BABIES on ICE: IVF & EMBRYO DONATION

HOW TO READ THIS BLOG

2007-07-11T09:11:00.000-05:00

I have archived the posts on this blog in date order so you can see what happened from the beginning to the end. I am not continuing to post to this blog since the donation has reached its conclusion. I do check the email, however, and post comments, so feel free to let everyone know what's on your mind. You can get my email address in the "Profile" to the right. There is an email link on the left side of the "Profile". If you put your cursor over it my email address will appear on the left bottom side of your screen.

I do not post any sort of commercial spam or links to commercial sites, so please don't send any. Thanks and good luck with your own journey.

TO LIE OR NOT TO LIE

2007-07-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

Here is an article on egg/sperm donation from the New York Times. I have edited it because it is extremely long. The main point of the article for me is the studies about revealing to a child if s/he was conceived with donor gametes. It's healthier for kids, and we now know this to be true based on science.

Another point in this article, this time one I disagree with, is about the difference between the way sperm donors and egg donors are treated. The author of that study, and this article, argue that egg donors are treated better and more valued.

Having gone thru egg retrieval twice myself, and once when my wife gave eggs to our friends, I can tell you that what ever egg donors are paid it isn't enough. Painful shots, daily schleps to the doctor for blood tests, potentially fatal surgery and medications? I wouldn't do it again for less than twice my annual salary. When I can donate an egg by having an orgasm (like sperm donors), sign me up.

Here's the article with the redundant stuff removed:

"By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Published: July 15, 2007

In 1992...there were just 1,802 attempts by women to become pregnant using someone else’s eggs, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Three years later, there were more than 4,738 such cycles; by 2004, the most recent year for which data has been published, there were 15,175 cycles, resulting in 5,449 babies. By comparison, some 22,911 children were adopted from abroad that year, and although there are no official figures, one survey estimated that at least the same number are conceived annually via donor insemination. Donor eggs are now used in 12 percent of all in vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) attempts, making it among the fastest-growing infertility treatments. Despite the portentous hype around women like Frieda Birnbaum, a 60-year-old New Jersey resident who in May used donor eggs to become the oldest American to give birth to twins, the bulk of intended mothers are in their 40s. The birthrate among women ages 40-44 has risen 62 percent since 1990, while the rate among those in their late 40s has more than doubled. Among those who used I.V.F. in 2004, about a third of the 43-year-olds used someone else’s eggs; by 47 years old, 91 percent did.

With egg donation, science has succeeded in, if not extending women’s fertility, at least making an end run around it, allowing older women who, for a variety of reasons (lack of money, lack of partner, lack of interest, lack of partner’s interest) didn’t have children in their biological prime — as well as younger women with dysfunctional ovaries — to carry and bear babies themselves. It has given rise to the mind-bending phrase “biogenetic child,” meaning a child who is both biologically and genetically related to each of its parents, by, for the first time in history, separating those components. In that way, it is fundamentally different from sperm donation, though it also levels a certain playing field: mothers can now do what fathers always could — conceal the truth about their blood relationship to their children. And as with any new reproductive technology, it has provoked a torrent of social, legal and ethical questions about the entitlement to reproduce, what constitutes parenthood, children’s rights to know their origins and the very nature of family.

I first became interested in the implications of egg donation because I tried it. After five years of repeated miscarriages and invasive, futile infertility treatments, a 21-year-old friend offered to spot me her gametes, the cells containing half the chromosomes necessary for reproduction. It wasn’t something I ever imagined I’d consider — it seemed so “Handmaid’s Tale.” Then again, with a donor egg, I could feel a baby grow inside me, experience its kicks and flutters. I could control — that sweetest of words — the prenatal environment, guard against the evils of drug and drink. I could give birth to my own child, breast-feed it. After a year of discussion, my husband and I decided to go ahead, only to find that, when placed in a petri dish, his sperm and my friend’s eggs refused to tango.

Although my husband and I went on, improbably, to conceive our daughter spontaneously, I always wondered what it would have been like had that cycle worked. Would I have felt less authentic as a parent than my husband, or would my gestational contribution have seemed equivalent to his genetic one? Would we tell our child? And when? And how? What about strangers on the street who commented on how little the baby resembled me? What if someone said the baby did look like me and I smiled — would I feel dishonest? How would the experience be different from adoption? What kind of relationship would the child have with our friend, the donor? Would my husband feel awkward about pointing out similarities between our child and himself? What if the child someday turned to me and said, “You’re not my real mother?” What if I secretly agreed? What if she wanted to put the date I met our donor on her sixth-grade timeline?

...By the late ’80s, though, European researchers perfected a new method of retrieving eggs by using a thin needle, guided by ultrasound and inserted through the vaginal wall. The procedure took 10 minutes and required only light anesthesia. As Liza Mundy writes in her book “Everything Conceivable,” this technique would revolutionize — or, you could even argue, create — the fertility industry by unhooking clinics from their dependence on hospital operating rooms. Suddenly, any doc with a lab and the right equipment could set up his own shop. Using that advance, Paulson and his team made a breakthrough of their own: some of their patients had aged past 40, which was considered the outer limit for medical intervention, while waiting for donors. Would it be possible, Paulson wondered, to push that threshold? He tried transferring multiple embryos created from a young woman’s eggs into the body of a 40-year-old and she became pregnant. In 1990, Paulson published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine announcing that as long as the eggs were young, the age of the recipient appeared immaterial. And just like that, the market for donor eggs was born.

...Becky, who asked me to use a nickname, sat down and began scrolling through pictures on the Web site of Ova the Rainbow, one of the (regrettably named) agency sites she browsed last fall during her search for an egg donor. “When I first started doing this it was really emotional for me,” she said. “I kept thinking about that kids’ book, ‘Are You My Mother?’ I’m looking through these pictures of young women and feeling like: ‘Oh, my God! Is this the mother of my future child? Is this the mother of my future child?’ ”

I stood behind her, watching the young women go by. Each was accompanied by an assortment of photos: girls in caps and gowns graduating from high school, sunburned and smiling on family vacations, as preschoolers in princess frocks, sporting supermodel pouts in shopping-mall glamour portraits. Sperm banks rarely provide such visuals, which is just one disparity in the packaging and treatment of male and female donors, according to a study published last month in The American Sociological Review. Egg donors are often thanked with presents and notes by recipients for their generous “gift.” Sperm donors are reminded that they’re doing a “job,” providing a “sample,” and performing an act they’d presumably do anyway — which may be why many men in the study were rattled when told a pregnancy had actually occurred. And although the men could admit they were in it for the cash, ovum donors were expected to express at least a smidge of altruism.

It was weird to look at these pictures with Becky. I inevitably objectified the young women in them, evaluating their component parts; it made me feel strangely like a guy. Becky clicked on a photo of a 22-year-old brunette with a toothy grin. Each profile listed the donor’s age (many agencies consider donors to be over the hill by 30), hair color (there seemed to be a preponderance of blondes), eye color, weight, ethnicity, marital status, education level, high school or college G.P.A.’s, college major, evidence of “proved” fertility (having children of their own or previous successful cycles).

...the notion that blood is thicker than water, that we can pass on our best — or someone else’s best — characteristics (but somehow not our worst) is a powerful one, even though anyone who has biogenetic children will tell you that they can be as different from one another, and from their parents, as strangers.

Women using donor eggs know that. But the dream, the hope, of replicating oneself dies hard. “Loss is the first stage of building a family with donor gametes,” says Madeline Licker Feingold, a psychologist who works with couples pursuing third-party reproduction. As part of that reckoning, women have to give up not only on using their own eggs but also on the search for the perfect donor, one who is in every way their match. Or, as Becky put it: “It’s this tension between letting go and clinging to this ideal of the donor being ‘you.’ ”

...Becky’s search lasted about two months. Russell participated, too, of course, but since it was her genetic material they were replacing, she had the final say-so. Husbands typically defer to their wives for that reason, according to Feingold. The reverse, in her experience, is less true: women are usually more involved in choosing sperm donors than men are in choosing egg donors. That may be, she says, because women tend to be more devastated by infertility than men, regardless of whether its source is male or female...

“But I’m really attached to wanting to birth and nurse a child,” she added. “If this doesn’t work I might be ready to move on to adoption. But it’s not like you can say, ‘O.K., I’ll adopt.’ It’s not that easy. And the home visits are so intrusive. And anyway I’m not there yet.”

“Why don’t you just adopt?” That is the first question most people ask if you say you’re considering egg donation. It’s the question I asked myself, as had every potential donor recipient I spoke with. Why create a child where none existed? Why spend the money on something that’s not a sure bet? Why ask another woman, even (or maybe especially) a friend, to inject herself with drugs — drugs whose side effects, although unlikely, could require hospitalization and even, in extremely rare instances, be fatal. (Recipients of donor eggs are required to buy supplementary health insurance for the donors in case something untoward occurs.)

The answers among the women I met were both deeply personal and surprisingly consistent. Like Becky, these women longed for the experience of pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding. Often they (or, more often, their husbands) resisted adoption, reasoning that egg donation would be psychologically easier on the child, who would be born — rather than relinquished — into its family. They wanted the opportunity to hand-pick a donor’s genes rather than gamble on a birth mother’s and father’s. And they wanted to be able to see at least their husbands, if not themselves, reflected in their children’s faces.

Still, many questioned the morality of egg donation. “Taking into your home a baby who needs one is inherently more ethical than pursuing a very intensive route to have a biological child,” one potential donor recipient told me. Perhaps that’s why public support for and approval of parents who use donor gametes is lower than for those who adopt — the former is presumably perceived by some as a rather selfish act and the latter a selfless one. Yet adoption has often come with its own ethical quandaries, whether it was the girls “in trouble” who were pressured to give up their children in the 1950s or the current State Department caution against adopting from Guatemala in the wake of reports of child smuggling. What’s more, the idea of healthy infants who “need” homes, particularly white infants, is a myth: domestically, demand has always far outstripped supply.

Which is not to say that egg donation is without complexity — for either donors or recipients. Looking at the screen, Becky paused at a donor who identified herself as Jewish. I recalled waking up in a middle-of-the-night panic shortly before our cycle was to begin wondering, since my donor friend was gentile, whether our baby would be a Jew. My husband is not, and at any rate, Judaism is traditionally passed down matrilineally. How could the Talmudic scholars of yore have anticipated this conundrum? I called a Conservative rabbi who explained that, while there’s no general consensus across denominations, his movement’s official stance was that the gestational mother determines a child’s religion. That mollified me. Sort of.

A gentile donor was a deal-breaker for some Jewish couples I met. “I didn’t want to add to any identity conflict the child might already be experiencing,” said one potential mother in the Midwest who had found a New York agency that recruits young Israelis. “Certainly not about religion. It’s too delicate.”

Jewish donors, along with Asians, Ivy Leaguers and those with proven fertility, are considered “exceptional donors” and can command a hefty premium. A recruitment ad on New York’s Craigslist offered up to $10,000 for Asian donors. On some sites I visited, agencies were asking $15,000 for donors with proven fertility. There have been reports of agencies charging more than double that for other highly desirable women.

Yet there is often no way to know whether the information the donor gives, including her medical history and educational background, is accurate. A 2006 study conducted by researchers at New York University found that donors routinely lowballed their weight, and the heavier they were the more they fudged. Agencies, too, which are unregulated and unlicensed, can easily manipulate the truth. Many advertise I.Q. and psychological testing as part of their services, though there is no independent verification of either the results or the protocols used. Even if there were, jacking up fees for smarts is a dubious prospect. “Fees for donors are based on time and trouble, so I don’t see how someone who goes to Brown has more time or trouble doing this than someone who didn’t go to college at all,” Feingold, the psychologist, told me.“Parents are vulnerable. People would be willing to do a lot to take charge so that they didn’t need to feel so sad, bad, fearful and out of control. They’ll pay more money, do testing. But it’s impossible to do intelligence testing on an egg.”

To discourage both fraud and undue inducement, the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (A.S.R.M.) issued a position paper in 2006 on donor compensation: $5,000, they determined, was a reasonable but not coercive fee. Anything beyond that needed “justification,” and sums over $10,000 went “beyond what is appropriate.” What’s more, the committee denounced paying more for “personal attributes,” saying that the practice commodifies human gametes.

Those guidelines, however, are unenforceable among both A.S.R.M. physician members and the donor agencies listed on the group’s Web site as pledging compliance. A survey published in May of medical clinics with egg-donor programs (which are presumably under greater pressure to act ethically than unlicensed agencies) found that although donors received an average of $4,217 nationally, at least one clinic brokered a $10,000 fee and another $15,000; a recent Craigslist post directing new recruits to Columbia University Medical Center offered $8,000 to new recruits. One in five clinics considered the donor’s fertility history or ethnicity in establishing rates.

The word donor, then, may actually be a misnomer — at least in this country, where the free market prevails. Internationally, when governments say it, they mean it. Canada and France ban payments to egg donors. Britain reimburses expenses up to about $500 after submission of receipts; before deciding to forbid donation, Italy experimented with a partial “mirror” system, a kind of genetic tit-for-tat in which a husband donates sperm to shorten his wife’s waiting time for donor eggs. No nation has a pool of donors anywhere near the size of that in the United States.

The agency Becky eventually used charged her a flat $6,500 donor fee (there would’ve been a comparatively reasonable $500 premium if she had requested a Jewish or Asian donor) along with a $3,800 agency fee. Additionally, there were the costs of the donor’s medical screening and health insurance; legal fees; reimbursement for the donor’s and possibly a companion’s travel expenses if the donor was from out of the area (Becky’s wasn’t); and reimbursement for lost wages and child care. There were also the costs associated with any I.V.F. cycle: not only the fertility drugs but also physician, clinic and lab fees. And fees for freezing any unused embryos, in case the transfer failed or the couple wanted to have another child. Becky estimated that she and Russell would eventually be out about $35,000....

When I met Deborah this spring, she had finally committed to going ahead with a donor egg after several years of flirting with the idea — the donor was chosen, the fees paid, the contracts signed, the appointments planned, the drugs delivered. Yet, days before the process was to begin, she found herself lying awake nights, frantic over whether she was doing the right thing. “What gets to me is that the three of them would be genetically related,” she said, “and I would be the one. . . . It’s not about passing on my genes. It’s that I don’t want to be an outsider in my own family. I don’t want to feel less legitimate in my child’s eyes. I’d feel I’d have to prove my status as a mother by not making any mistakes and by being the perfect mother to this child. Otherwise, he or she could. . . . ” She trailed off, staring out the window again.

“I just don’t understand,” she went on to say after a moment. “How can one parent tell a child that the genetic connection is irrelevant to their bond — when it clearly means something to the father, or why would they have gone to such lengths to maintain it? How can I tell my son that the special sense of connection he shares with me and with his cousins is irrelevant, even forbidden to mention in front of his sibling, who wouldn’t have access to his own genealogy? That’s one of the reasons why I preferred adoption. At least it allows the family to maintain a coherent logic.”

Most parents expect that clarity, those bright lines in their genetic, biological and social relationships to their children. Becoming the parent of a donor-conceived offspring means reconciling, even embracing, something murkier. Before starting our donor cycle, my husband and I met once with a social worker, a standard requirement for couples using donor eggs — though, again, not for those using donor sperm. Her job wasn’t to screen us (she did, after all, work for the clinic and had little incentive to reject anyone) but to help us imagine how the genetic asymmetry might play out. What would it feel like to see my husband’s caterpillar eyebrows or artistic talent in my child but no heritable trait of my own? What about our extended families? My parents had assured me they’d love their grandchild no matter whose genes she carried. I knew they meant it, theoretically, but I wasn’t sure they could pull off the particulars. My dad loved to brag, “It’s in the genes!” when one of his grandkids excelled in school, sports or music. I worried over how hearing those comments would affect our child. Or maybe I worried over how they would affect me.

I wasn’t alone in my concern. According to a paper published in the March 2005 issue of the journal Social Science and Medicine, parents of donor-conceived kids found “resemblance talk” — something most of us consider innocuous — to be “ubiquitous, unavoidable and uncontrollable” and they feared the constant chitchat would stigmatize their child and throw the family’s legitimacy into question. This was true irrespective of whether parents had told their children how they had been conceived, and it exacerbated uncertainties about these decisions among both groups. It also made them apprehensive about whether their children could be fully accepted by their extended families.

“People see a child in a supermarket checkout line and almost reflexively make some comment about who he looks like or doesn’t look like,” said Robert Nachtigall, an adjunct clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and a co-author of the paper. “We interpret it as a kind of shorthand by which people validate the child’s position in the family, in society, by basically making comments that refer to the blood relationship that must exist between the child and his or her parents. The problem for people who have conceived with donor gametes is that they know it’s not true. And the dilemma for them is how to respond, if at all.”

Resemblance talk did something else, too: although emphatic that it didn’t change their love for their child, mothers said it was a constant reminder of their own infertility. “Your infertility is always kind of there when you do donor conception,” said Marie, the mother of 14-year-old Catherine. “It’s always there through adoption too.” The difference is that there’s widespread cultural support for adoption in a way there isn’t for donor conception. Families can access a longstanding network of social workers, psychologists, other parents. Marie knew this from personal experience: she was herself adopted at birth. “Adoptive families are not as isolated,” she said. “People have been educated. Although I still think in general the culture is adoption-negative, it’s certainly different than 30 years ago.”

For years there has been speculation about how high-profile, late-in-life moms got pregnant: Geena Davis had twins at 48; Holly Hunter had hers at 47; Jane Seymour’s were born when she was 44. Joan Lunden has had two sets of twins, one at 52 and one at 54; although she appeared on the cover of People with a gestational surrogate, when asked flat-out by reporters if she also used an egg donor she declined to comment. Elizabeth Edwards, who gave birth to a daughter at 48 and son at 50, has ducked the question as well, demurring that it’s not “ladylike” to discuss infertility. Marcia Cross, the actress, is one of the few celebrities to acknowledge, last year in a USA Today article, that older women may use donor eggs, “which doesn’t make the baby any less beautiful or perfect. One’s own eggs only last so long, and sometimes at 43 or 44 you can have your own baby, but statistically it’s very difficult and expensive. You don’t want to wait that long.” In a People cover story published after her twin girls were born, Cross was described as having “beat the odds” of conceiving via I.V.F. at age 44 using her own eggs.

Even those in the limelight have a right to privacy, especially where their children are concerned. At the same time, drawing that line at egg donation is troubling. For one thing, the author Liza Mundy says, it perpetuates the fantasy of women’s endless fertility, as much a Hollywood illusion as unfurrowed brows, full lips and perky breasts in middle age. In reality, according to C.D.C. statistics, in 2004, only 5.2 percent of 44-year-old women who transferred embryos created through I.V.F. using their own eggs gave birth. Among 47-year-old women, none did. With donor eggs, the odds for both sets of women jump to 51 percent and often far higher. It’s also hard to imagine that these same women would be equally circumspect had they adopted. Consider the proudly public stance of the adoptive mothers Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone, Jamie Lee Curtis, Madonna. By trying to protect their children from stigma, famous egg-donor recipients may inadvertently be creating it.

Most parents of donor-conceived children won’t be expected to take a stand in the national press, but they do struggle over who to tell and when to tell, the difference between “secret” and “private” information and how much of the story is their child’s as opposed to their own. “The hardest part about not being willing to disclose until my daughter is old enough to understand is that I feel this responsibility to women my age,” said Anne, the mother of a 2 1/2-year-old girl conceived using a donor egg, who asked me to use only the middle names of her and her husband. “I want them to know they could do this, too — they could carry their baby, give birth to it, and it’s wonderful. This girl at work got pregnant. She was 43, a year older than I was when I got pregnant. She found out it was a Down baby and terminated.”

Anne’s eyes welled up, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I was so devastated for her. She came to my office and said, ‘You beat the odds.’ And I felt so guilty because I didn’t beat the odds. And I couldn’t say anything about it.”

...By the time the couple married, Anne was 40. “I used to say, ‘I’m willing to adopt but I want the experience of pushing out my own,’ ” she told me. An enthusiastic advocate of egg donation, she felt truly blessed that technology had so beautifully fulfilled her dreams...

According to several studies, most donor recipients haven’t told their children about their origins, though some researchers argue that this trend is reversing. The women I spoke with, all open enough about their choices to talk with me, said they did expect to tell their children. They talked about integrity and a child’s right to know his history. They mentioned the danger and difficulty of keeping family secrets. “If I keep it a secret, then why is it a secret?” Anne said. “Then I create the stigma even if no one else ever does. And I don’t want to be responsible for that. I want my daughter to understand that, you know, you were the best egg for the job.” Anne laughed. “And she’ll learn about perseverance. And that some things are nature: your genetic makeup makes you behave certain ways, or like certain things. That’s the way that it is. But I’ve been nurturing her. I carried her in my body. I pushed her out. She’s my child.”

The idea that disclosure could be a viable, even preferable, option is relatively new. Taking a cue from donor insemination, which was historically (and often still is) kept secret, fertility doctors initially counseled couples that disclosing to their children would only cause unnecessary confusion. I recall our first appointment to discuss egg donation at the clinic where we had undergone two I.V.F. cycles; a nurse led us to an office in a different part of the building and offered to close the blinds to ensure our privacy. Until then, I hadn’t realized we were supposed to feel furtive.

Deborah told me that she heard a clinic counselor speaking on a panel at an infertility conference promoting secrecy as a perk of egg donation. “She said, ‘The women who use donors tell me they just forget about it when they’re pregnant.’ She repeated that. Twice. Isn’t that awful?”

In truth, it isn’t clear that secrecy is necessarily damaging. In the most extensive longitudinal study to date, Susan Golombok, the director of the Center for Family Research at Cambridge University in England, has compared families who have sperm-donor children with those who have egg-donor children, as well as with those who used conventional I.V.F. and those who conceived naturally. In 2006, when her team last checked in with the donor-conceived children, they were 12, and most had not been told the nature of their conception. The kids in all of the groups were equally well adjusted. What’s more, parents of donor-conceived kids (and those who used conventional I.V.F.) were more involved with their kids’ lives than those who had conceived naturally.

