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that a sperm donor must pay child support. The two cases raise questions about the rights and responsibilities of people who buy and sell genetic material. ...

The fear for sellers of eggs and sperm is that someone will track them down for child support. The fear for buyers of eggs and sperm is that a seller will demand rights to the child.

That's what happened in the triplets' case, but it was with the aid and consent of the man who bought the eggs, provided the sperm, paid for the womb, and is the father of the boys.

He is James Flynn, a 63-year-old Cleveland man who paid tens of thousands of dollars for the surrogate birth of the triplets but then neglected to get the legal papers necessary to take the boys home from the hospital.

When Flynn hadn't visited his newborns for five days straight, the womb donor, Danielle Bimber, took them from the hospital. An Erie judge declared in April that she is the babies' legal mother.

Shortly after that, the egg donor, Jennifer Michelle Rice, a 23-year-old Arlington, Texas, resident, asked an Akron judge to declare her the mother. ...

A judge's decision that a donor has a parent-child relationship should raise concern with anyone who sells or uses genetic material, said medical ethicist Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania medical school. ...

The Erie case, and the case the Pennsylvania Superior Court decided in July, are good examples, he said. In the Superior Court case, a man donated sperm to a woman who told him he'd have no responsibility for the child. But then he was ordered to pay child support for what turned out to be twins. The judges ruled invalid the agreement between the two adults depriving the children of their right to support.

more

posted by Eve at 10:24 PM | link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home