In early August a little-noticed story ran in some Canadian newspapers. It concerned a Saskatchewan lawsuit in which a couple was fighting over visitation rights to four-year-old twins. Nothing unusual about that, right? In this particular case, however, the circumstances are unusual. The couple are not married, did not have a sexual relationship and the twins were conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF). Grant Sharman, the guy part of this couple, was not the sperm donor and therefore, has no biological link to the child. Just to review, IVF is a technology in which doctors extract eggs (often stimulated by hormones) from a woman and join them with donated sperm to create an embryo. The embryo, often created in a glass petri dish (vitro is Latin for glass), is then implanted into the woman (or sometimes into a surrogate). More than one embryo is usually implanted to increase the success rate. A husband, partner, friend or an anonymous donor can donate the sperm. In the Saskatchewan case, the couple were platonic friends who lived together. The single woman decided she wanted a baby and asked Mr. Sharman to donate sperm. He declined, but helped arrange and pay for the costly IVF treatment, and attended pre-natal classes with the mother, who has not been identified. He supported her and the babies financially and was the primary caregiver when the mother returned to work. Two years ago, the mother moved with the two-year-old twins from Regina to rural Saskatchewan after the relationship with Mr. Sharman fell apart. She denied him contact with the children. He went to court to obtain visitation rights and says he wants to support them. Judge Ted Zarzeczny, who described the circumstances as “extraordinary”, awarded Mr. Sharman interim access until the case can be heard later this year. Legal experts are saying the case could expand the definition of father. Thousands of people have used IVF to have children. Most are married couples who have been unable to conceive naturally for a variety of reasons. It is expensive, invasive, has a very high failure rate and results in the destruction of thousands of embryos either through “selective reduction” (that is the aborting of some of the implanted embryos to avoid multiple births) or those that are deemed “surplus” (the couple has enough children and don’t want any more implanted.) Judge Zarzeczny characterized the Saskatchewan case as “extraordinary” but in fact, these “weird” cases are becoming more common. This past summer in the U.S. a sperm donor was ordered to pay support for twins conceived with his donation. These guys are usually anonymous. In Tennessee, custody of triplets was awarded to a woman when she and her partner (they weren’t married) split up even though the “mom” was not biologically related to the children but the “dad” was. His sperm was combined with donated eggs to produce the children. In Washington State, a lesbian couple is fighting for custody of an IVF child. The non-biologically related woman wants legal status as a parent now that the biological mother has split with her and married the gay man who donated the sperm. Yikes!!! A Kentucky judge refused to allow a surrogate mother to relinquish her parental rights to quadruplets. She gave birth to the quads and “gave” them to two gay hairdressers. She later gave birth to a boy, also for the hairdressers. One of the men donated sperm for the quads and the other donated sperm for the boy. The men describe themselves as Christian. They opposed doctors’ recommendations to abort some of the quads to reduce the risks and wanted their children baptized as Catholics. (They of course found a Catholic priest who agreed to the baptism.) The surrogate single mom has three children of her own. She didn’t ask for cash but wanted a tummy tuck after giving birth to eight children. The judge refused the request to relinquish parental rights saying the children needed “both a mother and a father.” These “extraordinary” cases illustrate the fatal flaw in this kind of technology. Children become commodities. They aren’t sold in a marketplace (although in some cases the eggs, sperm, surrogates, etc. are bought) but people who want children decide that any means of getting them are acceptable. Children, in other words, are a right. It is a short step from “children are a right” to the “right sort of children.” Pre-implantation diagnostic testing is now routine in many IVF procedures. The embryos are screened for possible genetic problems and defectives are not implanted. Dr. Jeffrey Nisker who headed an IVF clinic in London, Ontario, admits that when his clinic introduced such testing he expected parents to want to know about such conditions as Down syndrome, spina bifida and other serious problems. He was shocked to find that the majority wanted to use the diagnosis for sex selection. There is a growing chorus of IVF supporters, both practitioners and parents desperate to have children, demanding that IVF treatments be covered by medicare. Abortions are covered, they say, so why not treatments that produce life. With all due respect to the suffering of people who are aching to have children, IVF should not be paid for by taxpayers. Furthermore, I don’t think it should be legal at all. Once we sever procreation from sexual intercourse, there is no way to limit this technology. Anyone will be able to demand and procure babies. Or embryos. The embryos can be used for implantation, research, cloning, and reproduction unrelated to parents or family. The sky is the limit. We can pretend that laws and regulation will safeguard against abuses, but if they work at all, it will be temporary. Researchers and rights’ groups will demand and insist on their rights and courts will agree. This is a Pandora’s Box. I would urge that we slam the door shut.
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