Judge: Egg Donor Cory Sause is Boy's Mother--and will get parenting rights

Cory Sause and son

An Oregon judge has ruled that an egg donor mother has the right to be part of her child's life, despite the efforts of the wealthy sperm-donor father who wants to cut her out of the picture. The ruling was based on the "contradictory" agreement that the egg-donor mother and the father signed prior to the birth of a son and emails and other evidence showing that the father intended to keep the mother in his son's life, changing his mind only after the boy was born. In her decision, Judge Amy Holmes in Portland said that she will meet with the parties to develop a parenting plan.

Jane

The case does not signal a breakthrough for all egg donors who after birth wish to participate in the resulting child's upbringing, for this case involved an agreement between two parties who were a couple at the time an egg was implanted in a surrogate, and the agreement signed was not cut-and-dried as is usual between parties who do not have a prior relationship. The child, a boy named Samuel, is now two.

Whose name is on your 'birth' certificate?

Jane

When Lisa Phillips Stackman of Indianapolis gave birth to her daughter, Lola Jean, seven weeks ago, she expected that her spouse's name would appear on Lola's birth certificate. If Lisa's spouse had been Jack, instead of Jackie, it would have.

Under Indiana law, the husband of a woman giving birth is presumed to be the father and his name goes on the certificate--even if he's not the father. But because Lisa's spouse was a woman, Indiana officials have refused to put her name on the certificate. Lisa and Jackie are suing with six other same sex couples claiming their constitutional rights have been violated because Indiana officials refused to place both spouses names on the birth certificate.  Lisa and Jackie's case may be more compelling because Jackie is Lola's biological mother. She had embryos created with her eggs and frozen two years ago, before she met Lisa.

Egg 'donor' and child unite on 'Katie'

Jane

UPDATE on 6/12: Katic Couric successfully navigated the reunion between Britten Gilmore, her mother Janet Schreibman, and Brittan's "egg donor" JoLana Talbot and Talbot's two daughters. Couric and her guests minced no words in emphasizing the importance of knowing biological relatives and the joy of establishing a relationship with them. Kudos Katie! 

What we found remarkable was the complete openness of Britten's parents, who told her the truth about her origins when she was old enough to ask (apparently where babies came from), and continued to answer her questions as she got older. JoLana Talbot said everyone should have all the friends and family they could, and the Schreibmans spoke of expanding their own family. Hugs all around. Britten and her half sisters, especially Talbot's younger daughter, look very much alike. When JoLana mentioned "strong genes" we noticed that nobody winced. 

For the half hour that this story took up, little was asked of Britten's father, who is both her day-to-day dad and her biological father.  Wendy Kramer who, with her son, founded the Donor Sibling Registry spoke from audience, saying that since the registry began in 2000, it had made 11,000 matches. FMF assumes that the site is booming today. Reunion shows always lead to an uptick in search and reunion.
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Travolta's Redux

Several readers have asked why I have it "in" for John Travolta. Actually I like him as an actor; I particularly enjoyed him in Primary Colors.

I have it "in" for anyone who risks another woman's life in order to have a baby. I put John Travolta and Kelly Preston in that category.

I'm not ageist. I don’t make the rules; Mother Nature does. And for good reason. The younger the mother, the better the odds that she will be around to raise the children to adulthood.

(This was brought home with the news yesterday that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, is dying from breast cancer. The Edwards’ had two children via donated eggs when Elizabeth was 48 and 50 respectively. According to NYDailyNews.com, she is determined not to let John and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, whom she blames for breaking up her marriage, raise the children, now 12 and 10. She wants her 28 year old daughter, Cate, to have custody of the children when she passes away.)

Back to the Travolta’s, it’s reported that Kelly Preston is carrying twins. This makes it more likely that her conception did not occur in the usual way. I don't know whose eggs (or whose sperm for that matter) created these embryos but at 47, it's unlikely they were Preston's unless she had had her eggs frozen. This is according to a CNN doctor/commentator.

Readers have pointed out that women in their 40's do conceive. Early 40's, no question. My mother was 41 when she had my brother (yes, that brother -- the pot-smoking, war protesting hippie I've written about before.) And Rielle Hunter was 43 when she gave birth to John Edwards' daughter, likely not as a result of fertility treatments, at least none that Edwards knew about.

