Who’s Your Daddy? Er, your Mommy? er. . . . Let the Courts Order…

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] Battered Mothers Rights - A Human Rights Issue.

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Let'sGetHonestBlog

Not a Private Matter – Why "Family" "Law" System Hurts Us All

 

This NYT article from Dec. 13th is overdue for posting.  A story of how important motherhood really IS and what lengths a mother (whether financial,  or surrogate — neither with any biological relationship) will go to protect their own.

Sounds like, here, both the people who PAID for the babies (they were twins) and the surrogate mother (no biological relationship) were happily married.  And it would seem in both cases, employed…Surrogacy is a job…

Anyway, I presented some “teaser” information.  Check out the article (multiple links and graphics), and just ask yourself, what are the responsible fatherhood folk going to do with THIS one?

Building a Baby, With Few Ground Rules

Uncertain Laws on Surrogacy Can Leave Custody at Issue.

Unable to have a baby of her own, Amy Kehoe became her own general contractor to manufacture one.

For Ms. Kehoe and her husband, Scott, the idea seemed like their best hope after years of infertility.

Working mostly over the Internet, Ms. Kehoe handpicked the egg donor, a pre-med student at theUniversity of Michigan. From the Web site of California Cryobank, she chose the anonymous sperm donor, an athletic man with a 4.0 high school grade-point average.

On another Web site, surromomsonline.com, Ms. Kehoe found a gestational carrier who would deliver her baby.

Finally, she hired the fertility clinic, IVF Michigan, which put together her creation last December.

“We paid for the egg, the sperm, the in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Kehoe said as she showed off baby pictures at her home near Grand Rapids, Mich. “They wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for us.”

[[So far, so good . . . . Everything is worked out.  Looks like the courts, the police, and the parental education folk will have to go look somewhere else, as well as supervised visitation supervisors....]]

A month later, a police officer supervised as the Kehoes relinquished the swaddled infants in the driveway.

Bridget and Ethan are now in the custody of the surrogate who gave birth to them, Laschell Baker of Ypsilanti, Mich. Ms. Baker had obtained a court order to retrieve them after learning that Ms. Kehoe was being treated for mental illness.

“I couldn’t see living the rest of my life worrying and wondering what had happened, or what if she hadn’t taken her medicine, or what if she relapsed,” said Ms. Baker, who has four children of her own.

Now, she and her husband, Paul, plan to raise the twins.

The creation of Ethan and Bridget tested the boundaries of the field known as third-party reproduction, in which more than two people collaborate to have a baby. Five parties were involved: the egg donor, the sperm donor, Ms. Baker and the Kehoes. And two separate middlemen brokered the egg and sperm.

Well, that’s not my main post this afternoon….  Interesting reading, though.  I poke fun at Designer Families from the Top-Down perspective.  But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet . . . .

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