The State Creates Sperm Donors

The new social institution of the anonymous sperm donor is completely the creation of the government. This case from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania proves that beyond any shadow of a doubt. In this case, a woman asked a friend to donate sperm to her, on the understanding that he would not be a father to the child: he wouldn't ask for visitation or other parental rights, and she woudl not ask for child support. By the time the child was 5 years old, the mother changed her mind and asked for child support. The PA Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling, and decided that the man did not owe child support. The court ruled that the couple's verbal contract was binding. Bill Duncan posted the case earlier.

This case is interesting because the court's argument makes it very clear that couples could not and would not contract for donor sperm unless they were assured that the state would create a separation between the members of the couple. Given that the state already permits anonymous sperm donation, I think this case is properly decided.

Contrary to the Court's statement, I can think of several good policy reasons why the "would-be mother's reproductive prerogatives" should be curtailed. Children have a natural right to have a relationship with their fathers. The state has no business separating mothers and fathers from each other, and children from their fathers. We should not assume that every woman has a right to have a baby, just because she wants one. And if a woman wants to "seek the sperm of a man she knows and admires," public policy ought to be to encourage her to marry him, not cook up alternative contracts with him that allow them to deconstruct the parental relationship.
I think we should begin having a debate on exactly these questions.

Read my entire post at my personal blog.

Labels: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Fathers, Marriage

posted by Jennifer Roback Morse at 10:56 PM | link

WSJ "Five Best": Marriage

From "Five Best: These works explore marriage with uncommon clarity, says author Edward Mendelson," Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2008:

1. Riceyman Steps
By Arnold Bennett
[1923]

...Arnold Bennett's greatest novel...probes the unsettling psychological and symbolic depths of a marriage that becomes too close...

2. The Return of the Soldier
By Rebecca West
[1918]

This brief and devastating novel explores the conflict between marital duty and romantic love...

3. Effi Briest
By Theodor Fontane
1895

...the last of the great 19th-century novels of adultery...as much a gentle comedy about the ordinary humanity of Effi and her stuffily correct husband as it is a tragedy about a marriage that combines social success and emotional failure...

4. The Prime Minister
By Anthony Trollope
1876

The fifth and best of Anthony Trollope's six "Palliser" novels...explores the ways in which a marriage is not just a relation between two persons but also a relation between the married couple and the world around them...

5. Love in the Western World
Denis de Rougemont
[1940]

...swift and sweeping history of eight centuries of romantic passion...argues that marriages fail when the partners want a romance that can continue through a lifetime but succeed when the partners recognize that marriage can be more complex, more satisfying and more intense than even the brightest sudden flare of romance...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:56 AM | link

Pennsylvania Sperm Donor Case

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has recently issued a decision approving a contract whereby a sperm donor was relieved of any child support obligation for a child he created.

The case involved what the court described as “former paramours” who agreed that the man would provide sperm to the married woman so she could have a child through IVF. He agreed not to seek visitation and she to forego seeking child support. Five years after twins were born, however, the mother did seek child support. The trial court ordered support because it believed the best interests of the children required invalidating a contract that would prevent their receiving child support.

The supreme court disagreed. The majority opinion said that it is an “inescapable reality” that children are being born in arrangements involving donor sperm or eggs and “an increasing number of would-be mothers who find themselves either unable or unwilling to conceive and raise children in the context of marriage are turning to donor arrangements to enable them to enjoy the privilege of raising a child or children.”

The majority argued that without the kinds of arrangement it was approving in this case, “a woman who wishes to have a baby but is unable to conceive through intercourse could not seek sperm from a man she knows and admires” and sperm donors would be “considerably less likely to provide his sperm to a friend or acquaintance who asks, significantly limiting a would-be mother’s reproductive prerogatives.” The court concludes: “There is simply no basis in law or policy to impose such an unpleasant choice.”

A dissenting opinion argued that the means of conception of a child should not change their right to parental support and that “the only difference between this case and any other conception is the intervention of hardware between one identifiable would-be parent and the other.” The dissent believed the legislature should be the body to “disenfranchise children whose conception utilizes clinical procedures.”
posted by William Duncan at 6:06 PM | link

UK Call for Stay-at-Home Mums

From "Brown advisor calls for tax breaks for stay-at-home mums after warning over nurseries," Daily Mail (UK), January 3, 2008:

Parents should get tax breaks to help them bring up their children at home, says [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown's childcare research chief.

[He] warned that toddlers who spend long hours in nurseries or with childminders suffer "disconcerting" effects...

The findings will come as a deep embarrassment to Labour, which has pumped £21billion into subsidising childcare and toddler education over the past decade.

It has been heavily criticised for pressing mothers back into the workforce by giving out large sums through the tax credit system for them to spend on nurseries...

Mr Brown has attracted criticism both for Labour's insistence that all mothers should work and for giving benefits to working single mothers...

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:51 PM | link

The Financial Complications of Same Sex Divorce

From "Same-Sex Divorce Challenges the Legal System," Washington Post, January 2, 2008:

...[Same sex couples] who choose to end their marriages soon discover that the trauma of divorce is compounded by legal and financial difficulties that heterosexual couples generally are spared...