Speaking of John Edwards, it's worth noting that none of our readers objected to my statements about him or Elizabeth. Is it because of his affair de coeur that the he and Elizabeth have no defenders here? Or is John Travolta's publicist trolling blogs, pouncing on any suggestion that the in utero Travolta's are anything but natural, using our natural sympathy for John and Kelly over the loss of their son to deflect questions about the embyros' DNA?

What's wrong with creating children with Sperm from Column A and Egg from Column B? Just about everything.

Today just a link to a New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, about the perils of creating children-for-hire. It's a good read: The Birds and the Bees (via the Fertility Clinic) and do leave a comment.

And if you have been away from the blog over the weekend (and why not?) yesterday's post is about the end of a friendship with a friend whose opinion is that birth/first mothers who search are wrong, wrong, wrong. I think she would like to stone us because we are "disturbing" the  happy, non-troubled adoption that she is sure is in place.

This morning with family my husband and I went downtown for the annual Memorial Day parade in Sag Harbor and ran into one of Yvonne's friends, with whom we are also friendly. My husband (when I was not around) told her that Yvonne and I had a huge falling out and it was not going to be breached. I'm no longer even sad that the friendship ended; I am disturbed that so many people feel that it is all right to trample the feelings and sensibilities of birth/first mothers because after all, we did it! We got pregnant! We surrendered a child! We signed a paper that insisted on anonymity because we had no choice! Therefore, we ought to go quietly to our emotional graves.

Screw 'em.--lorraine

That's my niece (by marriage) and her two kids, Charlie with the flag and Anna peering from behind it.

Egg Donor or Egg Seller? Fulfilling Another Woman's Dreams or Filling Your Pockets

Trouble, trouble in baby-making land reported The New York Times on May 10, “Payment Offers to Egg Donors Prompt Scrutiny”. Apparently them gals who went up north for some educatin’ graduated with something more than a diploma written in Latin. Seems a few took a class or two in economics and put it to good use: charging up to $50,000 for their ivy-coated eggs, a price women with old rotten eggs are more than willing to pay. Men are also willing to part with big bucks to become daddies, hiring surrogates to tote upscale eggs blessed with their sperm.

Well, knock me over with a feather. I thought that women risked their health, their own fertility, even their lives, taking a lot of hormones to stimulate their bodies to pop out eggs for perfect strangers out of some sort of "love" for mankind. That these women do it for money (enough to pay for about half a year at Harvard) puts them right up there on the scoundrel list along with Wall Street barons fleecing low income would-be home buyers.

The egg business may soon surpass the adoption business. About 10,000 families each year acquire a baby through donated eggs, almost as many as acquire babies through adoption, 14,000. According to the Times,

“Dr. Aaron Levine, an assistant professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology examined more than 100 egg donation ads from 63 college newspapers. He found that a quarter of them offered compensation exceeding the $10,000 maximum cited in voluntary guidelines issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a professional association.

"In addition to limiting compensation, the society’s guidelines forbid paying additional fees to egg donors for specific traits. But the study found that every 100-point difference in a university’s average SAT scores was correlated with an increase of more than $2,000 in the fees advertised for potential egg donors in the campus newspaper.

"The guidelines state that payments of $5,000 or more above and beyond medical and related expenses ‘require justification’ and that payments above $10,000 ‘are not appropriate.’ Ads in newspapers at Harvard, Princeton and Yale promised $35,000 for donors, Dr. Levine found, while an ad placed on behalf of an anonymous couple in The Brown Daily Herald offered $50,000 for ‘an extraordinary egg donor.’"

The article doesn’t say what a Columbia grad could garner, hopefully not enough to entice my youngest daughter, a lioness diplomate, from selling her eggs. On the other hand as the contributor to half her DNA, maybe I could get a cut, sort of like a royalty. I can see the ads: Fund your retirement from your daughter’s eggs.” That ought to give SAT prep classes a boost.

"'The concern is that some young women may choose to donate against their own best interests,’ Dr. Levine said. ‘They’ll look at the money on offer and will overlook some of the risks.’" [It seems to me and Lorraine that donating eggs is always against a woman’s best interests.]

The American Society for Reproduction Medicine’s reason for limiting compensation to donors may not be based entirely on concern for these bright, attractive young women whose eggs command high prices. Back to Econ 101, more money to donors means less money to doctors, egg merchants, and the rest of the industry promising parenthood to those who cannot or do not choose to have children naturally.

