Archive for the ‘Current Affairs’ Category
Why you need to begin thinking about the consequences of “Personhood” Amendments
February 16, 2012 | By: Elizabeth
I have had enough. Enuf is enuf.
I want to know what ACID or other hallucinogenic drug was put in the water of every member of every state legislature (heck let’s add congress) which are either proposing or passing amendments which declare that preembryos are to be afforded the same legal status as a full-grown-eighteen-year-old-human being , defining how many times a man may masturbate in furtherance of the donation of his sperm , or defining who can prescribe oral contraceptives, like someone’s boss.
I’d like to propose an amendment to the food and drug law which declares that any person consuming this “acid” or other hallucinogenic drug whether voluntarily or involunarily, be sentenced to life without sex and life without children (the logical result of forced abstinence).
It’s been a long day and I am tired so perhaps I don’t make a coherent point; although I am drafting a more detailed legal explanation of this stuff, (are you familiar with my blog, you know the one you are reading right now and the one the ABA likes well-enough to deem one of it’s top “blawgs”–although maybe not so much after I post this little explanation), but in the meantime,
Doctor’s, paging all doctors: do you realize that with the passage of these “personhood amendments” it is inevitable that the following sentence will one day be uttered : “OOPS I dropped the petri dish, guess I better call my criminal defense lawyer because I am guilty of negligent homicide!”
Guys, Men, Boys, are you out there? Do you really like the slippery slope you are on here? Right now we are just talking about masturbation for purposes of sperm donation but how far off are we — with passage of a law like this — from saying that masturbation ain’t okay because . . . (let me tell you your freedom of religion clause does NOT go here).
Ladies, girls, women, babes, let’s be real now . . . we all take them at one point or another. One study I read said that more than 90% of women of reproductive age take oral contraceptives at some point in their reproductive life. I personally thought this was an issue long ago resolved by the US Supreme Court but I guess it’s an issue again and now our boss gets to decide whether our insurance will pay for them (by the way, they ain’t cheap when you are paying out-of-pocket).
Seriously, where has MY America gone? We are suddenly on this slope which has the potential to erode personal, sexual and reproductive freedom in ways never before imagined. I have to believe the founding fathers would have objected to the masturbation thing. Why is no one saying anything about this? I have not heard one peep from a doctor who is now liable for all the little lives in cryopreservation in their fertility clinic in Oklahoma. Docs, don’t turn to us lawyer’s for too much sympathy — where was your voice in the debates against this law? I didn’t hear you in New York and now we are dealing with this stuff here. New York, one of the States I am proud to live in because of its progressive stance on same-sex marriage. Wow, never thought of this before . . . assuming the slippery slope (that is such a poor metaphor, I am sorry but it is a legal term of art) gets really slippery and this bill passes, then how far away is the State from telling us when and how we can have sex, yet another issue that I thought the US Supreme Court resolved. My wonderful progressive state may not be so progressive. Not so much. No.
Why aren’t people speaking up? Don’t you get how dangerous these statutes/laws are? Every day we are dialing back United States laws by decades . . . what’s next equal protection? No birth control seems like an equal protection issue to me, sounds like there are some potentially serious issues are facing us. SPEAK UP.
Please join me:
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
I guess you can ignore me if you’re not worried about being guilty for killing preembryos, in jail for masturbating too many times, or pregnant because you couldn’t afford to pay for your oral contraceptives that your boss wouldn’t cover under your health insurance.
Filed under: Current Affairs, In the News
Tags: constitutional law, federal law, negligent homicide, Personhood, preembryo, reproductive freedom, statutes
Infertility Treatment and Insurance — Speak Up While You Can!
January 30, 2012 | By: Elizabeth
There is an important deadline tomorrow:
Public commentary (from you!!) is needed to demand that infertility treatment coverage be included as an essential benefit under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To include your voice and make sure your concerns and needs are addressed contact the Department of Health and Human Services before January 31st, 2012.
The decision to include infertility treatment as a covered essential benefit falls solely in the hands of Kathleen Sebelius, US Secretary of Health and Human Services. You can email her at
EssentialHealthBenefits@cms.hhs.gov
For more information please read http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Infertility-Matters–Demanding-Essential-Benefit-Coverage.html?soid=1101342191383&aid=B44Urr44QiU
Filed under: Announcements, Current Affairs, Financing Fertility Treament or Adoption, Insurance for Infertility, IVF, The Journey to Parenthood
Tags: Announcements, Economy, Finances, financing, health insurance coverage for IVF, health insurance for infertility, infertility, insurance
The Starbucks Sperm Donor
October 18, 2011 | By: Elizabeth
There have been a ton of interesting articles in magazines recently about third party assisted reproduction. One particular article caught my attention and both intrigued and kind of grossed me out.
The article was in the October 10th/17th edition of Newsweek, “You got your sperm where?” The discussion in the article focused on how people are finding sperm donors (SD for short) through the internet (the “virtual” donor). The article described one donor-recipient match and donation that was initiated through web contact and fulfilled via a donation made in a Starbucks bathroom in NYC. Major yuck factor to that one. Seriously, have you been in a Starbucks bathroom recently? The line outside the bathroom will give you an indication of how actively they are used (hopefully not all for sperm donation purposes), and thus how potentially grimy they are. I have a pretty high threshold for gross bathrooms and overall I think Starbucks does a good job keeping its bathrooms clean. However, with the high traffic many of these bathrooms experience, you have to assume that they are crawling with germs. And if you are trying to have a baby, at least to me, public bathrooms and sperm donation don’t make a great combination. But to each his or her own, I suppose.
