Category: adoption

Posted on

Atheists may not have children

According to an Illinois judge, you must have religion to adopt:

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata
denied the Burkes’ right to the child because of their lack of belief
in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes’ "high moral and ethical
standards," he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that
"no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping
Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own
conscience."

I find that ridiculous.  Any human being can have a child regardless of their religion but if you don’t believe in some religion, you can’t adopt one.  Sounds like lack of religious freedom to me!  If you are free to choose a religion, you should be able to feel free to choose no religion. 

Posted on

Swapped babies: to swap back or not to swap?

The TV series Private Practice told the story of two moms whose babies were switched at birth.  Turns out it’s not all fiction.  These Czechoslovakian women had their babies swapped at birth too.  After an initial agreement to swap back they’ve changed their minds and have decided to keep the babies that they have been raising.  Unfortunately, one of the dads doesn’t like the decision.  The babies are 10 months old …

… I can’t even imagine being told that Caleb wasn’t "mine" and that I had to give him up.  I think I agree with these moms.  By now he’s mine no matter what!

(Private Practice went on to give the story another twist … one of the babies wasn’t expected to live past five and her father is the one that made the switch.)

Posted on

Babies Gagged in Russia

Having just spent three days in the hospital with my own 5 month old son, this article hit a nerve, Russian Shock at Gagged Babies.  The babies were gagged with plaster and tape because their crying was disturbing the nurses.  A woman who happened to be in the hospital with her own children heard the babies and took a video with her cell phone.

All of the gagged children were orphans.  It definitely made me understand why people want to adopt!  Everytime Caleb cried in the hospital I talked to him or held him.  The thought of those babies being gagged instead of comforted just made my heart hurt.

Posted on

Choosing your child

The oldest woman to ever give birth got to pick her child’s genes, or at least the donors, and then she gave birth to them:

Bousada,
a Spaniard, sold her home in Spain to raise 30,000 pounds ($60,000) to
pay for the treatment in the United States. She chose donor eggs from a
"pretty, brown-haired 18-year-old" and sperm from a blond, blue-eyed
Italian American.
"I picked them from photos in a catalog. It was a bit like studying an
estate agent’s brochure and choosing a house," the paper quoted her as
saying.

Amazing technology … three people came together to create these children.  Plus all the doctors that helped.

I keep thinking that the English language needs a lot more new words.  It needs a word for "my biological mom who donated an egg", "my biological mom who gave birth to me", etc.

Posted on

Buying human eggs – who are we exploiting?

So I think buying human embryos is fraught with moral and ethical issues but what about human eggs?  This article seems to think it’s unethical because the program that buys eggs (for stem cell research) might exploit poor women.  There are two issues that are getting mixed up here:

  1. buying a human body part
  2. buying part or all of a human

In the first case you could look at buying an egg like you do buying a kidney or buying blood plasma.  Within body parts there are two kinds, ones with an infinite supply (like plasma) and ones with a very finite supply (like kidneys.)  For parts with a finite supply, I think we definitely have to make sure that we don’t take advantage of people.  Desperate people might sell something they really can’t afford to sell or they might be coerced into it and there’s no way to really give it back to them.  In the case of infinite supply, I don’t see any problem with paying for it.  We pay for lots of different kinds of output from our bodies like construction work, sitting at a desk for hours, or participating in medical studies.  Those all take a toll on your body that is supposedly reversible and replenishable but costs you something and you get compensated for it.  Eggs, if they are a "human body part" fall into the replenishable category.   We have so many of them, it’s unlikely we are going to run out.

However, if you look at human eggs as potential human beings, then you have a whole different issue.  This is like buying and selling embryos – you are just buying half of an embryo.  And since you can easily acquire sperm from a sperm bank or other source, you can easily make an embryo.  Add a surrogate mom and you have a human being.  When you sell human eggs, you once again come close to trafficing in humans and there’s a whole slew of legal, ethical and moral issues that need to be addressed!