Apparently, secrecy has not affected their relationships. But, Golombok wonders, what if those children someday discover the truth? Close to 75 percent of her subjects who were not planning to tell their children had told someone else that they had used a donor. What if the information came out accidentally or was blabbed during the course of a bitter divorce? What if the nongenetic parent contracted a fatal, genetically linked disease? That one hit home: I’d been through treatment for breast cancer five years before our donor cycle; I couldn’t imagine allowing a daughter to believe that she, too, would be at risk.

There have been no large-scale studies on how disclosure affects the psychological development of donor-egg-conceived kids or their relationships with their parents. But among teenagers who were told as young children that they had been conceived using donor sperm, there have been no negative repercussions, according to research by Joanna Scheib, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. In 2004, the A.S.R.M. switched its official position to support disclosure, though not unequivocally.

According to Robert Nachtigall, who has looked at disclosure decisions as well as “resemblance talk,” both those parents who disclose and those who don’t have the same motivation: acting in the best interests of their children. “We were struck by how people could use the same argument and come to a different conclusion,” he said. “Disclosing parents perceived the danger would come from an internal disruption of the family dynamic: they felt that if the child found out from another person it would destroy the trust and their relationship. Nondisclosing parents were more concerned with threats from outside of the family, with stigma. They didn’t want to subject the child or themselves to public scrutiny, to be thought of as different or other. They’d made the decision that that was the greater threat, so they weren’t going to disclose. Both types realize that this information is powerful and important; they just have different strategies about how it is to be managed.”

Parents who take the leap, though, say they don’t regret it. In a study published this March of disclosure strategies among parents who had used donor eggs or sperm, Nachtigall and his co-authors found that many expressed relief at having told their children, as if a weight had been lifted, while most children’s responses ranged from neutral to positive. “That’s the big take-home message,” Nachtigall said. “Nobody regretted telling. Nobody.”

Once a child knows she was donor-conceived, what then? How far do her rights extend? Should she be able to meet her donor, and who gets to decide? It was clear to Marie, the donor recipient who is also an adoptee, that knowing one’s genetic lineage should not just be an option, it should be an entitlement. “There’s no way I would have a child of mine go through what I went through in terms of the not knowing and the questioning and the search.” she said. Not only did she and her husband, a 65-year-old lawyer, plan from the get-go to be open with Catherine about her conception, they also wanted to ensure that their daughter would, whenever she was ready, have access to the donor...

They have been in phone and e-mail contact with the donor, who at the time of the donation was a college student interning for an acquaintance of Marie’s, ever since. Catherine has known about the woman since preschool. “The comments she’d make about it at 5 were different than at 10,” Marie said.“At 5, we’d be driving to Safeway, and this little voice in the back of the car would say, ‘Now, what’s an egg donor again?’ At 10 there were a lot of questions about who she looked like and ‘Why don’t I look like you?’ ”

Then, when Catherine was 12, came the moment that all of the donor recipients I spoke to told me they dreaded. “She turned to me in this relaxed, ‘Hey, Mom, isn’t this interesting’ kind of voice and said, ‘You know, technically speaking, you’re not actually my mother.’ ”

This, Marie said, is where it helped to be a trained therapist — and perhaps an adoptee as well, someone who has understood from experience both the salience and limits of genetic relationships, that DNA doesn’t make the mom, but children need to figure out what, if anything, it signifies. “It was her way of acknowledging that this means something to her that’s completely independent of her relationship to me. And that’s inevitable: no amount of being wanted, planned for or loved eliminates that piece of the experience.”

...When it comes to the question of whether to reveal a donor’s identity to a child, at least for now, we leave the decisions to parents. Other nations say that prerogative is trumped by a person’s right to know his heritage: Britain, for example, recently banned anonymous donation; any children conceived after 2005 will have access once they turn 18 to identifying details about their sperm or egg donors. Since 2000, when the debate over this issue began, the number of registered egg donors in Britain has dropped almost 25 percent.

Yet egg donors and recipients may have less to fear from open donations than they imagine, at least if the experience is comparable to sperm donation. According to Joanna Scheib’s research, teens who were conceived with “open-identity” sperm — who when they turn 18 can have access to their donor’s name — said that, while more than 80 percent were interested in meeting their donors, fewer than 7 percent wanted to establish a father-child relationship with them.

A few days after my conversation with Marie, I talked to Becky. She had just found out she was pregnant with twins. “Twins!” she crowed. She had always hoped to have two children: both she and Russell are close to their siblings. Now she was jubilant, if jittery. “When I found out, I walked around in a haze for a week thinking, What have I done?” she said, laughing. “As for the donor piece, I imagine this could make it easier. They won’t be alone in their situation. They’ll be in the same boat. I’m glad that they’ll be together and genetically related to each other.”

She paused a moment, thinking about her future. “I’m just happy,” she said. Finally, Becky would be a mother, her husband a father, the two of them building a family with all the conflict, joy and unpredictability that entails — regardless of whose genes are involved.

Peggy Orenstein is a contributing writer for the magazine and author of the memoir, “Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother.”"

USE A SPERM BANK, LADIES

2007-07-02T07:23:00.000-05:00

When we were in the process of conceiving our first child through IVF we were interviewed by a PhD candidate. She was comparing the experiences of lesbians who had kids by adopting, using alternative insemination or putting the eggs of one woman in the womb of the second.

One thing she told us is that every couple she interviewed who didn't use a sperm bank regretted it or had problems. Using a "friend" as a sperm donor sets lesbians up for big problems later on. This is different with egg donors because courts see two mothers and don't think a third mom is needed. But women without a man in charge of their lives are dangerous and deficient. Sperm donors are frequently awarded custody of the children of lesbians. If you don't want the hassles of divorce without the rights of marriage, use a sperm bank ladies.

"Sperm donor wins Irish custody battle

Thu Jul 19, 9:34 PM ET

SUMMARY: A lesbian couple wed in a U.K. civil union cannot take their 14-month-old boy to one mom's native Australia for long periods, the judge rules.

A man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple won a legal fight Thursday to keep his biological son in Ireland.

The Supreme Court judgment was a first in Ireland, a predominantly Roman Catholic country where the rights of same-sex couples and sperm donors have not been spelled out. Now the couple, wed in a civil-union ceremony in England, cannot spend long periods in Australia with their 14-month-old boy as planned, but can only vacation there for up to six weeks.

Another courtroom battle between the man and the couple looms over joint custody of the boy.

Two judges, Justices Susan Denham and Joseph Finnegan, ruled that the toddler's best interests required him to stay in Ireland near his biological father. The third judge, Justice Nial Fennelly, disagreed, arguing no evidence was offered that the boy would be harmed by leaving Ireland.

"The case is utterly unique and unprecedented," Fennelly wrote in his dissent, noting that neither the parental rights of sperm donors nor lesbian couples are defined in Irish law.

Neither side has been publicly identified, following Ireland's policy of granting anonymity to family law litigants.

The lesbian couple -- an Irishwoman and an Australian -- exchanged vows in January 2006, just after same-sex civil unions were legalized in the United Kingdom. The Irishwoman was pregnant by the Irish sperm donor, who signed a contract giving him visitation rights.

The boy, born in May 2006, has his biological father's name as his middle name, and the couple initially granted the man regular visits. But tensions quickly grew, both sides' lawyers agreed.

The couple restricted the man's access to the boy, then announced they planned to go to Australia for up to a year. The man filed two lawsuits -- one to restrict the trip and another seeking joint custody. The custody case is to be heard this fall.

Thursday's verdict upheld a judgment by High Court Justice Henry Abbott, who ruled the couple could take the boy to Australia for six weeks. The Supreme Court held that until the custody claim is considered, the boy should travel outside Ireland for only a limited period. (Shawn Pogatchnik, AP) "

BALLING HYSTERICALLY

2007-06-12T21:48:00.000-05:00

There have been several stories I've read about lesbians who get pregnant at the same time to complete their family all at once. Having been through two pregnancies together, my wife and I think this is nuts. Who runs out for the pickles and ice cream at 2am if both women are pregnant? Who carries the groceries?

I was just reading about two women who each gave birth to sextuplets on the same day. When I told my wife about this, she said "Is that those two lesbians who both got pregnant at the same time? Bad planning on their part!". She was just joking, but I thought it was pretty funny, the idea that a female couple could end up with 12 babies at once.

No, each woman who gave birth to sextuplets was married to a man. They have more in common than that. Both couples see the conception of the six babies as "an act of God", even though they both needed fertility treatment to get pregnant. Of course, each saw selective reduction as against God's plan.

I'm fine with people not seeing an infertility diagnosis as "God's plan". But how is that not the plan and having to take powerful drugs that make you conceive too many children is? What God would plan that they carry six babies, give birth to six disabled children and, as with one of the women, experience heart failure upon giving birth?

Let's either leave things up to God entirely or take responsibility for our own selfish, destructive decisions. Poor God. S/he is not to blame for every stupid thing done by us humans. But the couples who gave birth to the sextuplets put it all on God. Their websites are chock full with prayer requests and discussions of "miracles". A miracle is when someone gives birth to a healthy child, not whelps a litter of innocent, damaged children who will never be well, just because they can.

At least one of the couples is fessing up to having used fertility drugs. Three rounds of increasingly strong drugs before the sextuplets were finally conceived. God's plan -- that the first two drugs didn't work but the third one did -- was not very efficient.

The second couple will only say they became pregnant through "artificial insemination". What?!? Call the sperm bank and get that guy's sample. He's the world's biggest stud if he can make a woman ovulate six eggs instead of the usual one or two. Obviously that couple used fertility drugs as well and is lying about it. Why? Because it wasn't them dooming their children to disability and forcing tax-payers to foot millions of dollars in medical bills, it was God.

I assumed that the news report I read on the "artificial insemination" couple was simply wrong, so I looked at the many press clippings on their website. Sure enough, the phrase "insemination" came up in each story, sometimes as a direct quote. This is a calculated effort on the part of the couple to deceive. They are completely open about every aspect of their story so it's not a privacy issue. It's a direct attempt to hide the truth.

There is one other possible explanation. Perhaps they conceived six children another way. The mother is quoted below:

"By azfamily.com

...it was a shock to learn Jenny was carrying sextuplets. The ultrasound technician showed the young mother-to-be something she never expected to see.

"So she counted and she was like, 'One, two, three, four,' and then she lost it and then I was like balling hysterically and I was like, 'Oh my God, I don't know.'" Then she's like five and I was like, 'Oh my gosh' and then she stopped,"

So that's how they conceived six: it wasn't "artificial insemination", it was "balling hysterically".

However it happened, people who claim to be pro-child and doom their own children leave me BAWLing hysterically.

THE SECOND TRANSFER

2007-06-10T09:14:00.000-05:00

After the recipients transferred one embryo and it didn't take they decided to thaw the remaining two embryos and transfer both at once. We were fine with this, since we were mainly trying to avoid contributing to needless disability should they transfer three embryos at once and have all three take.

When the recipients thawed the last two embryos, only one survived. It grew to a grade B, 4-celled embryo. That is the exact same size and grade of the embryos, from two different egg retrieval batches, which resulted in our son and daughter. Since all of my embryos to date had reached grade B, 4-cells (except the first embryo the recipients thawed), we had hope that this embryo would result in a baby for the recipients.

Unfortunately, that hope was unfounded. The transfer did not work. The recipients did not get pregnant from the embryos we donated to them. We wish we had more embryos to offer them so they could try again, but we only had three left over.

Erin, the recipient who tried to get pregnant for two years through insemination and then using my embryos, felt she had "let us down" by not getting pregnant with the embryos we gave her and her partner. But I told the recipients that the benefit of using a donor is you can blame any problems on him or her.

In this case, the eggs with which the embryos were created were 37 years old, which isn't the freshest. I told the recipients that it was certainly my old, musty eggs that caused the problem, not Erin.

We are sad we could not help these wonderful women become mothers. They are now pursuing other options. Of course, if you have some spare eggs or embryos lying around, let me know and I will pass the information along to them. You could not find warmer, more loving women. We hope their child will come to them soon.

WHEN EMBRYO TRANSFERS FAIL

2007-06-09T09:38:00.000-05:00

We were disappointed for our recipients that the first embryo transfer did not work. Originally they told us they wanted three children, all full genetic siblings. That was a long shot to begin with since we only had three embryos to offer them. With only a one in three change of success per embryo (assuming all the embryos thawed) it was likely that our recipients would end up with one, or possibly two children.

On the other hand, there was also a possibility that they would have either zero or three children from the three embryos. But now that the first transfer had failed, it was almost impossible that their dream of having three genetic siblings would come true with our embryos (identical twins are much more common with IVF so there is a slight chance they could still have three genetic siblings).

We knew these wonderful women wanted to be mothers with all their hearts. We wanted to help them. Since my eggs had been used to create the embryos, I felt like I was at fault for the failure of their first attempt.

WHY IT DIDN'T TAKE

It is impossible to know exactly why the embryo did not implant. We know that embryos of the size this one had achieved have at least a one in 3 chance of becoming a baby. But they have a two in 3 chance of failing to implant, just as they do when conceived the old fashioned way.

There were several factors that probably contributed to the lack of a pregnancy:

1) The embryo was only grade C. I had never before produced a grade C embryo, all my previous embryos being higher grades, but it's not surprising that this embryo was of lower quality. I was 37 when these embryos were created. That's not super-old for successful reproduction, but it's not considered young. Most clinics won't even accept egg donors in their mid to late 30's.

2) This cycle had been rather stressful for the recipients. There was the mix-up with the prescription, first-time jitters, meeting us for the first time, traveling to a new area, and so on. Stress is known to have a significantly adverse affect on IVF outcomes.

3) We later learned that both women had a common bacterial infection known to cause miscarriage and failure to implant. The clinic requires these infections to be treated before a cycle can begin. I am not sure how the infection was overlooked, but it could certainly have had an affect on their chances for success.

Well, at least they had two embryos left. The recipients looked into ways to increase their odds of success for the next attempt. One thing they did was treat the infection. Another thing involved me, and shortly after the failed transfer they wrote to me to see what I thought about it.

More on that next time.

TRANSFER RESULTS

2007-06-08T08:15:00.000-05:00

Each day my recipients did an early home pregnancy test and each day they wrote to us to say the result was negative. We appreciated them involving us in their pregnancy attempt but we did not expect it. The embryos were no longer ours. The recipients had a contractual obligation to notify us if they gave birth, but they were under no obligation to tell us anything else before the baby came.

As each day passed with no indication of pregnancy it seemed likely that the recipients were not pregnant. Still, there was a reason the doctor schedules the test for two weeks after the transfer: that's when enough hormones should be present to truly indicate if a pregnancy had occurred. Until that date it was entirely possible that the negative results simply indicated it was too early to tell.

The day before their final pregnancy test was scheduled at the doctor's office we did not get the daily update from our recipients. It seemed clear to us from this that the last home pregnancy test had been negative.

Several days passed with no word. Had they rescheduled their doctor's visit? We gave the recipients their space and privacy. This was their family and their business, not ours. Several days after their last email, we received this message, sent to a dozen members of their immediate families:

"We had our blood test completed today and received a call back confirming
that we are not pregnant but wanted to send a thank you to all those who were so supportive and thoughtful during this whole process. It would be much harder without the great support system we have. We are truly lucky to have such great family and friends.

We are still not down for the count! We will be trying again hopefully late Spring early Summer! So until then we are counting our blessings and saving our quarters for next time."

We were disappointed for Jenny and Erin. They had been waiting so long to become moms. We had hoped to help them and we still might, but not yet.

WHY SHE DESTROYED HER FROZEN EMBRYO

2007-06-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

Here is another perspective on what to do with a frozen embryo from Sabrina Paradis. The article is entitled "Why I Had My Stored Embryo Destroyed". I understand her decision but it seems that she based it on incomplete information. For instance, she didn't know about the non-religious embryo donation site MiraclesWaiting.org. She only found the extremist sites run by people trying to outlaw all abortion.

The writer imagines meeting her genetic child born to other parents. She thinks it would be uncomfortable to tell that person "I only wanted two children." My experience and expectations around adoption, embryo donation and egg donation are not hypothetical. My wife and I have been through it from all angles, and have spent many hours with the family her egg donation helped to create. Our experience is just the opposite of that imagined by the author.

Children who are not genetically related to their parents (due to adoption or egg/embryo donation) don't look at their donors as their parents. If they know their parents had help to have children, that's how they look at the situation. A donor is an interesting footnote in the self-image of those children who know they were conceived with the gametes of someone other than their parents. A donor can be a family friend. Donors are not parents.

If I meet the child(ren) of my recipients I will proudly say "I couldn't keep someone as wonderful as you to myself so I shared. I interviewed dozens of people before I picked the very best parents for you. I found two people who wanted more than anything to love you and I helped them to have you." I am completely pro-choice. Destroying an embryo is a perfectly valid thing to do if those who created it wish to do so. But I cannot imagine that a baby born from a donated embryo would be disappointed at being born, whether to the parents who created her or to equally loving parents they picked.

With those thoughts, here is an excellent article by someone who made a different choice than I:

"The bill came in the mail last month. It sat, unopened on our front table. Neither my husband nor I touched it or said a word to each other. But one day at work, I got an email from him that read, simply, "Should we pay it?"

"No," I replied, "Let's not pay it." His second email was somber: "I am okay with that, so long as we are both willing to look at each other and our kids and say that it is okay."

The bill was for Vial Number 2988 — our third child. Well, not actually our child — our embryo, in frozen storage at the in-vitro-fertilization clinic. Vial Number 2988 was the final result of $12,000 worth of IVF treatment: fifty hormone injections, twenty-seven blood draws, sixteen sick days from work and at least one day where the whole process made me feel suicidal. The result: two beautiful children, one boy and one girl, eighteen months apart and both still in diapers, and across town, a cluster of cells in limbo.

I always wanted three children. To me, three seemed to be the magic number that made a family "big."I couldn't help but think of this third embryo (which was frozen at five days' development) as a child. A fortuneteller once told me that I'd have three children, two boys and a girl. Like a child's birthday wish, I never told anyone her prediction, fearing it might not come true. The image of those three babies stuck in my head.

Growing up liberal, I always believed in a woman's right to choose and that an embryo (the term used until week eight of a pregnancy, when the embryo becomes a fetus) wasn't actually a child. Yet, I couldn't help but think of this third embryo (which was frozen at five days' development) as a child, especially because both the other embryos I had created eventually became children.

The day after our email decision, I called the number on the invoice. "Um, I don't want to pay my bill for embryo storage." I said.

"What do you mean you just don't want to pay it?" the woman at the billing office said. She sounded confused.

"I, uh, don't want to have my embryo stored anymore." I said, feeling horrible.

"Oh! Well, in that case, we just send you out a form to tell us what you want done with the embryos and you send it back to us and that's it!" she said brightly, "Oh! And it has to be notarized!"

I hung up without requesting the form. I wasn't ready to have my office secretary notarize a form that said I didn't want more children.

And yet, I really didn't and neither did my husband. Our family felt complete. And I felt I couldn't face a third difficult pregnancy. My two pregnancies were rough and high-risk. My doctor even forbade me from taking the subway. I had placenta previa and a weakened cervix — two disorders that might have caused problems, but luckily didn't. My daughter and son came into the world full-term, fat, pink and amazing. I couldn't believe my luck.

And I didn't want to press it. During my initial treatment, my doctor warned against carrying multiple babies with my medical conditions, so he implanted only one. It worked. Success using only one embryo is very rare (some say 20%), even in the most advanced of New York clinics. But success using only one frozen embryo is more so; typically, only about half of embryos even survive thawing. When I went back to the clinic to start trying for baby number two, in went one frozen embryo from that same, first, IVF cycle. It also worked. I won the IVF lottery — twice. Once you have two big wins like that, you have to acknowledge that on your next play, you're more likely to lose. Better, I thought, to let the storage facility dispose of that embryo than to go through the grueling IVF process only to have the procedure fail or to miscarry.

I never considered giving the embryo up for "adoption" or donating it for stem-cell research. I know that sounds selfish. Here I had a perfectly good embryo and I didn't want it. I knew how awful it felt to be infertile. Why not give it to an infertile couple longing for a child? Or donate it to science? Well, stem-cell research blogs and the paltry explanation of "donating to science" in my IVF pamphlet conjured up images of human cloning. And I cringed when I looked at resources like the National Embryo Donation Center website, on which such embryos are referred to as "snowflake kids." All I could think of was the eighteen-year-old child on my doorstep. What would I say? "Uh, well, we had your brother and your sister and we pretty much had our hands full after that." They say you can donate anonymously, but who hasn't turned on a talk show to see an adoptee reunited with his mother after a lifelong search? I can't help but feel it's only a matter of time before those anonymous frozen embryos find their way back home.

The cliché is true, having kids changes everything — including the decision to have more kids. And the dream of easily, happily having three children ran up against reality. And that reality is: I have two kids who are far closer in age than I ever would have planned because I was getting older and had struggled for years to have kids at all. I went into the IVF clinic frightened and hopeless and left it $12,000 poorer and thirty-five pounds heavier, extolling the virtues of modern medicine. I went from daybreak trips to get my hormone levels tested to daybreak coffee runs covered in baby vomit. Sometimes I feel I don't have the right to complain, because I worked so hard to become a mother, in all its horror and glory. But the truth is: having two young children is harder than I ever imagined.