The thing that really got me, aside from the fact that this was taking place in Starbucks, was the lack of thought people were giving to what they are doing. It’s one thing to go on a blind date with someone you met on an internet dating site. To conceive a child from an online site — one that is not run by a sperm bank — seems a wee bit more frightening than agreeing to meet your average Tom, Dick or Harry for dinner or drinks.
One of the reasons people seem to be turning to online sources is to avoid the anonymity of sperm banks. There is a sperm donor registry that is designed to help families created through anonymous donation, match the SD’s with the children conceived from the donations and to help children/adults conceived through sperm donation find their biological father. The appeal of finding a random guy from whom you will receive donated sperm, and with whom you can establish some kind of non-anonymous but also non-parent-child relationship, is appealing to many people. I get that. No problem there. Except, I don’t know, maybe some legal issues surrounding that lack of parent-child relationship. . . .
Known sperm donation agreements are some of the trickiest agreements a reproductive lawyer can draft. I am always extremely careful when I draft them. Why you ask? Because, even though the goal of the agreement may be to avoid having the SD be liable for child support or retain any parental rights to the child conceived through the donation . . . courts overturn them with surprising frequency. All it takes are a couple of birthday cards signed “love Dad” and a court may well determine that, notwithstanding my carefully drafted known sperm donation agreement, the SD does indeed have parental rights, is liable for child support, and the child may even be able to inherit through “donor dad’s” estate. Did any of us intend for that to happen when we sat down at the table to discuss what they wanted the agreement to accomplish? No. My clients usually want to have a friend donate sperm so that they can have a child (alone or with a partner), and have the comfort of knowing who the person is that is donating his genetic material. All those “what-if” and “what is he like” questions can be answered later by the existence of a specific known SD.
If the SD and the recipient mom don’t want to have a parental relationship — for example two women in a relationship who intend to parent a child together but don’t want to use an anonymous sperm donor, and would like a close friend of theirs to donate his sperm (think along the lines of a well-known singer and her partner and another very well known male singer) — the sperm donation agreement becomes a critical component for recognition of the intended family unit. The sperm donation agreement establishes what everyone intends to happen, and what everyone intends to be their respective rights and responsibilities in the future. These intentions are set forth in writing prior to the conception of a child. Most of the case law in the US that involves third-party assisted reproduction (including known sperm donation) looks to the parties’ intent at the time the child is conceived. Provided that everyone sticks to the terms of the agreement, usually a good sperm donation agreement will be upheld if ever there are arguments, disagreements, or when and if someone suddenly wants something that was NOT intended when the agreement was drafted. The thing is that just a few real-life events can cause that sperm donation agreement, and the parties’ intention, to come into question. A court could decide that while the parties may have written down and signed an agreement that said one thing, their actions reveal a contrary intent. Actions frequently speak louder than words when it comes to known sperm donation arrangements.
So let’s get back to the people who donated and received the sperm at Starbucks. Do you think they took the time to consult a reproductive lawyer? Did they consider what the consequences would be 10 years down the road if suddenly one person decided they wanted a different type of relationship or needed child support? It didn’t sound like it from the article in Newsweek. While their intent may have considered the prospective best interests of the child — having a person that the child could one day meet or speak to and thus avoid identity issues that plague many children conceived via anonymous sperm donation (thus giving rise to the donor registry I mentioned) — the reality of what they were doing and the lack of awareness of the long term ramifications are mind boggling.
According to the article, one man who is donating sperm through online forums, is asking the recipient to scream “make me pregnant!” or something like it during intercourse. Let’s agree to not discuss the fact that they weren’t using medical professionals or a home insemination kit. The statement the recipient is being asked to state in and of itself could be interpreted as an expression of their mutual agreement and intent to parent a child, TOGETHER. Did the recipient of this sperm intend for this man to be the FATHER of her child? I don’t believe she did. Or did she? Did the SD?
And hey, are we doing background medical checks of any kind? Does anyone know if the people donating or receiving the sperm are healthy or otherwise able to parent a child? What if the SD has an infectious disease? What if the recipient is an ax-murderer? Odds are they aren’t anything other than people with good and honorable intentions. But if the law comes down to intent, don’t we owe it to the child to express that intent?
The internet is a wonderful place and it is a frightening place. We all have heard horror stories stemming from internet match-making. Let’s not add conception of a human being to those horror stories. For anyone considering this type of sperm donation, and apparently there are plenty of people doing it, or even those seeking to enter into a known sperm donation with the assistance of medical professionals, do me a favor: Find a reproductive lawyer or a family lawyer and talk about how you want to protect your family!
Maybe I am over-thinking this. Maybe it’s not different than someone who goes to a bar knowing she is ovulating, with the intent to hook-up with some guy and hope she gets pregnant. At least the people going to Starbucks theoretically know each other’s real names and have some information about each other, and both know that a child is being conceived. Good intentions and lack of (legal) judgment aren’t a crime. Then again, apparently Law & Order made an episode about this subject (maybe not involving a Starbucks sperm donor) and I would love to watch it. I wonder what issues the writers of Law & Order found to address?
And really, I am just totally dumbfounded by this, someone donated his sperm in a Starbucks bathroom? Wow. What’s next? A mile-high club for sperm donors?
Filed under: anonymous sperm donation, Check This Out, Current Affairs, In the News, Infertility on Television, known sperm donation, Personal Musings, Sam Sex Parenting and Reproductive Law, Thinking Out Loud, Third-Party Assisted Reproduction