Who’s Buying?
With many women today putting making money ahead of making babies, there’s no end to Hollywood stars, political wives, and others seeking motherhood in their late 40’s, 50’s, and even 60’s. Recently we learned that John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston, still grieving over the loss of their son Jett, are expecting a baby. It’s safe to assume that 47 year old Preston didn’t get pregnant au naturel. She may have had her eggs frozen when they were still viable (but that’s unlikely) or she may have purchased some eggs (more likely), perhaps requiring that the seller have some Grease in her DNA or at least be a Scientologist.

If Travolta and Preston are having a “replacement” baby, they won’t be the first. After the death of their son Wade, former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth decided more children would bring joy back into their family. Emma Claire was born in 1998 when Elizabeth was 48, and Jack was born in 2000 when she was 50. (Subsequently John added to his lineage through a more loving way, albeit unwillingly, when 43 year old Rielle Hunter gave birth to his [initially unacknowledged] daughter, Quinn.) 

Real Risks
On the serious side, whether for love or money, egg donation presents substantial risks. Besides the physical risks (gory details below), there is the likelihood of psychological distress when the donor fully realizes that there is somebody “out there” carrying her genes. Like women who surrendered babies in closed adoptions, donors may find themselves scanning faces in shopping malls looking for people who resemble them. Unless donor and child know each other, there is a risk that the donor’s children and the children created from her eggs may meet and marry since donors may contribute multiple eggs. [For a thorough investigation of the psychological effects of donor insemination, read Annette Baran and Rueben Pannor's excellent study, Lethal Secrets.]

Unlike birthmothers in open adoptions, egg donors know nothing of the parent who raises her offspring. The recipient of the egg may be an abusive parent. I remember reading a news article years ago about a man who beat to death his infant son, created with a surrogate mother. The recipient of the egg may die before the child grows up, leaving the child to be raised by relatives, more interested in spending the child’s inheritance than nurturing this technological wonder.

According to Stanford University’s “Egg Donor Information Project”, donors commonly experience pain, abdominal swelling, tension and pressure in the ovarian area, mood swings, and bruising at injection sites. A less frequently occurring condition is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a serious complication marked by chest and abdominal fluid buildup and cystic enlargement of the ovaries that can cause permanent injury and even death. Severe OHSS affects between one and 10 percent of donors.

Less frequently, drugs cause adnexal torsion, a condition that results when a stimulated ovary twists on itself and cuts off blood supply. Surgery is required to untwist and in some cases remove the ovary. Additionally, some studies suggest that one of the drugs may increase a woman’s chance of developing ovarian cancer. Doctors have reported a few cases where a drug aggravated existing tumors of the pituitary gland and caused strokes.

Eggs are retrieved through transvaginal ultrasound aspiration, a surgical procedure performed under conscious sedation. Major injury to the bladder, bowel, uterus, blood vessels or other pelvic structures occurs in approximately 1 in 500 to 1000 surgeries. Other surgical risks include acute ovarian trauma, infection, infertility, vaginal bleeding, and lacerations. Additionally, anesthetic complications may occur.

These are the known dangers. As Times readers, Diane Beeson and Tina Stevens, pointed out in a letter to the editor, much is unknown:

“Without long-term follow up, it is simply not possible to offer potential egg donors a truly informed consent about the long-term risks of taking the powerful synthetic hormones associated with the egg retrieval process. Yet, there is no effort now under way to establish a registry to find out what the long-term risks are. Why is that?

"Consider what happened to magazine editor Liz Tilberis, comedian-actor Gilda Radner, playwright Wendy Wasserstein and many other women who underwent hyperstimulation and died of cancer in the prime of their lives. Shouldn’t we first attempt to provide a full informed consent before financially encouraging women to take powerful hormones?”

Review of Coraline and Perfection: Perfect Parents, Perfect Children

Last Sunday my husband and I saw Coraline, a 3-D film using stop action technology based on Neil Gamain’s book of the same name. It was a welcome break from finding and perusing the manuals needed to re-set the clocks on the micro-wave, the CD player, and loads of other gadgets.

Coraline is an 11 year old girl who moves with her loving but work stressed real parents to a new home, a large and mysterious mansion divided into three apartments. She discovers a birth canal-like passage which leads her to a fantastical world. There she finds loving, perfect other parents, appearing identical to her real parents except that they have buttons for eyes. After several visits to the other, button-eyed parents, they tell her she can stay if she agrees to have buttons sewn into her eyes. Horrified, she refuses. The other parents morph into witches and Coraline’s real parents become trapped in the button-eyed world. Coraline must rescue her real parents as well as three lost souls who had agreed to have buttons sewn into their eyes years before.