The billing office started leaving vaguely threatening messages on my machine regarding the unpaid bill, which was for several hundred dollars. I had another birthday and was officially in my late thirties. The kids got the croup and I spent Memorial Day weekend convinced the four of us wouldn't make it out of the steamy bathroom alive. My daughter learned to sing her ABC's and my son started to crawl. We decided to move and found a wonderful three-bedroom house. And just like that, I decided my family wouldn't be bound by the outcome of that $25 palm reading. I called the billing department back and asked them to send me the form, on which our names were printed and there were highlighted lines for our signatures stating that we wished for the contents of Vial Number 2988 to be thawed. We signed the form, got it notarized and sent it the same day. And every day I count my blessings. One. Two. "

THE RESULTS

2007-06-04T07:27:00.001-05:00

A few days after Jenny and Erin's fertility doctor transferred one of my spare frozen embryos into Erin's womb they tried an early home pregnancy test. It was too early for a valid test but they thought they'd give it a try. It was possible they they might have a hint if the embryo had attached.

As expected, the test was negative. That was to be expected. Jenny and Erin thoughtfully let us know that they had tested. It is hard to wait the two weeks to find out if the IVF procedure was successful. Doctors ask their patients to wait the full two weeks before testing at the doctor's office to avoid false negatives which can be disappointing.

There was still a week and a half to go before the final test by the doctor. Jenny and Erin decided not to stress out. Another test might have a better result. There was always tomorrow.

EGG DONOR RIP-OFF

2007-06-03T14:10:00.000-05:00

Here is a report that tries to defuse some of the hysteria surrounding egg donation. Finally, an explanation of why egg donors are paid such a piddling amount for risking their lives to help someone else have a family: only the hours spent at the doctor's office are counted. That is utterly ridiculous. What about the hours spent taking painful injections? Or the hours of discomfort from these extremely strong medications and the huge number of egg sacs inside your body?

I have never donated eggs for money and never will but the amount women are paid for this is piddling. You can die while taking the egg meds, or on the operating table, or you can die later due to the meds increasing your risk of future ovarian cancer.

Donating sperm is NOTHING compared to donating eggs. This is another example of women earning less than men for doing more work.

"Survey belies tales of donor egg market gone awry

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Media reports of an out-of-control market for human eggs fueled by desperate couples willing to pay large sums are exaggerated, results of a survey suggest.

The average donor compensation for 191 fertility clinics surveyed nationwide was $4,217, well within the $5,000 limit established by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) in 2000, Sharon N. Covington of the Shady Grove Fertility Reproductive Science Center in Rockville, Maryland and Dr. William E. Gibbons of the Women's Center for Reproductive Medicine in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, found.

"I think that's what gets headlines is to look at an industry that's kind of out of control and gone awry, and we don't believe that that's the case," Covington, who conducted the survey for the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), told Reuters Health.

"One of the purposes of a study like this is to give consumers information to empower them so that they can make choices," she added in an interview.

The ASRM had established $5,000 as the upper limit for standard egg compensation, with payments above $10,000 "beyond what is appropriate." But there remains no objective way to put a price on human ova, the researchers note in a report in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

The ASRM had suggested a formula based on multiplying the average number of hours an egg donor spends in a medical setting -- 56 -- with the standard payment for a sperm donation. Based on a sperm donor payment of $65 to $70 in 2000 dollars, the ASRM came up with a "justifiable" price of $3,360 to $4,200 per egg.

In the current study, the researchers contacted 394 SART member clinics, and 191 responded. Eighty percent said they paid the same fee to all donors. There was some regional variation in compensation, ranging from roughly $5,000, on average, for the northeastern and western US to $2,900 in the northwestern part of the country.

Covington and Gibbons admit their analysis does not cover the entire field of donor egg payment; one western agency had told SART it couldn't comply with the society's guidelines and compete in the marketplace. And the researchers did not survey donor egg agencies, they note, which represent a "burgeoning, consumer-driven industry." Such agencies must agree to comply with ASRM and SART standards in order to be listed on their Web sites, the researchers add, but "it is unclear whether they are in fact doing so."

Nevertheless, Covington and Gibbons conclude, their "reassuring" findings indicate that the "vast majority" of fertility clinics are complying with ASRM guidelines on donor egg compensation.

SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, May 2007."

PROTECTING MY KIDS

2007-06-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

There is an agency called RainbowLaw.com that creates legal packets specific to couples' needs in each US state. The goal of these forms is to protect families whose marriages are not recognized in the USA, or who do not wish to marry.

RainbowLaw has a packet aimed at the needs of Seniors, and one for unmarried heterosexual couples. The main goal of their work, however, is to help gay couples, whose marriages are ignored by the Bush Administration, overcome some of the many barriers to keeping each other safe. Because they specialize in this work, and do it out of community concern, the packets cost less than $300, a pittance compared to what a typical lawyer charges to make such forms from scratch.

We completed a RainbowLaw packet before our first child was born. We needed it at the hospital so I could make medical decisions for my wife and my genetic child. I would remain a legal stranger to the baby created from my egg until the birth certificate and Petition to Establish Maternity were filed the following week. For that reason, I needed a sheaf of forms with me at all times in case something happened.

And something did happen. After two days of unsuccessful attempts to give birth naturally to our 9-pound breech baby, he was born by emergency cesarean section. If I had not had those forms in place, my mother-in-law, who was 1,000 miles away and who did not support our relationship, would have had all the decision-making power for my wife and my genetic child.

It was recently time to redo these forms, due to the birth of my second child. Rainbow law charged less than $100 for the updates. No couple can afford to be without these forms. With the prices RainbowLaw charges, and the scholarships they provide, everyone can afford to have them. Do you?

SPERM DONORS vs. EGG DONORS

2007-05-30T07:10:00.001-05:00

Here is an article that says sperm donors don't get as much money or respect as egg donors, even though the men have more "work" and inconvenience. This report could only have been written by someone who never did an egg retrieval cycle. Here's why it's wrong:

1) Donating eggs even once triples your risk of cervical cancer. You have to sign a form to that effect before the cycle begins.

2) You can die during the egg cycle from ovarian hyperstimulation or from clots from the meds.

3) You can die on the operating table when the eggs are retrieved.

4) Sperm donation is completely non-invasive and risk-free. It also ends in orgasm.

5) Donating sperm takes about five minutes per donation.

6) The six weeks the egg donor works are 24-hours a day of discomfort.

7) During egg donation you have painful shots several times per day and you have to take the shots at precise times.

I think the argument stops at "you can die". Sperm donation is NOTHING compared to egg donation. Sperm donation is fairly compensated: after the intake process they get $75 for five minutes work. Egg donors have an even more arduous intake process, then they get $5000 for six weeks of hell and risking their lives. Which seems more fair?

There is no way I would ever donate eggs for money. I did it only to have my own children. My wife donated eggs to an infertile friend out of kindness. The friend introduced her to a woman who needed an egg donor. That woman offered my wife $10,000 -- twice the going rate -- to donate again. My wife said "forget it". It might be worth it for about ten times my yearly salary, but no less.

With this in mind, here is the most ignorant, biased article I ever read:

"Double-standard exists in the way that men and women donors are valued by the fertility industry
Medical Studies/Trials
Published: Sunday, 27-May-2007

When Sociologist Rene Almeling decided to look into the operations of U.S. sperm banks and egg agencies, the UCLA Ph.D. candidate in sociology thought she knew what she would find.

She figured that any discrepancies in compensation rates for the building blocks of assisted reproduction could be explained by either market forces or the biological differences between female egg donors, who must undergo hormone therapy and outpatient surgery, and their male counterparts, who, as one recruitment ad put it, "get paid to do what you already do."

Instead, Almeling, whose findings appear in the June issue of the American Sociological Review, uncovered a topsy-turvy market that often defies not just conventional wisdom but also the basic law of supply and demand.

"Men donors are paid less for a much longer time commitment and a great deal of personal inconvenience," she said. "They also are much less prepared for the emotional consequences of serving as a donor of reproductive material. Women, meanwhile, are not only paid more for a much shorter time commitment, they are repeatedly thanked for 'giving the gift of life.'

"From compensation rates to the smallest details of donor relations, sperm donors are less valued than egg donors," Almeling said. "Egg donors are treated like gold, while sperm donors are perceived as a dime a dozen."

The inequities persist despite the fact that profiles of hundreds of potential egg donors languish on agency Web sites, far outstripping recipient demand, while suitable sperm donors are quite rare, Almeling found. In fact, only a tiny fraction of the male population possesses a sperm count consistently high enough to be considered donation-worthy, and more than 90 percent of sperm bank applicants are rejected for this and other reasons. As a result, sperm banks routinely resort to finder's fees to meet the need.

"A pronounced double-standard exists in the way that men and women donors are valued by the fertility industry, and it can't be explained medically or by market forces," Almeling said. "Based on the availability of donors alone, you would expect the abundance of potential egg donors to drive down compensation fees and the scarcity of potential sperm donors to drive up their fees. But I found just the opposite.

Almeling's findings are part of a growing body of research on the sociology of markets in life-saving and life-giving material, including blood and organ donations and life insurance payouts. But Almeling's study, which is based on interviews with 25 staff members at two sperm banks and two egg agencies, is believed to be the first detailed comparison of gender-based differences in U.S. compensation rates for reproductive material. Almeling has been gathering data on the medical market in genetic material for the past five years.

Almeling found that it is not unusual for egg donors in large cities to make upwards of $5,000 per donation - no matter the outcome. Agencies also encourage recipient couples to provide female donors with thank-you notes, small tokens of appreciation and even cash bonuses.

In contrast, sperm banks do not pay as well or encourage such displays of gratitude. Male donors make between $50 and $75 per donation, and they are paid only when their samples meet the high fertility standards required for freezing. Over the length of their contracts - generally, an entire year - sperm donors may make as much as their female counterparts do over the course of a single six-week cycle, but only if they donate more than the required one sample per week. Invariably, however, earnings of sperm donors fell short, either because donors missed weekly sessions or their samples failed to meet fertility standards. Women also may donate as many as three times in a year, and their fees increase with each completed cycle.

So an egg donor actually stands to make far more during the same period of time than even the most diligent and fertile sperm donor.

Moreover, men work much longer for their pay than women, and their activities are much more restricted as a result. In addition to requiring weekly donations for a year, sperm banks instruct men to refrain from sex for two days prior to donation or risk the possibility that their samples will fail to meet fertility standards. Being sick or stressed also has a negative effect on sperm count.

"Even the doctors who were working with infertile couples were surprised when they learned just how demanding the process is for men," Almeling said. "Sperm donors basically have to schedule their sex lives for a year."

Meanwhile, their female counterparts also have to refrain from sex, but their activities are restricted only for six weeks. However, the women have to commit to a degree of bodily invasiveness not experienced by men: a six-week regime of hormone therapy, which leads to serious complications in 1 to 2 percent of cases, and a single egg-extraction procedure that causes some discomfort and leads to serious complications in less than 1 out of 1,000 cases, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Men and women weren't just compensated dramatically differently. They also experienced dramatically different "working" conditions. Almeling found that women were repeatedly reminded of their generosity, whereas men tended to be reminded that sperm donation was to be viewed like any other job.

"Staff at egg agencies constantly thank women and encourage them to think about what a wonderful difference they're making in the lives of recipients," Almeling said. "The sperm bank staff is appreciative, but men aren't told how amazing they are and what a great gift they're giving. They're treated more like reproductive service workers. They come in. They clock in and out. Their sample is checked for quality. And they're only paid when they produce an acceptable sample."

The medical community has justified compensation rates for egg donors by pointing out that egg extraction is more difficult and risky than extracting sperm and that the female body has a limited supply of eggs, while the male body replenishes sperm. But Almeling does not believe these biological differences fully explain this market. While an individual woman has fewer eggs than an individual man has sperm, women never run the risk of "running out" of eggs due to donating. Moreover, the huge oversupply of women willing to be donors means that eggs are not actually scarce for couples seeing to acquire them.

Cultural norms of parenthood, which are perpetuated though marketing efforts, interact with these biological understandings to produce the differences in market prices, Almeling believes.

"Both eggs and egg donors are more highly valued than sperm and sperm donors, where it is not just reproductive material but visions of middle-class, American femininity and masculinity and motherhood and fatherhood that are marketed and purchased," she said.

Donor recruitment at the egg agencies and sperm banks appeared to reinforce these stereotypes, Almeling found. Egg agency advertisements tend to appeal to women's altruism, while men are informed of a job opportunity. The application process for donors also favors what Almeling called "gendered stereotypes of selfless motherhood and distant fatherhood." Although egg donors stood to be handsomely compensated, women who indicated there was a financial motive behind their participation were routinely rejected in favor of applicants who expressed more altruistic motives, such as the desire to "help" infertile couples. Sperm banks, meanwhile, were much less explicit about the need to appear altruistic.

"While most egg donors will never meet their genetic children, women are expected to reproduce well-worn patters of 'naturally' caring, helpful femininity, guiltily hiding any interest that they might have in the promise of thousands of dollars," Almeling said. "This ruse is not demanded of sperm donors. Men, who are more likely to be contacted through the banks' identity release programs, often do not even consider that children will result from regular deposits at the sperm bank."

In fact, one sperm donor was dumbstruck when he was informed that one of his contributions had resulted in conception.

"I hadn't really thought about the fact there were going to be pregnancies," he said.

The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions and use of sociology to society."

THEIR CHILD

2007-05-28T08:43:00.000-05:00

Once I met someone who told me her mother went to school with Elvis and they had a flirtation. The family story was that if things had gone a bit differently, "Elvis would have been my dad!" There are stories like these in most families. The other day, my father said to me, "If your mother hadn't had that miscarriage you would have an older brother."

What we all know is that if there were different circumstances, we would not be here at all. If my parents had a child before me they might have decided not to have any more children. The timing would not have been exactly the same regardless, and a different egg and different sperm would have united to make a different person. I would simply not exist.

But it's certainly true that in slightly different circumstances our families would all be configured differently. Jenny and Erin, my embryo recipients, found MiraclesWaiting.org by chance. They decided to look for donors despite their concerns that no one would be looking for a lesbian couple like them. Finding us and having the faith in themselves to be open and honest with us led to our donation of three embryos to them. With a 1 in 3 chance of success per embryo, we hope and believe that our donation will result in at least one baby for them to love.

As we waited to discover if their dream would come true in the weeks after their transfer of one of those embryos, I had a sudden realization that took me aback.

Their child could have been one of our children. Not in the sense that we wanted another child. Two was the right number for us, and we had achieved our goal. We do not want any more children, which is why we donated the embryos to this lesbian couple who, we knew, would face nothing but discrimination if they tried to adopt a child.

What I mean by "their child could have been one of ours" is this: the reason we have our daughter is that the embryologist randomly selected two fertilized eggs AT CONCEPTION and froze the remaining three. There was no attempt to pick the "best" embryos because they were all just two-celled fertile eggs at that point, too small to grade for quality.

When the embryologist met with us to confirm that we wanted two embryos fresh and three frozen, I told her "pick a girl". We already had a boy and wanted our last child to be of a different gender for the sake of variety. Of course I was joking -- the embryologist who can look at a two-celled pre-embryo and successfully "pick a girl" would be a very wealthy embryologist. But she had. She could just as easily have selected any of the other embryos, and that might be our child instead.

Why did the embryologist choose the egg that became our daughter, and that second embryo which didn't implant? Maybe the embryo that stood out was the one in the middle. Perhaps she is left handed and that embryo was closest to her dominant hand. However she decided to use the two embryos she chose and not one of the other three, this was truly random luck.

This is not a case of "Elvis could have been my father". There were five existing embryos, each a potential child. We got two of them and the recipients got three.

If our recipients get one of those embryos to implant and grow into a baby, that child could just as easily have been picked for us by the embryologist. S/he could even have been our daughter's twin, if both embryos had implanted instead of just one. This was not an outcome we desired, since we only wanted two children and already had one. But it is an outcome which could have happened just as easily as what did happen.

The recipients may not even get a child from our embryos. The odds are in their favor, but the interplay between embryo and womb that leads to pregnancy is the least-understood and hardest to control part of the entire IVF process.

But while we waited to find out if our embryos' intended parents would become actual moms, what could have been was as interesting as what might be.

THE FIRST CYCLE

2007-05-24T14:32:00.000-05:00

After their embryo transfer, our recipients, Jenny and Erin, stayed in a hotel near the clinic. To give themselves the best chance of the procedure working, Erin was on bed rest for a couple of days until it was time to fly home.

Now began the two week wait. Until the pregnancy test two weeks after the transfer, there is no indication whether or not a woman who has completed an embryo transfer is actually pregnant. This is a nail-bitingly stressful time. The intended mothers would be cataloguing each twinge, wondering if a bit of spotting was a sign that the embryo was implanting in the womb, or being rejected, and generally on pins and needles.

Many women can't wait the full two weeks and use early home pregnancy tests to try and get an indication of whether or not the transfer worked. Jenny and Erin were no exception.

The problem with these tests is they are not certain. It is hard to tell exactly when the developing early pregnancy might produce enough hormones to register on the test. In other cases, a "chemical pregnancy" produced by the drugs one takes to do the IVF cycle could indicate a pregnancy where none exists.

With all of this in mind, I waited to hear what Jenny and Erin's early tests were revealing.

PROOF THAT GAYS PARENT BETTER

2007-05-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

Logic dictates that lesbian or gay male couples are better parents, on average, than straights. After all, gay couples are almost always parents by choice, not by accident. And they have to jump through so many legal, practical and societal hoops to have children that the process selects for those most dedicated to having kids.

The Canadian government did a "study of studies". It reviewed all the research out there on gay families. It found that almost all the studies show that kids of gays do as well or better than children in straight families/

Surprise: the new Conservative Canadian government tried to surpress the study. It's bad news, after all: gays are better parents than straights. Why must gay families continue to suffer at the hands of biased bigots? There is no reason to deny gay parents the rights we need to care for our children. There is every reason to give us equal rights. It's not just the morally right thing to do, it's scientifically proven!

"SUMMARY: The study for Canada's Justice Department finds that kids raised by lesbian parents are just as socially competent as kids raised by straights.

A Canadian study has found that same-sex parents are just as good, if not better, than opposite-sex parents.

The study, released by the Canadian Justice Department, was commissioned in 2003 by its then-Liberal government. The study primarily focused on lesbian couples.

The study, authored by Professor Paul Hastings at Concordia University, asserts that children raised by lesbian parents are equally as socially competent as children raised by heterosexual parents.

"A few studies suggest that children with two lesbian mothers may have marginally better social competence than children in traditional nuclear families, even fewer studies show the opposite, and most studies fail to find any differences," says the 74-page study.

Hastings, who only just gained permission to release the study, suggested that publication was restricted by the Conservative government that regained power in 2006, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In December, the Conservatives tried to challenge the constitutional definition of marriage, but the efforts were defeated in the House of Commons.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005. "

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN

2007-05-08T11:24:00.000-05:00

When women gain the right to control their reproduction or sexuality, repressive societies get scared. The response may be that of Islamic theocracies, where the government sanctions killing or gang-raping women as punishment for their, or their family members' infidelity.

In the United States, Christian theocrats seem to admire the Ayatollahs who dictate law and policy in countries like Iran. They are frightened to death of the fact that lesbians are creating healthy families without the participation of male parents.

In Kansas, a male friend agreed to donate sperm to a woman who wanted to have children as a single parent. They signed no contract giving him any rights whatsoever. His donation was made in a medical clinic. After the woman's twins were born, the man decided he wanted joint custody!

Below is my response to the article, entitled "What About the Children?"

"What about the children? The children have the right to an intact family of the parent(s) who chose to have them, NOT the confusion and chaos of shared custody with someone who happens to share their genes but is not a member of their family. With your logic, all parents who give their kids up for adoption should share custody with the adoptive parents. That is utterly wrong.

Infertile couples and their children created with the help of anonymous sperm donors have the legal right not to have a stranger interfere with their families.

You are suggesting that a family with an infertile husband who chose a sperm donor be forced to endure 18 years of interference by the "real" father.

Likewise, women who choose to have children without a male partner don't sign up for decades of "marriage" to a sperm donor either.

Oh, you only care if the parents are women. If you hate lesbians that much, don't pretend your concern is that the children have a "dad". The children's parents are the couple who is raising them, not a stranger who signed away his legal rights.

I donated my embryos left over from IVF to an infertile couple. My family does not expect the right to make decisions for those children or have legal visitation rights just because we helped another family have children. No donor has, or should have, that expectation. If the real parents who are raising the children wish to allow the donor and child to meet -- and most do -- that is their choice, not our right.

Children know their families are "real" whether or not their parents had help cretaing them. Why don't you know that?"

THE EMBRYO TRANSFER

2007-04-29T17:38:00.000-05:00

After our visit with our embryo recipients, Jenny and Erin, they headed back to their hotel. The embryo transfer was scheduled to occur within 24 hours. I'm sure they were nervous and excited.

We didn't expect to hear from our recipients for a while after the transfer and we had no intention of bothering them, but after the procedure Jenny and Erin thoughtfully contacted us to let us know everything had gone well.

They had chosen to stay in the hotel for another day after the embryo transfer. There is no hard evidence that this improves embryo transfer success rates, but it couldn't hurt.

Jenny and Erin went home two days after their transfer. They would have blood work three days later, but not to find out if they were pregnant. That information would not be available until after the dreaded "Two Week Wait". More on that later.

WHAT ARE THE RECIPIENTS LIKE IN PERSON?

2007-04-22T03:56:00.000-05:00

Before we met our embryo recipients, we "knew" them from extensive emails, phone calls and some photos of them and their families. We thought we had a good idea of who they were.

It was obvious that they were child-centered, caring women. They both have professional jobs. Their relationships with their families sounded strong. Jenny seemed to have a fun sense of humor. She wrote interesting emails. Erin sounded like the practical grounding force for the relationship. She looked glamorous in the photos they sent.

In person, we gained a clearer sense of who these women truly were that we were trying to help to become parents. Jenny was much more motherly than she had seemed via email. She was obviously the planner, taking care of everyone and making sure everything was alright. Her personality was bubbly and warm.

Erin had grown her hair much longer. She looked nice with long hair, but not as glamorous as with a trendy, short haircut. She seemed sportier than in her photos, but still very practical.

As Southern women, both were very polite, especially when one of my relatives strongly suggested activities for them for the rest of their (brief) stay in our town. By "suggest" I mean "dictate".