So I’d argue that when an organization buys human eggs they aren’t exploiting the woman, but they are potentially exploiting a child depending on what they plan to do with that egg.

Posted on

Using someone else’s sperm without permission

A few days ago I blogged about the adoption agency that is buying human embryos – I wrote that I think they are on morally shaky ground.  Well, today’s news gives me the same confused and uncomfortable feeling.  This guy’s family took sperm from his dead body, found a volunteer mom and they are having his kid!  They did have to prove in court that he wanted to have kids even though he hadn’t left a will or anything in writing that said that.

I’ve had lots of discussions about sperm, pregnancy and fatherhood over the years because I have several friends that are single moms on purpose.  We used to get into debates about how best to get pregnant without ending up with a dad in the process – just for fun, I used to think.  One of my friends ended up getting a volunteer egg donor and a volunteer sperm donor and going the in vitro route.  The donors are a relative and a friend and although they are not active in the parenting role, she still maintains contact with them.  The other friend only says that she used a "donor." 

So if the donor agreed to help her, I don’t see a problem.  So for argument’s sake, let’s say she found a way to get pregnant without him knowing.  Is that moral?  If he was dead like the guy mentioned above would that make the situation different?  Obviously she wouldn’t be able to tell him but it would still be doing something without his explicit permission. Did you know if a woman gets pregnant, doesn’t tell the guy, has the baby and then years later goes on welfare, the guy will be liable for current and back child support if the state can figure out who he is?  Kind of scary if you’re a guy right?  Does that change your answer to the "is that moral?" question?   I mean, if he has legal and financial responsibility for the child, it seems like he should be informed that the child exists.  In the case of the dead man, will the family be responsible since they are the ones who made the decision to have a baby?

I think once again technology has enabled us to do some amazing things (impregnanting a woman after you are dead!) and has brought along with it some very complicated moral and ethical issues.

Posted on

Buying human embryos

This adoption agency is now providing embryos!  They buy eggs from women, get sperm from donors, combine them, make embryos and then provide them to couples as a "service."  So they say they are not selling them.  But since they own them, it sure seems to me like they are selling them.  Whether or not they are selling them, they own them and they are either selling or giving them away.  Selling or giving away potential human beings. 

The owner of the adoption agency says she doesn’t currently have a stockpile of embryos because they are taken (or sold?) as fast as she produces them.  But she could stockpile them because embryos can be frozen indefinitely.

So does this mean I could collect a library of human embryos, advertise them and sell them based on different potential characteristics?  And since they are frozen I don’t have to feed or cloth them while I wait for someone to take them. … I see the beginnings of a science fiction story.

With the number of couples trying to conceive and the number of people wanting to adopt growing constantly, I can see how there could be a huge demand for this type of service.  I can also see how it could be very easily abused.   


Posted on

New Chinese Adoption Rules

Adopting from overseas is very popular but not easy.  The process starts with the research – which countries are an option (including the US), what are their rules, costs, corruption levels, etc.

China has published their new adoption rules.  They must have more than enough foreigners looking to adopt because the new rules are much more restrictive than the old ones.  (Turns out they have twice as many applications as kids.) Starting next May:

  • no singles
  • you must be married at least two years
  • if either one has been divorced before they must be married for five years
  • no couple that has more than two divorces between them
  • no more than five kids in the home (including the prospective adoptee)
  • nobody who is taking medicine for depression or anxiety
  • nobody who has cancer or AIDS
  • no people with a BMI of more than 40  (That’s extremely obese – 250 pounds on a 5’6" frame.)
  • you must have a net worth of over $80,000
  • you must have at least $10,000 in income a year for each member of the household including kids (and including the propective adoptee)
  • have a high school diploma
  • be between 30-50 years old

The process of adopting is
usually long one, starting with the research, and it is also pricey.
Getting a baby from China will end up costing a family $20,000 in fees.

Some of this information comes from China Tightens Adoption Rules for Foreigners.