As a birth mother, my first reaction was that the story was meant to convey one of those trite pro-adoption messages. You know the kind; a seemingly wise character says to the confused adoptee “Your real parents are the parents who raised you. Don’t search for them that birthed you; you’ll just open a can of worms (or find a bunch of buttons.)

But I got to thinking. The characters identified as the “real” parents looked like Coraline and shared her interest in gardening. The button-eyed faux parents disguised themselves to look like the real parents but underneath they were evil witches. So maybe the message is that first parents are real parents and adoptive parents are false and untrustworthy.

Perhaps, of course, the story has nothing to do with adoption (the reviews I’ve read don’t mention adoption but then adoption themes are rarely seen by non-triad members unless adoption is spelled out in capital letters.) Coraline may be a modern version of The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland telling children that the magical land over the rainbow, down the rabbit hole, or at the end of a tunnel is scary and there’s no place like home.

I recommend Coraline. It has wonderful graphics and a thought-provoking story line regardless of how one’s thoughts progress.

While Coraline explores the search for perfect parents, Perfection, a play by Measure 58 mother Helen Hill, recounts the quest for perfect children. (Measure 58 was a 1998 ballot measure which gave Oregon-born adoptees the right to obtain their original birth certificates. Ms. Hill largely funded the process.)

Perfection was produced in Portland and ran for three weeks in February. It takes place in 1934 when states routinely sterilized those deemed to be genetically inferior. In the play, a doctor at a state institution prepares to sterilize a resident who recently gave birth to a child which was taken from her. The woman is poor and uneducated but not mentally disabled. The doctor convinces her to submit to an operation (he does not disclose the nature of the operation) by telling her the operation is necessary for her child to be returned.

Thus, the play blends themes of eugenics and adoption. Helen Hill has experienced both. She was adopted as an infant and her adoptive father was a Creek Indian who had been sterilized under a eugenics program. She used money she inherited from him to fund the Measure 58 campaign.

Much of the dialogue in Perfection is in the form of an argument between the doctor and his nurse about the righteousness of eugenics, some of it bordering on a polemic, a method which never works well. The play as a whole works, however, because it has sympathetic characters and good drama.

My first thought, though, was “you’re beating a dead horse.” After the disclosures of Nazi atrocities, eugenics was thoroughly discredited. Being against eugenics is like being against slavery. No one is for it today.

As I thought about it, however, I realized the belief that tinkering with nature can create better human beings is very much alive today. Adoption, after all, is a form of social eugenics. Pre-natal testing gives prospective parents the option of aborting embryos found to have genetic flaws.

The counterpart to preventing the birth of inferior people is the creation of superior ones, something the Nazis also pursued. Spend five minutes on Google looking at egg donor websites and you’ll see how important genetics is to the process. From a March 15, 2006 article in USA Today:

“Advertisements in campus newspapers and on websites plead daily. ‘Egg Donors Needed. $10,000,’ says one in The Daily Californian, the student newspaper at the University of California, Berkeley. The ad, from a San Diego broker called A Perfect Match, seeks women who are "attractive, under the age of 29" and have SAT scores above 1,300.”

Conceive Abilities, a fertility business with clinics in Chicago and Colorado tries to soften the reality that fees paid to donors relate to the quality of the donor:

“Our agency compensates egg donors anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 and can be dependent upon a number of considerations some of which include location, number of previous donations and ethnic diversity.

Then there is The Egg Donor Program which boasts:

“The Egg Donor Program is the premier egg donation agency in the United States for solving female infertility by IVF donor egg treatment. Our Los Angeles based egg donor clinic has the most beautiful and accomplished donors in the country. Our egg donor center is also known for its extensive database of Superdonors, which includes hundreds of women from many diverse ethnic backgrounds. For over 15 years we have specialized in matching couples with exquisite young women whose motivations are heartfelt.

If you are interested in becoming an egg donor and want to be listed with the country’s most prestigious agency, we will ensure that your journey is safe and gratifying and we will reward you for your gesture with commemorating gifts and the highest level of compensation. We will treat you like the angel you are.”

In the end, the message of both Coraline and Perfection seems to be: let’s accept what nature has given us.
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PS: Lorraine here. Serious consideration is being given to changing the name of this blog. Stay tuned. All the old posts will stay but the only consideration is the links we have from other bloggers.