Our children took to Jenny and Erin immediately, even the little one, who was going through stranger anxiety at that time. Our older child tried to impress them with all sorts of gymnastics.

It was obvious that we had made the right choice in selecting these women for the embryos. We all headed out for brunch.

MEETING THE RECIPIENTS

2007-04-20T11:28:00.000-05:00

When the recipients came to our town for their embryo transfer we were scared but excited that they had decided to meet us. We thought they might not want to add to their stress with a visit to our town. We left the decision up to them and they said yes. It seemed like a good idea for them to meet our children before their transfer. If the kids were bouncing off the walls the recipients might think twice before using our embryos!

We had sent Jenny and Erin the train schedule and map instructions to find the train station. It is always hard to navigate in a new place and the recipients just missed the scheduled train. No matter. They called to say they were on their way.

Soon the intercom from downstairs rang. Jenny and Erin were on their way up! We were going to meet our recipients after all...

WHEN EGG DONATION IS A BAD IDEA

2007-04-19T21:49:00.000-05:00

Sometimes egg donation is an ill-thought-out concept. Can you spot the problems with the article below from Reuters Health?

"Canada mom freezes eggs so daughter can have child

Thu Apr 19, 2:35 PM ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Montreal woman has frozen her eggs so they can be used by her seven-year-old daughter, who cannot have children because of a genetic condition.

Doctors at McGill University Reproductive Centre in Montreal, which has pioneered a freezing program for cancer patients and those who want to delay childbearing, say the decision by 36-year-old Melanie Boivin is unprecedented in North America and raises ethical questions.

If the girl chooses to become pregnant using her mother's eggs, she will be giving birth to her biological half-sister. Boivin will then become a mother and a grandmother.

"She is donating her eggs to help her daughter to have children. It's mother's love," Seang Lin Tan, director of the McGill Reproductive Centre and a prominent expert on infertility treatments, said in an interview on Wednesday night.

"It's like donating a kidney to your own child, nobody will have problem with that," he said.

While there are about 60 cases of women freezing their eggs in North America, mother-to-daughter donation is the first, Tan said. The case has been reviewed and endorsed by the ethical committee of the McGill University Health Centre, he said.

Tan said Boivin decided to donate her eggs after finding out that her daughter is sterile because she has Turner's syndrome, in which one of the two X chromosomes normally found in females is missing or incomplete.

The most common characteristics of Turner's syndrome, which occurs in one out of 2,500 female births, include short stature and lack of ovarian development.

"Parents are there to help (their) children, and if she would have needed anything else, an organ, a kidney, I would give it to her without hesitation," Boivin told the Globe and Mail newspaper.

She has since declined to be interviewed, saying the discussion has caused some problems for her daughter.

Boivin's eggs will be frozen for 20 to 25 years, using a freezing method called vitrification that was developed by Tan's team, and which has drastically increased the egg survival rate.

The frozen eggs are stored in a protective device until they are ready for use. Pregnancy rates with vitrification eggs are almost the same as with fresh eggs, Tan said.

It will be up to Boivin's daughter to decide whether she wants to use the frozen eggs, he said.

"It takes time for people to get used to the idea," Tan said, adding that many people disapproved of test-tube baby technology 30 years ago."

This sounds like a very loving mother. The problem is, her daughter is sterile due to a GENETIC disease. Since it's on the X chromosome they may not know if it's a glitch on the mother's DNA or the father's.

It doesn't make sense to me to pass along a serious genetic defect, then set up your disabled daughter to do the same thing.

Egg donors should be screened as thoroughly as sperm donors. Are they?

ADOPTING ACROSS CULTURES

2007-04-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

As I have mentioned before, some adopted children appear to be a different race from their parents. Sensitive parents react to this by helping the child to embrace both her culture of origin and her family's ethnicity.

Since my children are very fair-skinned and German-looking, I assume their genetic sibling(s) will appear to be the natural child(ren) of my embryo recipients. That's why I worry they will not understand that they come from a 6,000-year unbroken line of Jewish ancestors. I think my recipients are wonderful but the only way I could avoid this problem is if my recipients were of Asian or African descent!

" A Chinese Orphan's Journey To a Jewish Rite of Passage

By ANDY NEWMAN; MICHAEL LUO CONTRIBUTED REPORTING.
Published: March 8, 2007

Of the 613 laws in the Torah, the one that appears most often is the directive to welcome strangers. The girl once known as Fu Qian has been thinking about that a lot lately.

Three weeks ago, she stood at the altar of her synagogue on the Upper West Side and gave a speech about it.

Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children -- most of them girls -- taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah.

She will not be the last. Across the country, many Jewish girls like her will be studying their Torah portions, struggling to master the plaintive singsong of Hebrew liturgy and trying to decide whether to wear Ann Taylor or a traditional Chinese outfit to the after-party.

There are plenty of American Jews, of course, who do not ''look Jewish.'' And grappling with identity is something all adopted children do, not just Chinese Jews.

But seldom is the juxtaposition of homeland and new home, of faith and background, so stark. And nothing brings out the contrasts like a bat mitzvah, as formal a declaration of identity as any 13-year-old can be called upon to make. The contradictions show up in ways both playful -- yin-and-yang yarmulkes, kiddush cups disguised as papier-mâché dragons, kosher lo mein and veal ribs at the buffet -- and profound.

Yet for Cece, as everyone calls Cecelia, and for many of the girls like her, the odd thing about the whole experience is that it's not much odder than it is for any 13-year-old.

''I knew that when I came to this age I was going to have to do it, so it was sort of natural,'' she said a few days before the ceremony at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on West 83rd Street where she has been a familiar face since her days in the Little Twos program. Besides, she said with a shrug, ''Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish.''

As Zoe Kress, an adoptee in Mt. Laurel, N.J., said about her approaching bat mitzvah: ''Being Chinese and Jewish is normal for me. Thinking about being Chinese and Jewish is a little strange.''

Olivia Rauss, a girl in Massachusetts who celebrated her bat mitzvah last fall on a day when the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot coincided with the Chinese autumn moon festival, said she saw no tension between the two facets of her identity either.

''Judaism is a religion, Chinese is my heritage and somewhat my culture, and I'm looking at them in a different way,'' she said. ''I don't feel like they conflict with each other at all.''

Cece was born on Jan. 29, 1994, in Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. She was abandoned to an orphanage because of China's one-child rule, and adopted by a lesbian couple, Mary Nealon and Vivian Shapiro. (The couple later adopted another Chinese girl, Gabie, now 5.) Cece has been drawing double-takes for a while, like when she used to ride on Ms. Shapiro's lap on a packed crosstown bus and would burst into the Passover standard ''Dayenu.''

Ms. Shapiro, an advertising buyer, was brought up by atheistic Jews; Ms. Nealon, a school nurse, was raised a Roman Catholic. But after they met, they were drawn to Judaism and decided to give Cece a relatively traditional upbringing.

''That was my hope when I started her in day school,'' Ms. Nealon said, ''that when she got up on the bimah'' -- the lectern where the bat mitzvah girl reads from the Torah -- ''she would feel like she had the right to be there.''

The countdown to the big day was the typical blur of lessons and studying, sit-downs with cantors and tutors, caterers and party planners. There was a thick dossier of Jewish history to master -- history that Cece confessed did not feel like hers. ''I just really try to learn it,'' she said. ''I don't try to think of whose history it is.''

And, of course, there was shopping to be done.

''In my fantasy,'' Ms. Nealon said, ''we'd take her to Chinatown and have this incredibly beautiful Westernized Chinese dress made.''

But Ms. Shapiro said: ''She wanted no part of it. For her, this has nothing to do with being Chinese.'' "

EGGS GET FREEZER BURN

2007-04-13T20:10:00.000-05:00

One mis-conception (ha ha) that I have noticed about egg retrieval during IVF is the idea that what is frozen afterwards are eggs. Typically, unfertilized eggs are never frozen unless the woman giving the eggs believes she will have a male partner in the future.

The reason that eggs are rarely frozen unless fertilized is that they do not thaw well. The successful thaw rate for fertilized eggs (pre-embryos) is up to 95%, depending on the skill of the embryologist who originally freezes it. Unfertilized eggs which have been frozen rarely become babies when later thawed and fertilized.

It is so rare that a frozen, unfertilized egg can become a baby that the total number of children born from this method worldwide is 200. Compare this to the three MILLION babies born through IVF in the 25 years since the method was first used.

Now a baby has been born from an egg which was frozen, then thawed and fertilized by sperm which had also been frozen. The patient who had her baby this way is Adrienne Domasin. She received free IVF treatment in exchange for being part of the study attempting to achieve a pregnancy from frozen eggs and frozen sperm.

"Egg freezing traditionally has been reserved for women who suffered from illnesses that might leave them infertile and has a low success rate. But there has been recent demand for the procedure by women in their 30s who want to have children in the future but are afraid they will be too old to conceive the traditional way, said Dr. Jane Frederick, who oversaw Domasin's fertility treatment.

The low viability of frozen eggs is due, in part, to ice crystals that can damage the egg's structure, though freezing sperm has been done for decades, said Richard Paulson, a professor of reproductive medicine at USC.

There have been about 200 documented births from frozen eggs worldwide, Paulson said. But he had not heard of other cases of frozen egg/frozen sperm conceptions. The Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics reported one case last year in Australia."

MEETING THE RECIPIENTS

2007-04-09T08:20:00.000-05:00

With the embryo growing rapidly and the tests showing Erin's body was ready to receive it, everything was a "go" for Jenny and Erin's embryo transfer. They had planned to fly to our fertility clinic two days before the transfer and to stay in the area two days after. That way, Erin could be on bed rest for 48 hours after the transfer. Some doctors feel this increases the chances for a pregnancy.

The day before the procedure, Jenny and Erin planned to visit us. Driving in a new city can be scary. Instead of trying to navigate with their rental car I sent Jenny and Erin a route via suburban commuter train. They would take an express train from the clinic area to our city, which is about 90 miles away.

My wife Sonia, based on her experiences as an adoptee and a known egg donor, was pushing for more openness with the recipients than my instincts dictated. We agreed to have lunch with Jenny and Erin. Sonia suggested we meet them at our home.

We made a date and provided instructions to our address. Within a few days we would meet our recipients.

THE EMBRYO GROWS

2007-04-04T08:27:00.000-05:00

The embryologist had good news for Jenny and Erin every day. The embryo continued to grow strongly, dividing rapidly until, just before the transfer it reached seven cells in size.

Seven cells is huge for a three-day embryo. We were surprised Jenny and Erin's embryo had grown so large. All of our past embryos but one had only reached the four cell size. The only one which had grown larger was only five cells at day three.

Large embryos are much more likely to create a successful pregnancy. With four-celled embryos we only had a one in six chance of having a baby. Yet both of our children resulted from four-cell embryos and pregnancy occurred on our first try during both of our embryo transfer cycles.

Things were looking good for Jenny and Erin, but there was a problem...

RESEARCH SHOW PARENTS SHOULD TELL KIDS ABOUT DONORS

2007-03-30T11:47:00.000-05:00

"NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Parents of children conceived with donor eggs or sperm don't regret disclosing this fact to their child, and almost all of the parents surveyed believed it was important that the child be told, California researchers report.

But parents do wish they had more support with the process, Dr. Robert D. Nachtigall of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues found. "If there is indeed a shift toward greater openness in parents using third-party reproduction techniques, there will be an increasing need for support services to assist parents in this process not only initially, but also continuing long after the children are born," Nachtigall and his team write in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

The researchers interviewed 141 couples, 62 of whom had conceived using donor sperm and 79 of whom had used donor eggs. Twenty percent of couples who used donor insemination had disclosed this fact to their children, 45 percent planned to disclose, 16 percent didn't plan to disclose, and 7 percent were undecided.

Among those who conceived with donor eggs, 23 percent had disclosed this to their child, 58 percent planned to do so, 10 percent didn't plan to disclose, and 9 percent had not decided.

Overall, 32 percent of parents using donor egg or sperm had disclosed to their children, while 45 percent planned to do so.

Parents who disclosed or planned to do so typically subscribed to one of two strategies for revealing this information, Nachtigall and his colleagues found: the "seed-planting strategy," in which they began talking to the child about being conceived with donor egg or sperm very early on, and the "right-time" approach, in which they waited until they felt the child would fully understand the process.

On average, "seed planters" started talking to their children about their conception when they were 3 to 4 years old. The "right time" group had planned to begin the discussion with their children when they were 10 to 12 years old, but typically told their children when they were 6 or 7.

Parents using the "seed-planting" strategy tended to be more at ease with their decision and less apprehensive, the researchers found. They believed this approach would give children the sense of "always knowing" that they were conceived with donor egg or sperm, making it "no big deal."

Parents using the "right-time" approach typically felt they could build a strong relationship with their children before having to disclose the information, when the child would be mature enough to handle and understand it.

"Most parents expressed frustration with the perceived lack of comfortable language and 'scripts' available to discuss donor conception with their children, especially as they struggled to find unambiguous terminology with which to refer to the donor," the researchers note.

Nevertheless, among parents who had disclosed to their children, none reported regret and many reported relief, the researchers found. Responses from children were, in most cases, positive or neutral.

SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, March 2007."

THE EMBRYO'S PROGRESS

2007-03-29T08:19:00.000-05:00

As each day drew them closer to their first frozen embryo transfer, Jenny and Erin monitored their embryo's progress closely. I had warned them that on my other two transfer attempts, my embryos had never grown very large.

The largest size a three-day embryo can reach is eight cells. On my two embryo transfer attempts all of my embryos had been four or 5 cells. This is considered quite small.

The smaller an embryo at transfer, the less likely the transfer will result in pregnancy. In addition, my other embryos had all been grade "B". That is normal, since it reflects as little as 1% fragmentation. Grade "A" embryos have no fragmentation whatsoever. That grade is rarely given out by our clinic. I told Jenny and Erin that if their embryo was consistent with our other embryos they should expect small grade "B" embryos.

Though the size of my embryos statistically reduced the chance of success, in our case the transfer worked on each of our two attempts. We were successful both times we transferred embryos: each transfer resulted in a child.

I told Jenny and Erin not to worry if their embryo didn't grow very large. Past experience showed that my embryos were slow starters but successful implanters.

We waited to see how the embryo I had given to Jenny and Erin would grow.

WILL IT THAW?

2007-03-28T08:54:00.000-05:00

A few days after starting the final fertility meds, Erin and Jenny called us, clearly excited. Their embryo had thawed and was starting to grow! As the embryologist told them, it was dividing rapidly and looked great. Everything was falling into place for their frozen embryo transfer.

Though our contract stated that Jenny and Erin could only thaw one embryo at a time it seemed that they would not need to thaw a second embryo. The first one looked good.

The next few days were somewhat tense as Jenny and Erin prepared for their flight to the clinic and waited to see if the embryo would keep growing well.

For a frozen embryo transfer, the hurdles the embryo has to over come are

* The Thaw. Whether or not the embryo will survive the thaw is pre-determined by the skill of the embryologist at the time of freezing.
* Beginning to grow. Even an embryo that thaws can turn out to be a dud which does not divide.
* Continuing to grow. Each day an embryo grows outside the womb increases the chances that it will stop growing. That is because most embryos are not destined to become children. Some stop growing because they are not healthy enough to develop into a fetus.
* The eventual grade of the embryo. An embryo can grow large quickly but if the cells have a lot of defects it will not turn into a fetus.

Jenny and Erin's embryo had overcome half of the barriers to becoming their child. We waited to see if the process would continue as brightly as it had started.

THE EMBRYO

2007-03-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

From Jenny and Erin's perspective, the cycle was on. They had the medications they needed, plane tickets to get to the clinic for the transfer, hotel reservations and positive signs from the blood work and tests the clinic conducts before each cycle to make sure the body is ready to become pregnant.

The last piece of the puzzle was the embryo itself. I had three embryos left over from my own in vitro fertilization cycles. That gave Jenny and Erin up to three chances to become pregnant. But they might have no chance, if the embryos did not survive the thaw or grow properly.

Our contract stated that Jenny and Erin's clinic would thaw just one embryo at a time. If the first embryo thawed did not grow they could thaw another one until they got a viable embryo. The embryologist could tell right away if the fertilized egg would grow. If it didn't look good she would thaw another embryo right away. That way the cycle could continue even if the first embryo did not begin to divide.

After beginning the final medications to prepare her body for the embryo, Erin and her partner Jenny still had a tense four days ahead of them while they waited to see if the embryo that might become their child would take the first step.

THE MEDICATION

2007-03-25T19:21:00.001-05:00

After a harrowing two days the fertility medication arrived. Erin's frozen embryo transfer was on after all. Jenny and Erin made arrangements to travel to the clinic. We had suggested they fly in to a smaller airport closer to the clinic than the more well-known major airport. We had also given them our hotel recommendations near the clinic. We knew the area well from the many trips we made to the same clinic to conceive our own children.

Jenny and Erin also took us up on our invitation to meet them. They decided to fly here the weekend before the transfer so they would have a free day to visit us. We gave them detailed instructions so they could get here via car or commuter train, as they preferred.

It seemed like a good idea for Jenny and Erin to meet our children before going ahead with the embryo transfer. If they found the kids to be horrid little monsters it was best that they did so before becoming pregnant with their genetic sibling.

We would meet our embryo recipients in less than one week.

EMBRYO INTERRUPTUS?

2007-03-23T20:27:00.000-05:00

When we last checked in with our heroines, they had been given the green light for their transfer cycle with our frozen donor embryo. But a missing prescription had just as quickly put on the brakes. If the fertility nurse did not track down the recipients' doctor, get the prescription, fax it to the special fertility pharmacy and make sure the pharmacy expedited filling and mailing the medication, the cycle would be cancelled.

The deadline for all of this to happen was that afternoon at 3pm. Jenny called the pharmacy. No prescription had been filed. She called the clinic. The nurses were preforming procedures but the receptionist took a message. No one called back. Jenny checked the pharmacy again. Nothing.

Increasingly concerned, Jenny wrote me an email. I had worked with this clinic before. Should she lay off or keep calling? I urged Jenny to continue calling the clinic and leaving messages until the prescription was faxed. She could even call their medical emergency line -- this situation certainly seemed to qualify.

As a polite Southerner, Jenny worried that the clinic staff would find her behavior obnoxious. I urged her not to worry:

"
You and Erin are certainly the nicest patients they have. My wife and I spent many hours in that waiting room. You would not believe some of the scenes we witnessed. Women on big doses of hormones whose fertility cycles are not going well are easily annoyed, let's put it that way."

Finally the prescription went through. If the medication arrived via next day delivery, as promised, Jenny and Erin's cycle was on.

REVEALING DONORS

2007-03-21T21:48:00.000-05:00

The Missus thought I should have the recipients over to our place when they headed North for their transfer of our embryos. I thought it was a bad idea. The only reason I could come up with was that most people don't do it. Why? I didn't know.

And Sonia had a some aces up her sleeve. She was adopted. She always knew she was adopted. She met her birth mother. She donated eggs to friends of ours. She knows their children well. They know she is their donor. They consistently express emotions about this that range from pride to neutrality. Sonia's birth mother even met her biological grandchildren and shared family medical information with the twins' mother. The twins' reaction to meeting their genetic grandmother? Polite boredom.

None of this openness caused anyone to have any confusion about who their real parents were (answer: the people who raised them, whether or not they had a biological tie to their kids).

My only other reservation was that the recipients might become angry if the embryo transfers didn't work or if something was wrong with their kids from my eggs. If they reacted to their disappointment by suing us or revealing our family name to anyone else it would threaten our children's futures. Our kids were not making the decision to participate in embryo donation or to have more siblings living in another family. They might grow up wanting nothing to do with the other kids, though I couldn't see why that might be. Still, they deserve their own right to privacy. If I revealed our name or address to the recipients I was potentially denying my children a future, and very personal, choice.

So we covered these possibilities in the embryo donation contract. None of us is allowed to discuss the embryo donation with the media, except anonymously. Neither can we reveal identifying details about the others to anyone else. We can discuss what we are doing with our friends and family but we cannot tell them the recipients' last names or address. They must do the same for our family.

Legally we were covered. Emotionally I remained uncertain.

ARREST ME!

2007-03-20T07:57:00.000-05:00

According to the progressive state of Texas I engaged in "human embryo trafficking" by donating my embryos to a couple who want to become parents. Texas to the rescue, guns a-blazin', to outlaw the huge international problem of embryo trafficking. Puh-leeze.

If HB 1703 passes in the Texas legislature, no one will be able to donate embryos unless they go through a proceeding to terminate their "parental" rights. No one will be able to transfer a frozen embryo unless they clear a full adoption process, including home study, etc and are approved by a judge. All this for a chance to become pregnant, not for a child.

Anyone who doubts the true agenda of embryo "adoption" groups should take a look at the text of this bill (unedited text appears below, except for all the boring stuff about how you can only "adopt" a human embryo. I guess if you want a puppy you still need to go to the pound).

A glance at this bill shows that its sponsors want to outlaw abortion. The first step is to legally define two-celled fertilized eggs as children and make their intended parents jump through $50,000 worth of hoops (adoption costs, legal costs plus embryo transfer cycle), possibly for nothing.

The reason TX wants embryos to be "adopted" is they want to outlaw all abortion. Defining an embryo as a child is the first step.

An embryo created in the womb (traditional way) or outside of it (alternative way) has a only a 25% chance of turning into a baby. So embryo "adoption" is a crock.

Here is the Texas law:

"Sec. 162.701. ADOPTION OF EMBRYO.

(a) A court order authorizing the adoption of a human embryo is required for the transfer of a human embryo to another person for implantation in any person who is not the genetic parent of the embryo or the spouse of a genetic parent.

(b) The court may grant the petition of a person residing in this state to adopt an embryo according to this subchapter.
Sec. 162.702. JURISDICTION; REQUIREMENTS OF PETITION. (a) The petitioner shall file a suit to adopt an embryo in a court in the county of the petitioner's residence.