For same-sex couples, divorce can be financially ruinous. Heterosexual couples claim a tax deduction for alimony payments, but that benefit is not available to gay and lesbian spouses because the Internal Revenue Service does not recognize their marriages...

Retirement savings and pension plans, easily split for heterosexual couples divorcing...have to be cashed out and [are] heavily taxed for gay couples. Current tax law allows only $12,000 to be transferred from one gay spouse to another without being subject to a gift tax...

posted by Imapp Staff at 9:19 AM | link

New Gallup Poll: Whose the Happiest?

According to Gallup:

". . . Most Americans say they are generally happy, with a slim majority saying they are "very happy." More than 8 in 10 Americans say they are satisfied with their personal lives at this time, including a solid majority who say they are "very satisfied." This personal satisfaction level contrasts sharply with the low level of satisfaction Americans express with the way things are going "in the United States at this time." Republicans, married adults, those residing in higher income households, parents of young children, those attending church weekly, and whites are most likely to say they are satisfied and happy at this time.:

posted by maggie at 12:55 PM | link

Happy Marriage Reduces Stress for Wives

From "Happy Marriage Eases Wife's Workday Tension," HealthDay News, January 1, 2008:

TUESDAY, Jan. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Coming home to a loving spouse and a good marriage helps working women shake off the stress of the day, new research confirms.

Men, on the other hand, often drop their stress at the door when they come home, regardless of the state of their union...

[R]esearchers found that women in marriages who felt they were happily married saw a greater reduction in cortisol levels when they came home at the end of the work day than women who were less happily married. Cortisol levels in men dropped at the end of the day regardless of their satisfaction with their marriage.

Long-term elevated cortisol levels have been associated with a host of maladies, including depression, burnout, chronic fatigue syndrome, relationship problems, poor social adjustment and possibly even cancer, according to the researchers...

posted by Imapp Staff at 11:43 AM | link

Bringing Up Baby All by Momself

Mostly celebrating the allegedly new freedom:

"Bringing up Baby All By Momself, Jan 1 2008 Oregonian.

". . . ."One used to think unmarried and teenager in the same breath," says Barbara Risman, head of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and executive officer for the Council on Contemporary Families. That's not the case anymore -- and that's a major cultural shift. "Grown-up women are having children whether or not they are married."

No longer can we label the unmarried mother simply as poor, uneducated and young. Increasingly, they are women like Portland resident Shila Fisher: older, financially stable and college educated.

Fisher never wanted children. She lived an unconventional life -- darting from country to country to live and volunteer after finishing college in Colorado, starting and selling businesses, then deciding at 42 that she wanted a baby after all.

"The joke I have about being pregnant is I just waited until I got divorced," says Fisher, just days before she was to deliver her baby boy. Fisher knows she made a choice that her mother and grandmother couldn't have. Little stigma haunts women these days when their stomachs begin to bulge and they flaunt a ringless hand.

"It's hard to stigmatize 40 percent of your population," says Risman. In 1965, one in 16 Oregon babies were born to unmarried mothers. Now it's more than one in three . . ."

posted by maggie at 7:41 PM | link

Marriage Junkies

Jason Krafsky starts a marriage junkies blog.
posted by maggie at 7:36 PM | link

New Year, New Hampshire, New Unions

From "New Year, New Unions for Gay Couples," AP, January 1, 2008:

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Dozens of gay and lesbian couples entered into civil unions in New Hampshire in the early moments of New Year's Day as a new state law legalized the partnerships after midnight.

Organizers said they checked in 37 couples for an outdoor ceremony on the plaza of the New Hampshire Statehouse...

New Hampshire's civil unions law — enacted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature early last year and signed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch in May, gives same sex couples the same rights, responsibilities and obligations of marriage without calling the union a marriage. New Hampshire is the fourth state in the nation to allow civil unions...

New Hampshire follows Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey in allowing civil unions. Massachusetts is the only state that allows marriage. New Hampshire estimates that as many as 3,500 to 4,000 civil unions will be performed this first year.

posted by Imapp Staff at 9:15 AM | link

Divorce Cuban Style

From "Cuban Divorce Is Easy, Housing Is Harder," AP, December 20, 2007:

...Estranged Cuban couples sometimes remain under the same roof for years or even lifetimes, learning that while divorce on the island is easy, housing is not. The phenomenon is a testament not only to the communist-run island's severe housing shortage, but also to Cubans' ability to stay friendly — or at least civil — under the most awkward of circumstances...

By law, Cubans cannot sell their homes and because the state controls almost all property, moves must be approved. Housing is so scarce, however, that often there is nowhere to go...

Many divorcees head back to their parents' homes, but problems arise if their former rooms have since been occupied by siblings' spouses and offspring.

Some divorced couples keep living together but throw up extra walls of plywood...

The shortage is exacerbated by failed marriages. In 2006, the latest figures available, Cuba reported 56,377 marriages and 35,837 divorces. That's a yearly divorce rate of nearly 64 percent, though it does not account for those married and divorced multiple times.

Breakups are so common that Cubans joke that anyone whose parents stay together needs a lifetime of therapy...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:54 AM | link