(b) A petition to adopt an embryo shall be entitled "In the Interest of the Embryo of __________."

(c) If the petitioner is married, both spouses must join in the petition for adoption."

Not only is the embryo defined as a child who needs to be "adopted", the embryo is defined exactly as a child. The embryo's "best interests" must be considered by the court, so a bigoted judge can arbitrarily deny "custody" of the egg to the intended parents if they are gay, older than average, a different ethnicity than the people who created the embryo, fat, low income, have poor fashion sense, or for any reason the judge deems "in the best interests" of the egg:

"Sec. 162.703. CONSENT; COMPENSATION.

(a) A court may not grant an adoption of an embryo unless both the man and the woman who contracted for the creation of the embryo have relinquished their parental rights or consented in writing to the adoption by the petitioner and waived any interest in the human embryo.

(b) Compensation may not be paid or received to relinquish or waive a person's parental rights with regard to an embryo except for reimbursement for reasonable fees incurred to preserve or transport the embryo.

Sec. 162.704. ADOPTION ORDER. The court may grant the adoption if the court finds that the requirements for adoption of an embryo are met and the court finds that the adoption is in the best interest of the embryo."

If you think a fertilized egg is a child, do nothing. If you want to preserve your right to access infertility treatment or believe in a woman's right to decide what to do with her own body, I recommend you join infertility advocacy group the American Fertility Association at theAFA.org. And boycott Texas.

PERSONAL INFO

2007-03-19T08:41:00.000-05:00

My wife, Sonia, and I were of different opinions about how much identifying information to reveal to the donors. I had no problem with revealing my family's medical history for four generations but sending the recipients our full names, address and photos made me uncomfortable.

The lawyer had built this information into her standard embryo donation contract. I was not legally responsible if no children came of this donation, or if the resulting fetus was disabled or didn't make it to term or grew up to rob a bank.

While we all waited I wondered how open to be with the recipients. Our contract set minimum standards but we were free to go above those limits. On this issue my wife and I disagreed. I'll tell you why next time.

THEY GET THE CALL

2007-03-15T08:42:00.000-05:00

The final tests were at hand. Erin went to her fertility clinic for the ultrasound that would determine whether or not she could transfer my donated embryo and try to get pregnant. Her clinic would send the results to my fertility clinic, where the embryos were stored. The fertility nurses there would call her and partner Jenny later that night to tell them if the cycle was on or off.

And they finally got word that everything looked good! Jenny and Erin could plan to come to our area to transfer the embryo that would hopefully become their child. "Your uterus looks just as we would like" the IVF nurse told them. "You can start taking the new medication tomorrow."

New medication? Jenny and Erin had received only one prescription, for the hormones Erin was currently taking. Because their intake had been done over the phone someone at the clinic neglected to phone all of the prescriptions to their pharmacy. The clinic had sent Jenny and Erin a protocol describing what medication Erin would take and when it was needed. But the long, dense protocol was hard for new fertility patients to follow.

The fertility medication Erin needed was not commonly available. Special fertility pharmacies exist which fill and ship such prescriptions to patients all over the country. Getting such a pharmacy the prescription and getting the medication out in time was impossible at this point. The cycle looked doomed. What would Jenny and Erin do?

GETTING THE GO-AHEAD?

2007-03-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

Preparing to transfer the embryos I had donated to her meant Erin was taking hormones. The purpose of the medication was to stop her natural cycle and prepare her womb to nurture the embryo.

There are many instances where assisted fertility requires patients to take medications to prepare for a cycle. That cycle may or may not end up happening. Before giving Erin the go-ahead for her cycle the clinic needed to make sure her body was responding the right way.

Each ultrasound and blood test panel Erin completed indicated that things were progressing just as they should. Jenny and Erin began making concrete plans for their trip to our clinic for the transfer.

One more hurdle remained. The final ultrasound would determine if the cycle was a "go". Jenny and Erin thoughtfully kept us posted and we waited to find out if they would be heading North to follow their dreams.

SHARING IS CARING

2007-03-13T22:55:00.000-05:00

It looked like Erin and Jenny were getting close to having their first embryo transfer. We had to decide how open to be with them. They were coming to our area and wanted to meet us and the kids. We wanted to meet them too. There is just so much secrecy about donating the raw materials to help other people have kids. Our donor is anonymous. He was willing to provide an adult photo to the sperm bank but when he got married his wife nixed that idea and made him stop donating.

In the United Kingdom and Northern Europe advocates for people conceived through donor sperm were able to get legislation passed that guaranteed adults the right to know the identity of their donor. Not to contact him or call him "Daddy", just to know who he was. No more wondering if they carried the genes of the King of Sweden or Elvis or that homeless dude they just passed on the street.

What was the result of this new openness? A flurry of news articles bemoaning the sudden sperm drought throughout Britain. In parts of Scotland there is just one guy willing to be an open donor. He is now donating for entire swaths of that country. I read on another blog that one couple almost had to cancel their cycle ON THE DAY OF THE EGG RETRIEVAL because no sperm could be found (they scrounged some up from another clinic).

Why does everyone need to be so secretive? Who knows. What I do know is I was able to pick and choose from hundreds of detailed profiles to find the best donor for us. If the price of that is not finding out who helped us have our kids so be it. Anyway, chances are we will find out, just as soon as our son decides to submit his DNA sample to one of those genealogy databases. A teenager just found his donor that way.

Did we want to maintain our family's anonymity? As Jenny and Erin planned their trip to the clinic we had a decision to make.

Getting Ready

2007-03-11T21:38:00.001-05:00

At this point in our embryo donation things started happening very fast. Within eight weeks of our first contact with our recipients the contract was signed and executed, the fertility clinic accepted Jenny and Erin, their tests came back looking good and Erin started on the pre-transfer meds.

Or at least things seemed to us to be happening fast. From Jenny and Erin's perspective their baby-making process had been a two-year slog and it wasn't over yet. But their frozen embryo transfer was just ahead, over the horizon.

Jenny and Erin told us they felt excited and a bit scared. They had many questions for us since we had been through the same procedure to have our own son. We did our best to answer them.

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SECRETS AND LIES

2007-03-09T14:55:00.000-05:00

During a weekend visit to see her first child, Sonia's birthmother Jane found herself having to come up with an excuse about being out of town to satisfy the curiosity of her younger daughters. They did not know about the existence of their older half-sibling and Jane aimed to keep it that way. An unexpected phone call from the girls almost disrupted her plan.

Back home, as we later found out, Jane's older daughter Pat hung up the phone, turned to the last-born girl and said "I think Mom had a baby before us and is visiting her for the weekend".

What?!? How on earth could Pat guess her mother's secret? The only family members who knew that Jane had given a baby up for adoption before starting her own family were her parents and husband, and they weren't telling.

If your mother told you she was visiting a friend out of town, would you leap to the conclusion that you had a half-sister you had never known about? Me neither. So how did Jane's daughters know this without ever being told?

Pat and her sister Stacey, raised by their mother to be evangelical Christians, had their own theory. As they put it later, "God prepared our hearts for the truth by revealing it to us before anyone told us."

OK, that could be one explanation. For me, a slightly more plausable reason Pat knew about her half-sister before her mother confessed the truth was the difficulty most people find in consistently lying for any amount of time.

Over the years Jane must have discussed the baby she gave away with someone when she thought Pat was still too young to understand. Or a shadow may have crossed her face when someone mentioned that Pat was her older daughter. However Pat intuited that Jane was visiting a child she had given up for adoption, I think it is significant that it was the older of the two daughters Jane had raised who figured out the truth.

Lies always make themselves known in a family. If you adopted your child, s/he deserves to know that. If your children has another sibling, it is their right to be aware of this. And if you are using donor egg or sperm to conceive you owe your child the simple decency of telling him or her the truth about his or her origins. You can instead choose to lie to your children. But eventually they will -- or should -- know the truth. Sooner is always less painful than later. If you want to raise a truthful, respectful child, respect her and tell her the truth.

The Contract

2007-03-07T09:16:00.001-05:00

As the lawyer was processing our embryo donation contract Erin and Jenny, the intended parents of our embryos, were getting ready for the first frozen embryo transfer.

Erin had ultrasounds and bloodwork to make sure her body was ready for the transfer. She and Jenny waited for the clinic to tell them it was the right time to start the meds they needed to block Erin's natural cycle.

During this time the women kept us updated on their progress. And we all waited for the next step.

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Secrets and Lies

2007-03-03T21:15:00.001-05:00

Sonia's birthmother Jane refused to tell her younger daughters about Sonia's existence. That was her right and we respected it. Jane did not cut herself off from Sonia even though Sonia's life choices conflicted with the bigoted teachings of Jane's church.

Jane continued to stay in contact with Sonia. She lived in a city several hours drive from our home town. One weekend when her daughters were out of town, Jane decided to visit us at our home.

As a special treat, we arranged tickets for Jane and ourselves to an exclusive arts opening and star-studded after-party. Sonia and I both have a history of working in the arts and are able to get tickets like this to many events. Out-of-towners always enjoy such events, particularly since they feature gourmet food and an open bar.

Before leaving for the party Jane wanted to check in with her family. We offered her the use of a cell phone since she did not have one. Jane called her own home and those of each of her daughters. No one was home but she left cheery messages and we were on our way.

The party was a great success. Just as we were getting ready to photograph Jane with a movie star she had recognized at the next table my cell phone rang. Seeing Jane's own home phone number the caller ID screen I quickly passed her the phone.

It was her daughter. "Mom, are you at a party? It's noisy. Where are you?" Jane's daughters had arrived back in town earlier than expected. Upon receiving Jane's messages they headed to their parents' home to greet her, only to find it empty.

On the phone with them and a little tipsy, Jane did not know what to say to explain her absence. She finally said she was visiting a friend for the weekend and would be home soon to explain everything.

Jane had bought herself some time. The ride home would provide plenty of opportunity for Jane to think of an excuse for her visit to our home. It still was not the right time for her to tell her other daughters about Sonia.
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THE RIGHT TIME

2007-03-02T02:25:00.000-05:00

Over the years, Sonia asked her birthmother Jane several times if the "right time" had yet come to meet Jane's daughters, Sonia's half-sisters. But the time was never right.

First Jane maintained that the girls were too close to puberty. Knowing their mother had been with someone before marriage could color their choices.

Later, the fact that Sonia was living with a boyfriend to whom she was neither married nor engaged served as the excuse.

Finally, Jane pointed to Sonia's eventual relationship with a woman as a reason she could not allow her girls to know of Sonia's existence.

Though Jane emphasized Sonia's life choices as the reasons to deny her daughters the chance to meet each other, there was another explanation that rings truer to me. Jane was embarrassed to have had a premarital relationship.

Her church condemns such behavior. The fact that Jane had chosen to honor her denomination's presumably more important teaching to elevate fetal life did not seem to provide any sort of "Get Our of Hell Free" card.

Those who want to outlaw abortion would do well to pay attention to Jane's example. It is hypocritical that a movement which calls itself "pro-life" treats women who are unwillingly pregnant as pariahs.

Mired in this belief system, it is likely that Jane would never have found the right time to tell her daughters about Sonia. But the truth has a way of finding the light of day. And around the time Jane's younger daughters were approaching the impressionable age of 30, circumstances made Jane's facade crumble.

CLOSED ADOPTION: THE AFTERMATH

2007-02-28T07:50:00.000-05:00

Meeting her birthmother at age 19 left Sonia with more questions than answers. What would her life be like if Jane had raised her? Where was the genetic father? And most important, why was Jane adamant that Sonia not meet her half-sisters?

Though Sonia was born when Jane was 19, Jane had waited to start her own family until her late twenties. When Sonia found her, Jane's children were "tweens" on the cusp of adolescence. Jane could not introduce them, she explained, because it was the wrong time.

Perhaps I could meet them as your "friend", Sonia countered. Jane need not explain to the children the Sonia was her first daughter. In response, Jane showed Sonia a picture of Sonia taken when she was about twelve. Sonia was standing next to a couch she had never seen, in a room she had never entered, and her hair was curled in a perm Sonia had never had. It was Jane's youngest daughter, Stacey.

Stacey and Sonia looked so identical that later, when Sonia met her biological grandparents, Jane's brother believed her prank that Sonia was his younger niece (granted, the uncle lived in another state and only saw his niece once a year). In fact, Sonia showed me this picture of Stacey without comment after we had been married and living together for several years. My response, before she revealed the subject of the photo, was "I didn't know you had a perm at this age."

It was not the right time for Sonia to meet her half-sisters. Jane had not prepared them for such an experience. They remained ignorant of Sonia's existence. It would have been easy to tell the children about Sonia when they were little. They would have absorbed the information without question.

Telling her daughters the truth would have been as simple as correcting Pat, the older girl, when she claimed to be "the oldest". Or simply gathering the girls and explaining with a smile and a positive attitude that mommy had helped another family to have a baby a long time ago. What a kind thing to do. Any child would be proud of her mother for performing such a selfless action.

But the right time had never come. And now Jane felt it was too late.

At least she had met Jane and filled that hole in her heart. Perhaps one day the right time would come and Sonia would meet Jane's children. For now, knowing Jane had to be enough for Sonia.

CLOSED ADOPTION WITHIN THE BIRTH FAMILY

2007-02-27T03:21:00.000-05:00

Sonia's birthmother, Jane, was 19 when Sonia was born. When Sonia was 19 she was visiting her father who adopted her when he asked if she would like to meet Jane.

It had not occurred to Sonia that this was a possibility. The adoption, however, had been privately arranged. Sonia's parents and birthmother were known to the pastor and the lawyer who had brokered the adoption.

Without impinging on Jane's privacy, a letter Sonia wrote was forwarded to the woman who had given birth to her. After some communication back and forth, Jane and Sonia finally met.

She had always thought she might hear from Sonia, Jane said. She was glad Sonia had contacted her. For her part, Sonia was amazed to look, for the first time, at someone whose face hers resembled. They spoke for hours. Though strangers, they shared the most intimate bond. Jane had carried Sonia for nine months. Hers was the first voice Sonia had ever heard, before she was even born.

For her part, Jane saw a beautiful young woman who had received a full scholarship to one of the country's most competitive universities. Sonia was majoring in the most difficult field of study she could find. She was about to leave for a year of study abroad.

There was no template for their relationship, just as Jane had not known exactly how she might broach Sonia's existence with her own children. A lifetime of secrecy was about to catch up with both of them.

THE OTHER SIDE OF ADOPTION

2007-02-26T09:23:00.000-05:00

Jane, my wife's birthmother, made a difficult and selfless choice to give birth to Sonia and allow Ellen and Don to adopt her. Her gift blessed several families. It allowed Ellen and Don to start a family. Later, the fact that Sonia is adopted gives our own children, conceived with donor sperm, a parent whose story they can relate to as they deal with a question mark -- their anonymous donor -- in the picture of their origins. Sonia's experiences being adopted made her more willing to do an open egg donation for friends of ours who experienced secondary infertility. Most recently, knowing how positive children can feel if adoption or gamete donation is handled with pride and openness informed our decision to give our spare embryos to two great women who want to become moms.

We are lucky that Sonia was adopted and so are a lot of other people. I can objectively say that Sonia is the most magnificent woman ever to grace planet Earth. We have Jane to thank for the many lives Sonia has touched. But there were consequences to this act for Jane.

Part of the problem is that the fling which resulted in Sonia's conception was out of character for Jane. She is an evangelical Christian, and she raised her own children to adopt the same religious fervor. Today, one of them is a missionary, helping no-doubt grateful people in Northern Europe to accept the right approach to religion.

Jane's church teaches that sexual relations outside of marriage are simply wrong. Religious leaders refused to honor the fact that Jane took the brunt of responsibility. The burden was on her for an act from which the boy involved walked away without any repercussions.

At the hospital, Jane's mother held Sonia before giving her to her new parents, but Jane did not. To protect herself, Jane kept Sonia as an abstraction, a child she was bearing for someone else.

After Sonia went home with her parents, Jane thought of her despite herself. On Sonia's birthday, when Jane became pregnant with her own daughter, and many other times over the years.

A younger daughter joined their family and still Jane never spoke of Sonia to her children. First they were too young to understand. Later, Jane was worried about the contradiction between her church's stance that abortion is wrong and the same religion's insistance that girls who get pregnant before marriage are evil sluts.

Really, there was no reason to be honest with her daughters. Sonia was gone and Jane did not know where she was. Sonia knew Jane's full name but a name that common, especially in the days before the internet, allowed Jane to melt away into anonymity.

Then Sonia turned eighteen and everything changed.

AFTER ADOPTION

2007-02-25T07:48:00.000-05:00

When she was three days old, Sonia's parents took her home from the hospital. They were grateful to Jane, Sonia's birthmother, but the cloak of shame that surrounded adoption in those days meant they never had the opportunity to thank her in person.

Sonia knew she was adopted as early as she was conscious. Her parents never attempted to lie to her about her origins. At age four, Sonia asked Ellen, her mother, "what is my real mother's name?" Ellen calmly replied "I am your real mother. Your natural mother's name is Jane." Ellen always had a positive and realistic attitude towards adoption, and Sonia absorbed this.

Unfortunately, since this adoption was closed, all that Sonia and her parents knew about Jane was her name, where she had lived and what church she belonged to. When Sonia felt normal adolescent rebellion towards her family she would sometimes imagine being rescued by her natural mother. In the absence of real information about Jane, Sonia imagined her as a particular television character from a popular series of the time set in Jane's home state.

This is the drawback to anonymous adoption. Real knowledge is absent. But an adopted child, naturally curious about her origins, will conjecture. "I have high cheekbones and straight hair" the adoptee might ponder "I must be a Cherokee princess".

In an open adoption, there is no mystery, and thus no glamour. The birthmother is a known quantity, with her natural human flaws on full display.

Still, Sonia at least never had to wonder why she was the only brown-eyed person of average height in a large family of gigantic, blue-eyed people. She knew that her mother wanted her for years and years and finally brought her home with great joy. Knowing she was adopted was a wonderful thing for Sonia.

At nineteen, when she met Jane, Sonia felt a sense of wholeness. She had answered those life-long questions. But she never again felt anything but gratitude that Ellen was her mother, and not Jane. Jane is Sonia's friend but Sonia knows exactly who her "real" mother is.

Meanwhile, Jane had handled this situation very differently from Ellen. We can contrast the two approaches as our story concludes.

ONE ADOPTION STORY

2007-02-24T08:28:00.000-05:00

My wife's adoption story is an important part of our family history. When her birthmother's boyfriend Tommy returned from Viet Nam, he and Jane rekindled their relationship, discussing marriage. Around this time, Jane found out she was pregnant. Tommy understood that they had not been officially "together" when Jane had the fling with John that resulted in this pregnancy. He still wanted to marry her but he asked her "Don't make me raise another man's baby".

For his part, John was willing to help Jane "take care of" this problem. When he went to his parents to ask for the funds to do this, they said "absolutely not". Abortion was legal by this time, though not in the state where they were living. Still, a young woman in Jane's economic class could easily have accessed a legal or illegal abortion.

John's parents disagreed. They gave Jane the moral and practical support she needed to complete her pregnancy. Adoption in those days was still shrouded in shame so Jane did not have the opportunity to pick the parents herself. But Jane's pastor knew a couple who were eager to have a baby. Jane decided to go through with her pregnancy and in due time give birth to the most wonderful woman ever to grace the planet, my wife Sonia.

We are obviously happy Jane made the difficult choice to bear a child for another couple -- Sonia's parents. We are particularly glad that Jane's consent was an integral part of every aspect of this story. Not all women are so lucky, which is why we strongly believe women should have the choice whether or not to go through with their pregnancies.

Many of my feelings about how destructive lies are in a family are shaped by how Jane chose to handle the information within her own family that she had given birth out of wedlock. Before I go on with this story I ask that you put yourself in Jane's shoes. Jane made the choice to have a baby she knew she could not keep. She dealt with a difficult situation in the way that seemed best. That is her right. We cannot judge her unless we have walked in her shoes. If we can all agree that Jane dealt with her pregnancy and its aftermath in the right way for her I will tell you what that was next time.

PARENTS OF ALL KINDS

2007-02-23T07:57:00.000-05:00

As we waited for the embryo donation contract, the recipients kept us up-dated about their lives and we began to share more with them. Jenny's car died and she bought a new one. This was an unwelcome expense as they budgeted for transferring the frozen embryos we were donating to them. At least they hadn't pursued egg donation: with one IVF cycle it would have cost more than their brand new sedan.

Around this time we invited friends and family to celebrate our daughter's first birthday. Jane, my wife Sonia's birthmother, spent six hours on the train to join us for the party. It was the first time we had seen her since our son was born two years earlier.

Since turning 19 and meeting Jane (at, co-incidentally, the same age Jane was when she had given birth to Sonia), Jane and Sonia had seen each other every few years.

Sonia was conceived in the swinging 1960's. At the time, free love was not as big in the South as it was elsewhere. Jane had a steady boyfriend, the first and only man she had ever been with. When he shipped off to fight in Viet Nam they took a break from their relationship.

While visiting a friend, Jane was swept off her feet by John, a handsome fellow student from a nearby college. Good girls don't carry birth control, but as inexperienced as she was, Jane may not have even realized she was rolling the dice.

Tommy was due back from Viet Nam and Jane's period was due, but neither had yet arrived. What happened next would shape many lives.

KNOWN DONORS

2007-02-20T08:47:00.000-05:00

As we continued to wait for the final embryo donation contract I wondered what made Jenny and Erin different from the other embryo recipients who had contacted me. Everyone else wanted our embryos and seemed to view us as an intrusive necessity. I was leery of intruding with these families because the sense I got from them was that ideally we would hand over the embryos and never contact them again.

Because embryo donation is NOT an adoption, people who have children using donated embryos need not worry that the biological parents will try to get "their" children back. Embryo donation is a property transfer, not an adoption. No children exist when embryos are given away and none may ever exist unless the recipients have very good luck.

With their rights fully protected, embryo recipients need not worry about their legal parenthood. The only state that elevates the rights of the genetic parent over that of the birth parent is Nevada. In all other states the person giving birth is the mother.

So the secrecy and coldness I felt from most recipients does not protect them in any way. And it did not spark my interest. I wanted a couple that felt good about themselves to the point that they could give their child permission to know all the factors that shaped her.

I wanted to know why Jenny and Erin seemed so much more self-assured and child-centered than the other recipients who wanted our embryos:

X"I guess to both of us, we want to be able to look that child in the eyes and always be honest. Honesty will include telling them that we did not provide the genetic make up that they have. A known donor will allow us to be honest and also have the resources to answer any questions that they may have that we can't answer.

I did not know my mother's mother. And I strongly believe that many of my characteristics come from her. I think to have a true understanding of who I am, I have to know who she was. To me, it's kind of like therapy of some sort. The mindset of “You can't treat an illness if you do not know the etiology”.

I believe couples feel a stigma for being
infertile. It’s interesting to sit in the lobby at our fertility clinic. The men always seem so nervous and sometimes ashamed. I am just thankful that there’s a clinic to help us. Erin did cry one time because she felt that (in her words) she had “failed”. That of course broke my heart.

I think that most people take fertility for granted. Erin is the picture of health! I think it was devastating to her to find out that the one thing that was wrong with her body was the one thing she wanted so badly. She was, of course, in true Erin style, joking about it a few days later as we were preparing deviled eggs for Thanksgiving dinner, I overcooked them and while we were peeling them big chunks were coming off. They looked kind of sad. I asked Erin if we should cook more and she said of course not, that we would just proclaim this “the year of bad eggs”. So, in good spirits we gladly go forward!"

This positive attitude had attracted me to Jenny and Erin. They were focused on having a child and any children they have will be "theirs" no matter what DNA they have. Secure in this knowledge they do not see a reason to cut their children off from a full picture of where they come from.

I was again buoyed in my feeling that these were the right recipients. I waited impatiently to sign the embryos over to Jenny and Erin so they could get on with their plan to become moms.

AUTISM IS GENETIC

2007-02-20T03:11:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may remember the couple that contacted me because one of their many sons had autism. They wanted a large family but they had read research suggesting that autism has a strong genetic link. They did not want to have another child with autism so they were looking towards embryo donation to try to have a child without the disorder.

I get health updates from Reuter's Health. The US National Institutes of Health has now done a huge study on whether or not autism is genetic. They have now found that it definitely is passed on genetically in almost all cases. That embryo recipient couple (to whom I did not donate) was right to seek another way to have a baby.

Maybe this will stop all that dangerous foolishness about immunizations causing autism. People who do not immunize their kids should not be allowed to have any because their judgement is too impaired to take proper care of those children. If you have ever seen a young person with polio -- decades after it was abolished through vaccination -- or heard of a baby dying from an easily preventable disease she should have been vaccinated against, it is clear that vaccines are a blessing we should embrace. Only the most ignorant among us really believe that vaccines are harmful.

Having the genes to pass along autism or any other genetic disorder is not a mark against a person. It is out of their control. Carrying a genetic disease is not anyone's fault. But choosing to pass along that same disease should be a criminal offense.

If there is a serious genetic disease that runs in your family such as Retinitis Pigmentosa, which causes blindness, you should get genetic testing to see if you carry the gene yourself. If so, you should not have your own genetic child unless you can afford to do IVF with genetic testing to eliminate sick embryos. Even if your partner does not have the disease, you still have a one in four chance of your child being born a carrier of that disease. If I had a one in four chance of winning the lottery I'd be playing it every day.

Anyone who can only be satisfied by having their own genetic child, even to the point of dooming them or their children to sickness, has too much ego tied up in parenting to do a good job.

I did not chose to donate the embryos to the family with the affected child, but I did consider it. They truly loved their kids -- enough to prioritize their health over a genetic link. That's a real parent.

"International study finds new autism genetic links

By Will Dunham Sun Feb 18, 5:32 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists revealed the most extensive findings to date on the genetics of autism on Sunday, pinpointing two new genetic links that may predispose children to develop the complex brain disorder.
ADVERTISEMENT

The five-year study, led by an international consortium of researchers from 19 nations, indicated autism had numerous genetic origins rather than a single or a few primary causes.

The researchers scoured DNA samples from 1,168 families with two or more children with autism, and used "gene chip" technology to detect genetic similarities. They also looked for tiny insertions and deletions of genetic material that could play a role in autism.

The scientists hope that nailing down the genetics of autism will lead to better ways to diagnose it and focus efforts on developing drugs to treat it. They announced they are launching a new phase in the research to map genes responsible for autism.

The study incriminated a gene called neurexin 1 involved with glutamate, a brain chemical previously implicated in autism that plays a role in early brain development, as a possible susceptibility gene for autism. A previously unidentified region of chromosome 11 also was implicated.

Autism is a spectrum of disorders apparently stemming from genetic and environmental causes. Geneticist Stephen Scherer of the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto said 90 percent of autism may have a genetic basis."

THE JOYS OF EMAIL

2007-02-19T08:15:00.001-05:00

The recipients and I were writing back and forth almost every day. They had never done an embryo transfer cycle and had some questions about the process. We kept each other updated on emails we received from the lawyer's office and the clinic. My wife Sonia and I also shared information about our children so Jenny and Erin had some idea of what to expect if a child resulted from our donation to them.

Aside from business matters like these we were also using email to get to know each other. Jenny wrote about their weekend activities and dreams for the future. We already knew they were child-centered, open-minded and thoughtful people. Now we were getting glimpses of their daily lives. It sounded like they had a lot of offer a child.

We had already agreed to contract terms. Sonia and I had no intention of erecting barriers to the donation. We had to trust Jenny and Erin to do the right thing for their family.

One thing was bothering me, however. Part of the reason we had chosen Jenny and Erin is their deep roots in their community. They were surrounded by loving, supportive family members and friends, all of whom seemed delighted by their plans. Another aspect we considered in our donation is the region in which they live. They would never be allowed to adopt a baby in their conservative Southern state. We offered one of the few ways they could have a baby.

The fact that they live in a state with anti-gay laws worried me. When their child was born only Erin, the birthmother, would have legal rights to their baby. Jenny would have to go through a second-parent adoption, despite the fact that I was donating to both of them. Why two adults in a committed relationship must ask permission to both take responsibility for a child they were raising was beyond me but that was the system.

If something happened to Erin before the adoption was finalized Jenny would have no rights to her own child. There was a way around this. There is a lawyer at RainbowLaw.com who has designed state-specific packets for all 50 American states. The packet includes a will, parenting agreement, health care proxy and authorization for treatment of minor child, among other forms. For only $250 RainbowLaw will customize these forms for each family.

I had asked Jenny and Erin how they would protect their family and they explained their intent to have Jenny adopt. They also mentioned a book they had purchased which helps gay and lesbian couples design their own legal agreements. I had gently mentioned RainbowLaw but they did not seem interested.

Do-it-yourself forms may be the most expensive legal advice they ever purchased. Without sound legal advice tailored to each situation it is too easy to make a mistake with the potential to destroy a family. I wished they would use the lawyer's forms instead of a general form in a book which might or might not be valid in their state. That book could have been outdated before it was even published if their state legislature passed some new anti-gay law.

Part of picking recipients is letting go. I did not want to be the precipitator of an ugly custody battle if something happened to one of the partners. But Jenny and Erin were adults. It was neither my responsibility nor my right to tell them how to best protect their family. And there was no child yet so this was all hypothetical at the moment. I simply had to trust them to do the right thing.

TELLING YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT EMBRYO DONATION

2007-02-18T07:32:00.000-05:00

While we waited for the lawyer to finish our embryo donation contract Jenny and Erin were planning their first frozen embryo transfer cycle. We had picked them as recipients in part because they were so positive about embryo donation. Their egos were not tied up in needing help to have a baby. They seemed excited to have been selected to receive our embryos from amongst dozens of families. They were going to be completely honest about with friends, family and their children.

But how do you tell your loved ones about this novel way to become parents? Their families of origin were already aware of what was happening and completely supportive of their choice. Now Jenny and Erin chose to spell out exactly how they hoped to have a child in an email to about a dozen close friends and relatives.

"Hello Everyone! For those of you that we haven’t talked to in a while I just wanted to give you an update. We have been trying to have a baby now for about a year. We have gone through 7 failed insemination attempts, several procedures, one surgery and too many blood tests to count.

Basically, what we found is that the quality and quantity of Erin's eggs are not what they should be. We were told that she could get pregnant, but it could take years and with us having to pay for every insemination as well as every sperm vial it was not feasible. We also talked with the doctor about using my eggs and having Erin carry the baby. This was going to cost upward of 25,000$ … way out of our budget.

With [my medical history] getting pregnant could be very difficult and the chances of miscarriage and birth defects are high. We were advised to participate in the “donor embryo” program. This is basically where couples have gone through IVF and have embryos (frozen) that are “left over”. Several embryos can result from an IVF cycle and many people have embryos left over after having children. They have the choice to either 1) dispose of the embryos, 2) donate them to science (stem cell research) or 3) donate them to other couples.

Our [local] fertility clinic offers this service. It is an anonymous program, meaning that we would have the opportunity to receive embryos but we would never know (other than the basic medical information) anything about the donors. The likelihood of ever having “biological siblings” was virtually impossible too. We would more than likely be given embryos from several different families.

We were still excited with all this information and the possibility of having a child. We got on the Internet to look up information regarding embryo donation. In the process we ran across several websites that offered a “listing” service to donors and recipients. These websites gave the opportunity to match donors with potential recipients. All of the websites we came across were ran by religious organizations that were very restricting in the couples they would allow to adopt. They wanted married couples who had been trying to conceive for a certain amount of time who were members of a church etc. and no alternative families.

We came across one website, miracleswaiting.com. This website provided the same service but had no restrictions. It was up to the donor families to determine the type of family they wanted to donate to. The very first listing we came to said, “embryos for a jewish/lesbian couple” and surprisingly (sarcasm) this was the only couple that specified they would like to donate to a lesbian
couple. We emailed and explained that we were not Jewish, but lesbian and interested in speaking to this couple. After several weeks of discussions and contract negotiations, we are happy to say that we have been chosen to receive the three embryos this couple has.

We are so delighted and excited and wanted to say thank you to those of you who have been so supportive in all this. It has been a roller coaster ride and I know we have a much longer ride ahead but we just wanted to say thank you!"

IVF and embryo donation are relatively new concepts. Many people are completely unaware of how either system works. Jenny and Erin spelled out exactly what embryo donation is. They did not assume that their loved ones knew anything about it. They also showed how they felt about anonymous donation, their hope for their children and how positive they felt about using embryos from a known donor.

By being up-front about their choice to pursue embryo donation, Jenny and Erin present it as something to be proud of. Sending the email to multiple friends and families at once shows they are not trying to hide their choice. They could have chosen not to inform the people in their lives or told them individually or after their child was born. This would have sent the message that embryo donation is something to hide. By contrast, their truthful email underscored their "delighted and excited" feelings about this donation.

We were pretty thrilled ourselves. Jenny and Erin included my family in this email about their plans. Seeing that they were being truthful with the most important people they knew further reinforced our conviction that they were the right recipients for our embryos. We looked forward to signing the embryo donation contract that would allow Jenny and Erin to pursue their dreams.

BORN IN THE MORNING

2007-02-17T07:37:00.000-05:00

I was born in the morning, but it wasn't yesterday morning. Someone recently wrote asking to publish excerpts from this blog in another format. What an honor. All they needed was my name, photo, address, birthdate, social security number and signature on a release form. I think I will title my work "Identity Theft Waiting to Happen".

We all know by now not to reveal personal information just because an email arrives from someone official-sounding. I directed these folks to my lawyer.

I'm trusting enough to give embryos to a couple who proved themselves to be good-hearted through emails (and a background search on a licensing board website). But it's not clever to reveal private identifying information just because someone writes to ask for it.

I write this column to help myself and others think through complicated parenting issues. I don't make any money from the blog, not even through the ads it seems every blogger posts. I'm open to well thought-out comments and legitimate media requests. Crazy ranters and computer scammers please look elsewhere.

WHILE WE WAITED

2007-02-16T20:43:00.000-05:00

What were the recipients thinking while we waited for the contract to be finalized by the lawyer? While Sonia and I were trying to decide if we should donate to these recipients we were sending them questions every day and receiving their answers with the same frequency.

Then we started to hash out the contract and resolve logistical issues and that precipitated its own flurry of emails. Now it was all over except signing on the dotted line. Once we had given the embryos to Jenny and Erin their next task would be to try to get pregnant. That was going to consume a lot of time and energy. I wanted Jenny and Erin to know that they were not obligated to keep up as much of a correspondence as we had been enjoying. So I wrote them a note to make sure it was clear that we knew they had their own lives and did not expect them to spend a lot of time writing to us:

"Before you get pregnant, I want to tell you that I understand your feelings and priorities will change when you have kids. You can't know right now how you will feel when you are moms. That's why it's in the contract that you only have to update us once a year. The main thing is that we trade pertinent medical info since that could affect our kids' lives.

Before we had kids we knew we didn't want a donor who was a friend since that would obligate us to an intensity of relationship we might not want to maintain. We picked our sperm bank because it had the most info on the donors: photos, audio, video, personality profiles, etc. We thought that would be enough. In our case, however, once we had kids we found ourselves wanting more info about the sperm donor.

There have been a million times I wanted to talk to the donor (or really to his mom!) to ask about something: was he tall as a baby like our son? Is he good at math? I'm not, but our son knew all the numbers visually at age 2. Was his hair blond as a baby? In our case, anonymity has not been optimal.

You may well feel the opposite way. So once you get pregnant and especially when you have kid(s) from these embryos we are going to really back off and let you set the pace. If you contact us, we will respond, but if you don't contact us for months we won't contact you unless it's something important. I don't want you to think we are planning to snub you -- I would be excited to hear how your pregnancy is progressing, etc. But we don't want to be intrusive and want you to know that in advance so you don't think there is something wrong if we drop contact."

We were donating the embryos to Jenny and Erin free and clear. Besides letting us know every so often that their kids were doing well, Jenny and Erin owed us nothing. And we wanted to make sure they knew it, before they became parents and had so much else to deal with. Here is what they wrote back:

"We were in the car last night on our way
home and began talking about how excited we are at all the possibilities and how lucky we feel (in general) with our lives. We were including in those possibilities, the possibility of having sort of an extended family. We love the idea of knowing our donors. We both know that once we have children our priorities may change.

I know that both of us feel very strongly about having relationships with our family and having strong steady friendships. I think that we would both want that with you after a child is born. This is difficult to explain, because I don't want you to feel like we are going to be calling every second or emailing and using up all your
text messaging! Or in general just being intrusive in your life.

That being said, we also understand if you do not feel like responding to any of our emails that are not "business/child" related. We, of course, enjoy the correspondence but understand if you do not see is as "needed" or "necessary". We just want you to have a good idea of who we are and would love to know about you and your family (in due time). We realize our day to day lives are going to be very separate but I think that we also feel very blessed to have the opportunity to form and maintain a friendship in all
this."

Once again these wonderful women were in sync with how Sonia and I were feeling. Their goals were our goals. We hoped we would be welcoming them into our extended family.

WAITING FOR THE CONTRACT

2007-02-15T08:27:00.000-05:00

Jenny and Erin had first asked for our frozen pre-embryos just before Thanksgiving. Now it was almost Christmas and we were about to head off on a holiday trip. Right after New Year's Jenny and Erin would have their intake appointment with the clinic. The holidays were turning into a busy time as we tried to help our recipients get some embryos.

We were hoping that the lawyer would get us the contract before we left town at the end of December. Jenny and Erin would have a calmer Christmas holiday with a signed contract in their hands.

I had an incredibly rude and illiterate comment from an anonymous visitor to the blog. Besides his or her extremely poor social skills, this person has poor reading comprehension. I'll guess it was a "he" since he had no idea how IVF or pregnancy works. He accused me of "handing out babies" to people I "didn't have a good feeling about".

I assume this is in response to my agreeing to give one single embryo to the first couple who contacted me and met my recipient criteria. After I agreed to donate they tried to change the terms of the contract we had agreed to. That is when I started to feel uncomfortable and refused to change the terms so as to end my commitment to donate.

What I was signing over in any case was a chance, not a child. With the second recipients, Jenny and Erin, each new interaction with them reinforced my impression that they were the perfect choice to receive the embryos.

And all our hand-wringing over picking the right parents could ultimately be for nothing.

I was NOT giving these women three babies. They were taking three fertilized eggs. At this two-celled stage they were not even embryos yet. The reason is there was no guarantee any of them would thaw safely. If they thawed, they might not grow. And even if they grew, the chances were low that they would attach to Erin's womb and become a baby.

What I was giving Jenny and Erin was about a 60% chance of having one child from the three embryos and about a 20% chance of having two. Having three, while possible, was more likely to result from the increased odds of identical twins with IVF. That chance was 3 to 10%. Barring identical twins, it was almost impossible that each of the three embryos would individually thaw, grow, implant and be carried to term. The recipients also had close to 50-50 odds of having no children from these embryos at all.

That is why embryo donation is NOT adoption. Adoption only exists when there is a child. There was no child here. We were donating fragile fertilized eggs that might not even thaw. There was only the hope of a child. But that hope was strong in Jenny and Erin and we would do all we could to nurture

STUDIES SHOW

2007-02-14T08:20:00.000-05:00

Here is a new study that confirms my opinion: people who must overcome barriers to have children are better parents. This includes parents who adopt and gay families.

"SUMMARY: New university research challenges arguments that have been used to oppose gay adoption and says same-sex families invest heavily in their kids.
ADVERTISEMENT

Adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents, according to a new national study challenging arguments that have been used to oppose same-sex marriage and gay adoption.

The study, published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review, found that couples who adopt spend more money on their children and invest more time on such activities as reading to them, eating together and talking with them about their problems.

"One of the reasons adoptive parents invest more is that they really want children, and they go to extraordinary means to have them," Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, one of the study's three co-authors, said in a telephone interview Monday.

"Adoptive parents face a culture where, to many other people, adoption is not real parenthood," Powell said. "What they're trying to do is compensate. . . . They recognize the barriers they face, and it sets the stage for them to be better parents."

Powell and his colleagues examined data from 13,000 households with first-graders in the family. The data was part of a detailed survey called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Education and other agencies.

The researchers said 161 families in the survey were headed by two adoptive parents, and they rated better overall than families with biological parents on an array of criteria -- including helping with homework, parental involvement in school, exposure to cultural activities and family attendance at religious services. The only category in which adoptive parents fared worse was the frequency of talking with parents of other children.

The researchers noted that adoptive couples, in general, were older and wealthier than biological parents, but said the adoptive parents still had an advantage -- albeit smaller -- when the data was reanalyzed to account for income inequality.

In particular, the researchers said, adoptive parents had a pronounced edge over single-parent and stepparent families.

The researchers said their findings call into question the long-standing argument that children are best off with their biological parents. Such arguments were included in state Supreme Court rulings last year in New York and Washington that upheld laws against same-sex marriage.

The researchers said gay and lesbian parents may react to discrimination by taking extra, compensatory steps to promote their children's welfare.

"Ironically, the same social context that creates struggles for these alternative families may also set the stage for them to excel in some measures of parenting," the study concluded.

The study was funded by the
National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the American Educational Research Association. Powell's co-authors were Laura Hamilton, a doctoral student at Indiana University, and Simon Cheng, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut.

The study is on the Web at www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Feb07ASRAdoption.pdf. (David Crary, AP)"

INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN

2007-02-13T10:16:00.000-05:00

Are you familiar with the International Museum of Women? They just contacted me. They want me to be part of an exhibit they are doing on motherhood:

"While researching motherhood blog sites online I stumbled upon Babies On Ice :IFV & Embryo Donation. I found your archives and perused a few articles. Your articles were a refreshing and honest retreat from the many analogous mother sites I have been leafing through daily. After reading your articles I decided it was important to email you about submitting an excerpt of your work for the Imagining Ourselves exhibit.

From March to May 2007, the focus of the exhibit will be on Motherhood and the challenges that this generation faces. We want to reach out to young women to amplify their voices, talk about issues they face and focus on the issue from different perspectives-- but really looking at personal stories. We would like to explore their views on maternal health, pregnancy, parenting, single motherhood, adoption, relationships, work and family and much more.

I feel that you so fluently broadcast a view of motherhood that is not seen by many. Most interesting is that you are a mother who is on a journey to find the perfect mothers for your eggs! It would be an honor to have you submit an essay for consideration to the Motherhood exhibit. Your work is honorable, but it is also important and relevant, and should be shared in order to catalyze a new wave of honest and emotive mothers and women like yourself."

It's nice to get some feedback on the blog. I do have a rather intricate reproductive history. If you do as well you might want to check out the exhibit or even contribute to it. And if you know anything about this organization, please let me know.

THE INTAKE APPOINTMENT

2007-02-12T16:28:00.000-05:00

The embryo donation coordinator at our clinic gave us important information we needed to complete the embryo donation contract. She agreed that it was possible to thaw one embryo at a time until a viable embryo was produced. If more embryos needed to be thawed it would not disrupt the recipients' transfer cycle.

She had even more important information for our recipients as they planned their doctor's visit. It was not necessary for Jenny and Erin to take the two-hour flight to our area to have their intake appointment at our clinic. If their doctor sent our fertility clinic the patient files before the appointment, Jenny and Erin could have their intake and work out a treatment plan over the phone. They would only have to come North for the actual embryo transfer procedure, saving them vacation time, effort and money better used for embryo transfer attempts.

Jenny and Erin asked if we thought they should fly up anyway or if they should do the intake over the phone. We assured them that it was not necessary for us to meet them in person, that we would go ahead with the donation based on our communication and negotiations to date. If they wanted to meet our kids and "see what they were getting" before going through with the contract they were welcome to do so.

The phone intake meant that Jenny and Erin could have had an appointment sooner, if they were willing to choose whichever doctor was available first. The doctor we recommended does not do phone intakes because English is not her first language but there was another doctor who, while new, had a great reputation. She was available for a phone apppointment, but no sooner than the in-person visit they had already scheduled.

In the end, Jenny and Erin decided to do their intake over the phone. As soon as the clinic accepted them we would sign over the embryos. We would be doing this without meeting them, and without their meeting us. And it would all happen within one month from the day we first spoke to them on the phone and told them we would donate to them. Jenny and Erin were breaking the world's record for getting and using donated embryos. And it was full speed ahead.

MATCH PENDING

2007-02-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

To finalize this embryo donation, we each had responsibilities. Jenny and Erin sent the attorney a retainer and I sent her a list of ideas for the contract. While waiting for the lawyer's office to prepare the contract I contacted MiraclesWaiting, the website I had used to find recipient candidates. I told the MW coordinator to change my listing from "active" to "Match Pending". This meant we were working on the contract and the embryos were spoken for, though the donation was not yet finalized.

Even with the "Match Pending" clearly featured in the listing headline, I continued to get requests for the embryos from eager recipients. One was from a Jewish woman who was clearly in touch with her heritage. I had a moment of wistfulness. If I had found a Jewish recipient I liked as much as Jenny and Erin, children from these embryos would grow up to know and embrace their genetic heritage. They would probably attend Hebrew school and learn to read the Bible in Hebrew. Once they had mastered that and been taught about my people's history their parents would probably encourage them to celebrate the Jewish coming-of-age ritual of the Bar Mitzvah (boys) or Bat Mitzvah (girls) which consists of the child reading from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue. A Jewish recipient's kids might even go to Jewish summer camp and learn the songs and games my own children were learning as they discovered their heritage. This new request reminded me that only embryos donated to a Jewish parent would enter the Covenant of Israel as had everyone before them who shared their genes.

As quickly as these images entered my mind, they passed. I knew it was almost impossible for children from this donation to have any of these experiences. They would be Jenny and Erin's children and raised Episcopalian or some other Protestant denomination. That was their parents' choice. And Jenny and Erin were their parents. I knew they would make the right choices for their children. Not in the least regretful or interested in other recipients, I was ready to let them begin.

WHAT WE DIDN'T ASK POTENTIAL RECIPIENTS

2007-02-10T09:37:00.000-05:00

When recipients responded to our MiraclesWaiting listing and asked for our spare embryos we asked them a lot of personal questions. I always felt bad about prying but obviously we needed to make sure we didn't give embryos to anyone abusive or incapable of good parenting.

There were a lot of things I wanted to know that I didn't ask any of the potential recipients. Some things are too personal. I didn't even ask the women we finally picked any of the things below. They are the parents. Since I don't have or want input on their parenting it is not my right to ask how they would parent.

Here's what I didn't ask that I would have liked to know:

1) Would you give your child soda?
2) Do you think children should watch TV?
3) How are the schools where you live?
4) Is there any abuse in either of your families?
5) Is either of you a recovering user of drugs or alcohol?
6) Are you setting up a college fund if you have children?
7) How will you child-proof your home?
8) Does either of you have depression or other mental illness?

Stuff like that. Why didn't I ask these prying questions? I chose to spend a month corresponding and speaking with the potential recipient couple to get a first-hand sense of what these answers might be. It was less intrusive and more accurate to read between the lines than to alienate the recipients by prying. In my job I am required to assess patients and get a sense of their mental health, physical health, lifestyle and skills. My track record is good.

Ultimately, I had to find people I trusted to be good parents then let them at it. And I had.

FULL SPEED AHEAD

2007-02-08T07:31:00.000-05:00

Now that we had picked Jenny and Erin as our embryo recipients, Sonia and I were eager to finalize the donation. The spare embryos had been sitting in our fertility clinic's freezer for almost two years as we decided what to do with them and we were ready to get them off our hands.

The recipients had spent about the same amount of time trying to start a family. After nine unsuccessful intra-uterine insemination cycles and lots of invasive tests, Jenny and Erin were more than ready to start their family. They, and their doctor, felt that embryo donation was their most feasible option for having a baby. If the lawyer could produce a final contract before their January intake appointment at our fertility clinic, Jenny and Erin might have a baby by the end of the year.

Though our contract did not require that the two families ever meet, Jenny and Erin had expressed interest in getting together when they traveled to our fertility clinic for the initial appointment. We wondered if this might end up being too stressful for them since it would be a four hour round trip from the clinic to our city. But if they were up for it we would be pleased to introduce them to our children. They should meet them before the transfer, we figured, to make sure they knew what they were getting into!

NEXT STEPS

2007-02-07T07:56:00.001-05:00

Now that we had agreed to give our spare embryos to Jenny and Erin, what next? As the recipients admitted "we're list-makers!" so the four of us took on the tasks needed to make the donation official.

Erin called the fertility clinic to get the first possible in-take/assessment appointment. At our popular clinic with the best frozen cycle success rates in the country, the next available appointment was almost six weeks away.

Jenny and Erin needed to use that time to transfer their medical records to our clinic, complete necessary testing and plan their trip North.

Six weeks gave me time for my task, working out a contract with the lawyer for the recipients to approve. The four of us had already sketched out the contract terms but we did not know if they were all legal, enforceable or even practicable.

Then there was the issue of the lawyer's reading of embryo donation law. Would there be aspects of her standard contract that we disagreed with? Was it even possible for residents of the recipients' Southern state to become parties to embryo donation?

Jenny and Erin had already contacted the lawyer's office before we even agreed to donate to them or mentioned the lawyer's name to them. As I had maintained with the first couple who contacted us, the good-enough couple we agreed to give our embryos to without really thinking it through, our lawyer is a pioneer in reproductive law. That first couple had balked at the cost of the contract and went back on every other term we had agreed to. By contrast, Jenny and Erin had discovered on their own, independent of our preferences, that our lawyer was the best woman for this job.

But another of my jobs was to straighten out the discrepancy between what the lawyer had told us and the fee they quoted to Jenny and Erin. A few months before, her office quoted me a flat rate of $1000 to prepare the contract.

Now they were asking Jenny and Erin for $350 to start and a balance of at least $1000. It is standard for recipients to pay the legal fees associated with an embryo donation. But I could not, in good conscience, subject the recipients to legal costs that could spiral out of control.

Before we could finish negotiations with our recipients we would have to negotiate with the lawyer...

THE RECIPIENTS CONSIDER MY TERMS

2007-02-06T07:53:00.000-05:00

The day after we called Jenny and Erin to tell them we had selected them as our embryo recipients, my wife and I wrote up our suggestions for the donation contract. Would the recipients agree to all the terms, or had we offended them?

I didn't think that any of the terms would be a surprise. We had discussed them all with Jenny and Erin, some in great detail. But chatting about possibilities is different than signing off on a legal contract.

This was their response:

"I'm not sure even how to express the gratitude that we feel. I am sure that "thank you" a million times would not be enough, but I want you to know that we feel honored that you have faith in us regarding the rearing of children from these embryos.

We understand everything that has been discussed thus far, and it has been a comfort knowing that we have a similar vision for the lives of these potential children. That being said, we also know that there are risks involved and that this process (FET) could have the potential to fail at any time. We want you to know that we would do anything possible to ensure that these embryos have the best chance of developing into wonderful, well-adjusted, happy children.

Erin takes very good care of herself and will continue to do so during this whole process...Erin and I have both reviewed this email and the terms you have suggested, and I just want to give you a response on each suggestion individually."

Uh-oh. Which of the individual items didn't work for them? I read on:

"I'm not sure this would have any legal worth but if it would help, you could provide this email to the attorney to show that we are in agreement when adding these stipulations.

1) you need to use these embryos for only one thing: to try to get Erin pregnant.
COMPLETELY AGREE TO

2) if you don't use all three embryos within 10 years you have to give them back to us. You would not have the right to pick your own recipients for your unused embryos. Only my wife and/or I can assign the embryos to anyone else. COMPLETELY AGREE TO

3) you have to notify us of any child(ren) born from these embryos, their gender (and their first names, so our kids can avoid dating them!)
COMPLETELY AGREE TO

4) if you get kids from these embryos and the kids have any health problems whatsoever you have no notify us immediately. We have to do the same with our kids who are your kids' genetic siblings COMPLETELY AGREE TO

5) at least once a year you have to provide us with a picture of your child(ren)'s face(s) and an update on their progress COMPLETELY AGREE TO

6) I agree to be a "knowable" donor: your kid(s) have the right to contact me at age 18 if we have not had direct contact before then. I have the responsibility to keep my address current with you or the lawyer to facilitate this
COMPLETELY AGREE TO

7) you must informing your child(ren) that they were conceived from donor egg and donor sperm and that their donors are of Jewish ancestry and that they have the right to contact me when they turn 18.
COMPLETELY AGREE TO

8) You may thaw and implant more than one embryo only if the first (and/or second) embryo thawed is considered non-viable by the clinic's embryologist. Once you have one viable embryo you may not thaw any more during that cycle. COMPLETELY AGREE TO

9) my family and I have no responsibility if these embryos are not viable or if your kids have any problems. COMPLETELY AGREE TO."

Oh, they agreed to everything. Specifically and individually. We were in complete agreement. They even sent the web address for the state licensing board that had issued Jenny's professional credential and teaching license. This was better than a background check. Giving embryos to someone who worked in a school setting guaranteed that the recipient was of good character, had never been arrested and had not committed malpractice. This was extra-sturdy karmic protection to ensure I was picking the best parents possible for any children that might come from this donation.

The embryos were spoken for and no longer our responsibility. It felt good. Now to get them the embryos.

NEGOTIATING THE CONTRACT

2007-02-05T07:24:00.000-05:00

What terms can be included in an open embryo donation contract? Anything the donor(s) and recipient(s) both agree will work for their families. In our case, my wife and I made sure we worked out our concerns with the recipients before hand. By writing emails back and forth and discussing things on the phone we had all arrived at a general framework for the agreement before the actual contract was written.

After sharing our concerns and hopes we then stepped back and trusted our recipients to keep to the spirit of what we had discussed. Only the most important issues made it into the actual draft contract.

The legally binding contract was kept flexible and as minimal as possible. The only things we asked the recipients to commit to were issues that I felt would put me into "karmic debt" if something went wrong.

By "karmic debt" I mean that I did not want to be responsible for causing pain. Thus, I would not help anyone create a child who was needlessly disabled, deceived or a member of a family whose values conflicted with what I consider essentially moral. Parents planning to lie to their children about their conception with donor egg/sperm were out. Heterosexual couples, whose options for starting a family were so broad compared to gay parents, were not the recipients for me. I also ruled out single moms because I know how hard it is to care for an infant when a parent does not have a partner.

Still, I had been convinced to change what I originally considered essential recipient criteria by the wonderful child-centered attitude of the couple I ultimately chose. Though I had at first wanted the children to be raised Jewish, in accordance with their bloodline, Jenny and Erin were magnificent, good-hearted people who had a lot of love to give a child. They would pass along the right values even without the benefit of millennia of Jewish wisdom (and with more humility than I could muster).

Shedding criteria that were not essential did not mean abandoning my core values. I still wanted a child from this donation to have the right to know his or her origins, both ethnically and genetically. I wanted to make sure the clinic could not pressure the recipients to implant multiple embryos at once, causing them to exponentially increase their risk of having disabled twins or triplets. And if the recipients changed their minds, I wanted the unused embryos back so they went to another family who also met my concerns.

Jenny and Erin had been so open and flexible but now we were down to brass tacks. I included as few terms in the proposed contract as I possibly could but I was still asking a lot. As we waited to hear their response, I wondered if I had over-stepped. My wife and I had accepted them, but would they accept us? I really liked these women, and I hoped their answer would be "yes".

HELLO

2007-02-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

Now that we had decided to give our embryos to Jenny and Erin we invited them to speak to us on the phone. They admitted to being nervous about this. I could understand that. This was life, actively happening. Nonetheless, they gave us their home and mobile numbers.

To make sure we didn't surprise them, we asked Jenny and Erin for a good time to call them, and that's when we called. They were both very sweet on the phone, and their Southern accents sounded musical to my Northern ears.

We talked to them in detail about every possible medical problem anyone in my family had ever experienced, including dandruff. We wanted to make sure they knew what they were getting into.

At the same time, we covered the basics of what they needed to do for us to sign over the embryos. We had already mentioned most of these things to them and they had said they were open to them, but we wanted to spell it out all at once.

Those requirements were:

1) Use our fertility clinic, since it has the nation's best success rates, and to avoid shipping the fragile embryos.
2) Pay our lawyer to draft the donation contract, as she is a pioneer in fertility law.
3) Tell any children they have that they are genetically Jewish, conceived with donor gametes and have the right, when adults, to meet their egg donor/genetic sibs.
4) Send us a photo, medical update and developmental summary on their kid(s) once a year.
5) Reimburse us for the embryo storage fees.
6) Use the embryos within 10 years.
7) Give back any embryos they do not choose to use.
8) Don't blame us if you don't get pregnant or the kid(s) have problems.

and the biggie:

9) Agree to thaw only one embryo to start. If the embryologist says that one doesn't look viable, thaw a second one, then, if needed, a third. But stop after one viable embryo is produced to reduce the risk of twins or triplets and the huge likelihood of problems from a multiple pregnancy.

We had tried to be as flexible as we could. We did not want to force the recipients to meet capricious demands. But I considered it my responsibility to make sure I did not force a child to endure needless disability due to prematurity or unhappiness from discovering later that they had been lied to about their genetic origins. I also wanted to keep my own children safe by learning about any medical problems that might arise with their genetic siblings. And after spending tens of thousands of dollars to create my own children, I thought it was fair for the recipients to at least pay the fees that allowed the embryos to wait for them in the freezer.

Would the recipients see this as reasonable? We waited to find out.

COMMON GROUND

2007-02-03T08:15:00.001-05:00

The last issue I was trying to resolve with our would-be recipients was how they, as Christians, could foster a sense of Jewish heritage in the genetically Jewish children who might come of my embryo donation.

With great hesitation, I had written them to make some suggestions as to how they might accomplish this. Were they open to my concerns? Jenny and Erin wrote back immediately:

"Of course without hesitation we would let our children know of their bloodline and the history of their ancestors and how they are a part of that history and future."

I stopped reading here. I was struck by the fact that they looked not just to the past, as I had, but forward to ways their child(ren) from this donation might bring their Jewish heritage into the next generation. If this was their perspective, or at least their intent, they were the right recipients for us, despite being Hebraically-impaired.

They went on to specify which activities they thought would work within their own family:

"Reading storybooks about Jewish holidays and history would be no problem at all. I hope that our children are inquisitive about their heritage and we would foster that at an early age. Erin and I are both open to the idea of participating in the occasional Jewish holiday with our children. While we do not have any personal friends here that are Jewish, Erin’s parent’s next door neighbors (who they are fairly close to) are Jewish."

It sounded like these recipients were open and responsive to my concerns. I didn't even mind the standard reference to the only known Jewish person in each Southerner's life: their dentist's third-cousin's mail carrier. At least they had some kind of resource for knowing which end of the Hannukah candle to light.

This was the final hurdle I had put up for myself. The recipients had leaped it gracefully by turning my gaze to the future. I was wasting my time looking sadly into the past.

The rest was details. Jenny and Erin were the right recipients for us and we would give them our embryos.

LEAVE MARY CHENEY ALONE

2007-02-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

Why do we even have to keep repeating anything this obvious: gay couples have children for the same reasons, and with at least the same success, as any other family.

In fact, I'd argue that we're better parents, on average, because we self-select to become parents, are willing to surmount the obstacles in our path that don't exist for heterosexual couples, and do not have our babies by accident.

There is no way to stop lesbians from having children, except, perhaps forced sterilization or stealing children from their natural

parents. Is this a democracy? The last time I read our Constitution it said every citizen has a right to pursue happiness and have privacy. Where do right-wing zealots get the right to decide who gets to have children? And why should they get to base it on their incredibly creative reading of scripture? The bible says absolutely nothing about gay women.

Do you remember when you dreamed of having a child? Did those dreams include being attacked in public by religious and political ideologues who called you names and damned your family? Poor Mary Cheney knew she and her partner's joy would be diluted by cruel attacks. If you don't like lesbian parents, don't let one adopt you. Otherwise, worry about something that actually affects you or your family in some way. If Mary Cheney's partnership or pregnancy threatens your marriage you need a couples' counsellor, and soon! Seriously, get a life.

From the NY Times Department of "Duh!":

"Decision to Have Baby Isn’t Political, Mary Cheney Says"

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: February 1, 2007

Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, for the first time yesterday publicly defended her decision to become pregnant and asserted that same-sex couples were equally capable of raising children as heterosexual couples.
Skip to next paragraph
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Mary Cheney, at a Glamour magazine panel at Barnard College Wednesday, said of her baby: “It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.”

“When Heather and I decided to have a baby, it was not going to be the most popular decision ever,” Ms. Cheney said, referring to her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.

She then gestured to her middle — any bulge disguised by a boxy jacket — and asserted: “This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child.”

Ms. Cheney, 37, was speaking at Barnard College in Manhattan in a panel discussion sponsored by Glamour magazine. The baby, whose sex she has not revealed publicly, is due this spring and will be the sixth grandchild for the vice president and his wife....

He wrote in Time magazine in December that years of social research “indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father.” He also wrote that his group believes that “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples.” Two of the researchers Mr. Dobson cited have complained that he distorted their views and said they disagreed with his conclusions.

Ms. Cheney agreed the research was distorted. “Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years on this issue has shown there is no difference between children who are raised by same-sex parents and children who are raised by opposite-sex parents,” she said. “What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, loving environment.”

The audience, of about 100 people, most of them Barnard students, applauded her warmly. So did her fellow panelists, including Gloria Feldt, the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Kathleen Turner, the actress.

FINDING FAMILY

2007-02-01T14:41:00.000-05:00

As I prepared for the visit of my long-lost cousin, I pictured our meeting in my mind. I know what this sort of reunion would look like in my wife Sonia's Southern family. They would make polite small talk but the main event during the visit would be a rousing genaological game of "Now, who's your Daddy again?". Southerners seem to play this game with relatives, friends and complete strangers. They come from areas where they are deeply rooted to the land and often know every family in town. "Now, who's your Daddy" is a fun way to find connections and establish relationships between families, but it might also be an attempt to avoid dating your cousin. Anyway, it always seems fun and light-hearted.

I didn't expect this kind of jolly genaological fun if we raised the topic of our mutual cousins or other family members. By trying to establish how we are related we revisit the loss of most of our family. Simply filling in the family tree meant treading on killing fields.

Why would my cousins and I subject ourselves to such pain? Because Jews, denied our own country, liberty and even lives over thousands of years have only the power of memory to allow our race to continue. We would try to piece together the puzzle of the names of the dead even though their lines had not continued because we owe our ancestors the respect of acknowledging their too-short existance.

This new cousin might not up to having such a chat, or her mother, more than likely, may have declined to revisit painful memories and left her ignorant. Whether we discussed them or not, the missing relatives would hang like ghosts among us as we shared tea and cakes.

It was this realization, that memory is a duty in those who survived, that was affecting my ability to donate my embryos to the wonderful Christian couple I had found who wanted them. Above all else, I knew, from my own experience with adoption and egg donation, that their children from my embryos would not want to remember. Not because it would be painful for them, as it was for me, but precisely because it was not.

I had no illusion, expectation or hope that my recipients' children would see me as a true relative. They would learn about, remember and care about their own family's history, not mine. That is as it should be. But it extinguished one or two more living memories which allowed those lost relatives to remain alive, in some way; to be remembered.

On the other hand, I was not choosing to give life to those potential children. I would not carry them, nurse them, change their diapers or soothe their small hearts. Neither I, nor my ancestors, could lay claim to their remembrance.

The recipients wanted to provide their children with some knowledge of their genetic roots but they neither wanted, nor needed, my awful burden of history. I would make suggestions according to their preferences and they were free to accept or reject them. My Jewish embryos would not become their Jewish children. Yet with the mothers I had selected they would grow into good and well-loved people. That was more important and, at any rate, would have to do.

MY FAMILY EXPANDS

2007-01-31T02:26:00.000-05:00

As my potential embryo recipients, my wife and I were discussing the issues involved in giving Jewish embryos to a Christian couple, an interesting thing happened: our family got larger.

We received an email out of the blue from a man in Israel who was working on the geneology of his mother's side of the family. She shared the surname of my great-grandfather and she had passed along the knowledge that relatives of hers lived in the city where my family lived for many generations. One branch of the family had moved elsewhere and here they were, generations later, reaching out to us again. My wife, Sonia, resumed her geneaological research, sharing information with him in hopes of rediscovering the link.

The following week an even odder thing happened. We reconnected with the children of my great-aunt, who also live in Israel. Decades ago my mother had their contact information but, never having met them, I did not get it from her or make any attempt to connect.

What's more, the daughter of my great-aunt was visiting the city where I live. Working around a pretty difficult language barrier (my Hebrew is limited to blessing food before dinner) I immediately invited her to come to lunch with her daughter and new grandson.

For Sonia, genaology is like a mystery novel. She is now working on finding the names of all of my great-grandmother's children. Perhaps my second cousin could help provide some clues. Her mother was one of only three cousins to escape the Nazis. She had lived in the old country, and personally known my great-aunts and -uncles, and even my great-grand-parents. But most Holocaust survivors refuse to discuss their war-time experiences with their children. Had my great-aunt found the strength to do so?

OPEN TO OTHER CULTURES?

2007-01-30T08:25:00.000-05:00

When we discussed donating our embryos to Jenny and Erin they said they were open to helping their child(ren) from this donation understand their genetic heritage. Did that willingness extend to taking concrete steps or was it more theoretical?

Making it clear that my suggestions were a general hypothetical picture which reflected my hopes, not demands or expectations, I laid out what I made clear was a "hypothetical religious scenario":

"The recipients in my ideal scenario might read up a bit on Jewish culture: holidays, child-rearing philosophies and/or history. That could be from a book like "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee", "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture" or even just children's books about Jewish holidays. Or they might go to a website like www.jewfaq.org.

My ideal recipients might occasionally go to a friend's Jewish holiday party for holidays like Passover, and maybe do something fun and easy like light candles for Hannukah. They would let their children know that they are part of a Jewish history spanning over 5,000 years.

They would sometimes read story books to them about Jewish holidays and history and let them know it is part of their heritage because of their donors (plural -- the sperm donor is half Jewish so these embryos are genetically 75% Jewish). Sonia has told me that Jews are pretty thin on the ground in your area, so if this would be an exploration undertaken in isolation, we would be happy to answer any questions or serve as a resource about Judaism.

From my perspective, the only Christian church that whole-heartedly honors the Jewish roots of Christianity and teaches about other religions in addition to Christianity is the Universalist Unitarian church. I would be delighted for children in my bloodline to be raised in that church. But if it does not resonate for you it would not meet your family's needs. Again, it is not my right or my intention to dictate anything to potential recipients about how to parent their children. Most people want to raise their children in the denomination in which they were raised. Of all the mainline Protestant flavors, Episcopalian seems to encourage the most thought among its adherents, so I'm pretty comfortable with that too.

I hope I have not offended you too much. If you have questions or feedback please let me know, but really, this is just so that you know what my best-case scenario is. The one thing we've learned from having children is that beliefs, intentions, priorities and plans all change, sometimes day-to-day as the reality of keeping everyone fed, dry and relatively happy sweeps us along."

Religion is such a tricky issue. I did not want to offend these women or boss them around or hit them over the head with Judaism. The issue of "disappearing" a Jewish child or children of my own bloodline was a real concern to me, however. I wanted to reassure myself that the recipients understood my concern, however they chose to address it. Was this asking too much? I waited to find out.

CIRCUMSCRIBING A DONATION

2007-01-29T07:46:00.000-05:00

At this point in our discussions about donating embryos to Jenny and Erin my wife Sonia and I were feeling great about them. They were such good women and they clearly had a lot to share with a child. We just knew they would be phenomenal parents.

Sonia and I had endless discussions before our children were born to work out all the issues surrounding child-rearing. Obviously, more questions came up after the children were born but our experience working out our concerns together meant that we were able to resolve whatever came up.

Pre-kids, the most complicated issue between us was religion. I am not religious, Sonia is. I am Jewish. Sonia is not. I wanted to pass along a sense of Jewish heritage to our children. Sonia wanted them raised in a worship community. She wanted them to know God. Our compromise was a natural one: we would raise the children Jewish.

This was not a bargain I would strike with Jenny and Erin. If we gave them the embryos it would of course be without strings attached in terms of child rearing. We felt we had the right to know if children resulted from our donation, and our natural curiosity meant we wanted to see photos of those children to see if they resembled our own kids. For the safety of both families we would also ask for pertinent medical updates. That was all we felt comfortable requesting.

Discussing my concerns about the embryos' genetic heritage felt both important and wrong. I did not want to come across as in any way trying to control their family life but it was such an important issue to me I couldn't just let it go without some discussion.

Sonia and I talked a lot about how we might make some suggestions as to how non-Jewish parents could share a bit of their children's genetic heritage with them. We wanted to make sure our ideas did not come across as orders.

When we were first discussing how to create our children, Sonia and I approached my cousin. He is the only male relative of reproductive age on the side of my family that was killed in the Holocaust. He lives in another country, to which his grandmother escaped just before World War II. He agreed to donate his genetic material, as long as we fulfilled a laundry list of demands, including listing him on the birth certificate as the father and promising not to circumcise a male child.

Leaving aside the growing call in the medical community for circumcision as a means of reducing cervical cancer in women and AIDS infections in both men and women, his insistence on this was extremely offensive to both Sonia and me. If we became parents through his donation, we would be the parents, not him. He had no right to be listed on the birth certificate, thus blocking my right to adopt the child I was raising. Nor should he insist we forego a procedure which could save our child's life (several separate trials in various countries comparing AIDS infection rates among circumcised and non-circumcised men were halted recently. The studies revealed that circumcised men were 60% less likely to contract AIDS so it was considered unethical to continue to allow the uncircumcised men to be exposed to death. As reported in the New York Times this week, circumcision is as close to an AIDS "vaccine" as we are likely to get with this fast-mutating virus).

I knew why my cousin made his request: he hates being Jewish. He lives in an intensely anti-Semitic country and had confided in me that being circumcised had made him the target of anti-Jewish remarks in high school.

Circumcision is what is meant by the "Covenant of Israel". We are commanded to do it as a means of perfecting our sons and showing our submission to God's will. The fact that it incontrovertibly prevents disease is a modern discovery. Like much of Jewish law it amazes me that my people had the knowledge that this was healthful thousands of years ago.

If I could not trust the intended parents to safeguard their child with vaccinations and other protections against deadly disease, I was picking the wrong people. Making an embryo donation means finding someone whose judgement you trust to be a good parent, then wishing them well.

My cousin's inappropriate demand made us wary of making all but the most modest pre-donation requests of our recipients. How could I paint a picture of a good faith attempt to expose genetically Jewish children to their cultural heritage without sounding like my cousin? I looked to Sonia for her experience as a Christian raising Jews.

TELLING KIDS THE TRUTH

2007-01-28T07:25:00.000-05:00

If you're reading this blog you probably have some interest in assisted reproduction. I'll interrupt my previously scheduled hand-wringing over religion to bring you more information on the wonderful "X, Y and Me" books that came up in my discussions with Jenny and Erin. Here's a little more info about this invaluable resource.

This is what it says on the books' website, http://www.xyandme.com:

"The author of the X, Y, and Me Book Series has...seen infertility from the perspective of both patient and caregiver...We believe that it is a child’s right to know their genetic origins...Some psychological professionals believe that a child should be told of their origin from the very beginning...This prevents the emotional upset that could occur if a child accidentally discovers, or is told later in life that he was conceived in an alternative way. Although professionals tell the parents it is best to disclose, very few tools are available to help them...the desire to help IVF patients nurture their child are the motivations for...these books."

Amen, Sister! People who want so strongly to share their love with a child that they undergo assisted reproduction should be proud of that fact, not ashamed. Doctors today are offering genetic testing to determine if people have the genes to put them at risk for everything from heart disease to breast cancer. By the time our children are adults they are as likely to get a genetic work up at the doctor's office as we are to get a blood test. How can we think our children will never find out if they are created from donor gametes: "Mom, I found out that my early-onset breast cancer is caused by the BRCA-1 gene -- why am I the only one in our family who has it?" or "Dad, how is it that you and mom both have A-negative blood but my blood is O-positive? That's impossible."

Children who know as early as they can remember that they are adopted or conceived with donor gametes regard it as normal. But how can a parent share complicated medical information with a child in an age-appropriate, non-sexual way?

The "X, Y and Me" books were invented to address just these concerns. As the welcome page puts it:

"There is much controversy as to whether it is a child's right to know his or her genetic heritage. This delicate issue of disclosure needs to be decided by parents; especially as science and medicine continue to delve into the genetic inheritance of disease.

It can be very difficult for parents to know how and when to disclose this information...[perhaps] they don't know how to broach the subject, the time never seems right, or they may be afraid of their child's reaction. Some literature shows there may be a real advantage to giving information regarding conception to a child at a young age. This prevents the emotional upset that could occur if a child accidentally discovers or is told later in life that he or she was conceived in an alternative way. It is especially devastating to find out as an adult that one or both of your parents are not genetically related to you. Adults told later in life often feel hurt, angry, and betrayed.

The books available from X, Y, and Me...[let] this information...be given in a factual, non-emotional, matter-of-fact way. By reading these books to a child from infancy through early childhood, the child then develops a progressive understanding and grows up knowing "no differently". It is our hope that these books will be helpful to parents as they deal with this delicate, but very real, issue."

I wrote to the books' author, Janice Grimes, for a list of books and more information on her company. Here's what she said:

"Thank you for your email. I have been following your blog...My books mainly sell by word of mouth...It is my plan to someday have a version that fits every family situation, including [as in your family] female partners that use the egg from one partner while the other partner carries the pregnancy. I think that is a wonderful way for female couples to share in the creation of a family.....I wish you all the best with your embryo donation."

She's really helping parents, and she's nice too! Here are the books that Janice currently publishes. There's one to fit most assisted reproduction scenarios:

Two parent Books:

IVF
Frozen Embryo
IVF using Donor Sperm
Egg Donation
Embryo Donation
Donor Insemination (IUI with donor sperm)
Traditional Surrogate
Gestational Carrier
Female Partners (IUI with donor sperm)
Male Partners (Traditional surrogacy)

Single Parent Books

Single Mom - Donor Insemination
Single Mom - IVF using Donor Sperm
Single Mom - Donor egg / Donor sperm
Single Mom - Donor Embryo
Single Dad - Traditional Surrogacy (IUI)
Single Dad - Donor egg / gestational carrier

Wow, she really covered the spectrum of assisted reproduction. We read her book to our son all the time and he loves it. We had to print some labels to change some of the pronouns from "he" to "she" but that's because our family-building method was relatively rare.

Janice goes on to say:

"The title of the books for single parents is "Before You Were Born...My Wish For A Baby." If anyone goes to my website, they can read the full version of the Egg Donation book. Then they can view all the illustrations. The pictures are almost exactly the same in both the two parent books and the single parent books. We did remove a parent bear [characters in the book are drawn as bears] on several pages in the single parent versions."

If you have a child conceived the new-fangled way, or you know someone who does, X, Y and Me is an invaluable resource. Check it out!

CONSIDERING THE DONOR-RECIPIENT RELATIONSHIP

2007-01-27T08:26:00.000-05:00

Jenny and Erin had shared their vision for the ideal relationship between the donor and recipient families should a child result from our embryo donation to them. My wife had written to them about her own ideas on the matter. Finally I chimed in with my perspective. All three models were remarkably similar.

When they received my email describing the role of parents and the role of the donor, Jenny wrote back:

"I called Erin (we are both on lunch) to read her your last email and her reply was, "I couldn’t have asked for a better response". I have to say I agree.

Erin and I are both very open. We both feel that the important aspect and the number one people involved are the children. We will let them, when they are of age, make suggestions on how often they would like to see their [genetic sibling] “cousins”, but we definitely agree that visits (such as when you are in our area visiting your wife's family) would be beneficial. We had actually started a “baby book” on our sperm donor when we thought we would have children that way. If we were the recipients, I would hope that we could have pictures of your family so that we could do the same. You may already be familiar, but we found on the Internet a website that has storybooks that deal with IVF/IUI/egg/sperm/embryo donors. I believe it is "X,Y, and Me" [http://www.xyandme.com/].

Thank you again for the response, I believe we are all in agreement on what an ‘ideal’ relationship between donor/recipient would be. Please let us know if you have any more questions."

They were right: so far everything between our two families had been remarkably simpatico. There were so many similarities between us and these recipients. We had similar perspectives on child-rearing, embryo donation and on many aspects of life.

The last obstacle to this donation was an issue I had been struggling with as my certainty grew that these were the right recipients for our embryos. That issue was religion, or more precisely, cultural heritage.

The sperm donor, I, and thus the embryos, were genetically Jewish. The recipients were not. Could I "disappear" one or two more Jewish "children" into historical oblivion by consigning them to Christian parents? The sperm donor himself had lived this story: born to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, our donor had been raised Catholic. We only found out that he was genetically Jewish because the sperm bank re-examined his donor profile. This genetically Jewish man would turn his back on the Jewish people: raised Catholic he would go on to raise his own children in that religion.

The sperm donor's story had been repeated millions of times since the birth of Christ, most often involuntarily. Jewish parents gave their children to Christians for safe-keeping in time of threat to the Jewish community and did not survive to retrieve them. Many times Jewish children were stolen outright by Christians intent on "saving" them. Or assimilationist Jewish parents had tried to "protect" their children by lying to them about their cultural heritage. There are several politicians in the United States who famously discovered this about their families after winning election.

None of this had anything whatsoever to do with my potential gift of embryos to Jenny and Erin. They were fine, kind women. They wanted to start a family. I wanted to help them. They had not set out to "convert" anyone to Christianity. They simply wanted the blessing of motherhood. They had nothing to do with priests splashing Jewish children with holy water in the Middle Ages then claiming them for the church as "converts", or any other crime against the Hebrew people. It was just that, in the face of rampant assimilation, I wanted to strengthen the Jewish race any way I could, not diminish it.

More than anything I felt that Jenny and Erin were our recipients. I wanted to put my illogical qualms to rest, to ignore the past and move forward into the future. But how?

DONOR-RECIPIENT RELATIONSHIPS

2007-01-26T07:46:00.000-05:00

As Jenny and Erin thought more about using our embryos to start their family they wanted to know how I envisioned the ideal relationship between the donor and recipient families. This is what I told them:

"When I think about possible contact w/recipients & their kids I see it from several viewpoints.

First, I think of our experience with our sperm donor. We have great kids thanks to him but it's a huge drawback that he's anonymous.

He did provide a detailed family history and wonderful essay but I know our kids will want to know more about him. I wish we had an adult photo to show them.

He has 2 other reported pregnancies. If we could swap medical info, at the very least, with the families of our kids' genetic half-sibs it would be helpful.

Then I think about how meaningful it is to my wife Sonia that, though adopted anonymously, she now knows her birthmom. There's something very satisfying about it and getting the info on medical issues in the birth mother's family is extemely helpful.

I also feel strongly that the recipients are the only parents. It's inappropriate for a donor to try to dictate how the children are raised. Once the donation is made the donor has no say in anything else. If we wanted 3 or 4 kids we'd use the embryos ourselves!

Still, it seems nuts to me that your clinic insists on anonymity with embryo donation. I don't understand the upside to this. We each have our own families. Legally the donor has no rights or responsibilities. What is the problem with being in touch?

I think a lot of straight couples are ashamed of needing fertility help. Lesbians always have at least one partner who is not genetically related to their kids so we're often more open.

My goal is to find the right parents and get the embryos out of the deep freeze and away from my responsibility.

My hope is that my info about the donors' kids won't end with the donation. I'd love to see photos. It would be great to meet the parents and their kids. The kids from both families would probably love to meet each other. My crucial issue is to share medical and developmental info.

We see the twins [from Sonia's egg donation to our infertile friends] every few months. It doesn't feel like they're her kids but it's cool to see how they are developing. We would never dream of commenting on how to raise them!

What I think will happen is that the new parents of kids from these embryos will want to get an idea of what to expect with their own kids' milestones by checking in with us. Did our kids walk early? Teethe at 4 months or at 14 months? Did their eye color change?

I hope we'll ultimately be friends with our recipients but we would never tell our friends, or our recipients, how to raise their kids. The minimum I'd hope for is the occasional photo or email update.

Ideally we'd like to serve as a resource or reference point and be a sounding board. Our recipients could do the same for us. This would probably be all thru email or the occasional call. I'd be happy with even a yearly update or more frequent emails. I'd let the recipients set the pace.

If you have kids from these embryos, it would be nice to swing by on one of our yearly visits to see Sonia's family in your home area if that feels comfortable.

The kids may eventually want more contact with their "cousins" or feel weird and want less to do with each other. We have a storybook for our kids about the nice man who gave us the cell we needed to have a baby. We would explain our own donation the same way. Our kids will know about the donation starting in the 3rd trimester of the resulting pregnancy.

How did this sound to the potential recipients? We were very flexible, as long as the last information we had about the existence of the embryos occured after birth, not before.

IMAGINING THE DONOR-RECIPIENT RELATIONSHIP

2007-01-24T08:27:00.000-05:00

Jenny and Erin, to whom we hoped to donate our embryos, wanted to know about our preferred relationship between donor and recipient families and the role of religion in our family. My wife, Sonia, having been raised Episcopalian, shared her experience raising Jewish children. She also spoke from the perspective of someone who had donated eggs to another family whose children were thus genetically related to her. Jenny wrote back:

"Sonia, thank you for the wonderful perspectives. I think from what you have described, that we do have a similar vision of what "knowable" donors entail. We of course were giving our "ideal" relationship with the donors and any variant of that would be acceptable. I also think that it is great that you have experience with having “family” in all different types of association.

Katie and her family sound like exceptional people. We completely
understand the need to continue her family’s legacy. If we were to be chosen to receive these embryos and children were born, I can say with certainty that we would gladly expand our knowledge (because they would be our children and part of us at that point), educate the children on their heritage, and allow them to express and celebrate their bloodline. This is something that I feel very strongly about.

We were getting closer to common ground with our potential recipients. It was time for me to lay out what I saw as an ideal donor-recipient relationship.

CHRISTIANS RAISING JEWS

2007-01-24T07:03:00.000-05:00

I was asking my potential recipients to be conscious of ways they could pass on an understanding of Jewish identity to any children they might have from my genetically Jewish embryos. They wanted to know how this worked in my own family. Was my wife Jewish too, they wanted to know, or was she in their boat when we met and started a family. My wife, raised Episcopalian like one of the prospective parents, shared her experience with how a non-Jewish parent can instill a sense of Jewish identity in her children, and what that identity means:

"Katie's father is healthy, alert and in his 80's. Her siblings live close by as well and we see them at least once a week, usually more. They are a close, vibrant family and in many ways fully expressive of their Jewish heritage. Being Jewish is so much more than being a particular religion (in fact, Katie's parents were completely non-religious). It's kind of like being Italian, but with different food.

When we got together neither of us was religious but once we decided to have children we thought very hard about the legacy of spirituality. Religion permeates the South, as you well know, and it gave me a firm framework to push against, analyze, and reject when I was younger. In my thirties, it has been nice to have that framework to lean back on during times when only something larger than yourself will do.

Southern religion is also so very social. It's not IF you go to church, but where. Consequently, no one pays much attention to exactly what you believe as long as you show up once a week. It's easy, and it's comfortable. (Or at least that was my impression years and years ago, when I lived there). It's much harder to be religious in the North: city life here is so secular that being even mildly observant is a BIG DEAL. You are presumed to be very religious if you simply go to services.

I want to give our children the same framework that I had, because as I've grown older it has stood me in good stead. I don't, however, have much opinion about which framework they get, as long as I believe in the general tenets of the sect.

Katie's response to this was that she hadn't thought about religion at all, really, but if our kids were going to be religious, then they had to be Jewish for exactly the reason I mentioned a long time ago above: being Jewish is about MUCH MUCH more than the religious aspect. It's an ethnic identity that has managed to survive dispersal to hundreds of lands through millenia of assimilation and persecution.

In 1935 Katie's mother had 4 grandparents, a dozen aunts and uncles and hundreds of cousins in Europe. By 1945, just three uncles and a few cousins had managed to escape. Their children are all that are left of a great Rabbinic family. If our children were to "forget" that they are Jewish, then those hundreds of deaths may as well have been for naught.

So this means that we're both learning a lot about Judaism, and actually, it's a really nice religion. They don't care what you believe either, merely that you follow the law, which includes a nice calm day of rest marked by lovely Friday night candles, a nice meal with the family, a toast and a blessing of thanks. It's a good legacy regardless of the spiritual aspect, though we go to children's services at the synagogue once or twice a month. I also have quite the library of Jewish Holiday children's books that the kids enjoy reading with us.

As the children get older it will get easier, I think, as we both will have more practice. There is an excellent book called "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee" (you may have heard of it, it's quite popular) that speaks of child-rearing from a Jewish perspective but that is written for anyone. I've really liked it.

Whew, I hope this answers some of your questions, although any more are welcome."

I would not bind these recipients to raise their children in a religion or culture that was foreign to them. I just wanted them to know that considering consigning embryos in my bloodline to lose their cultural heritage was difficult for me. Any little thing they felt comfortable doing to diminish this loss would mean a great deal to me.

But if the recipients decided to take these embryos I had no moral right to dictate how they raised any resulting children. It was none of my business if they attended services for Christians or Muslims or Buddhists (actually, Buddhist would be cool).

Maybe the recipients didn't want to even both with this donation. I waited to hear what they thought of everything we had said.

MY WIFE'S PERSPECTIVE

2007-01-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

Jenny and Erin, my chosen embryo recipients, had some questions for us. They needed to know us well enough to make an informed choice to accept our embryos.

My wife had been avoiding writing to the recipients, preferring to wait to involve herself until they were pregnant. But she had the experience that Jenny and Erin needed to hear so she wrote to them on her own to share her thoughts on possibilities for the donor-recipient relationship. They had asked about my health and personality and that of my relatives. It is hard to describe yourself so I asked her to do it:

"This is Katherine's wife, Sonia joining in this incredibly interesting discussion. Katie is right that we are making this decision together, but I'm letting her make the initial contacts and see how she feels about people before I get involved. The embryos are legally both of ours, but I give Katie the lead in this process, as they are her "blueprints."

I am actually very happy that you prefer "knowable" (however we end up defining that) donors; years ago, before I met Katie, I donated eggs to 2 friends of mine (hetero): they had boy/girl twins and live in a neighboring state. My friend is completely open about the egg donation with friends, family and her own kids, and it has been incredibly fulfilling to see the children grow over the last 6 years and to know that they think of me as sort of an extra-special aunt.

I agree with you that children are driven to know their genetic origins. I myself am adopted and found my birth mother when I was 18. We have been quite good friends ever since, though it is sometimes years between visits. I mention all this to say that Katie and I are fairly proficient at negotiating the waters of being related to people but not in their family, or of having "family" include some pretty low-key, far-flung relationships.

Since I have family in near your home it might be convenient to meet up every now and then when we bring the kids to see my relatives (usually no more often that once every year or two), but of course that would be totally up to you. I think it would be great for our kids and the recipients' kids to be sort of like cousins and you know that relationship can be close or far, depending. The point is, we're flexible, but I think it would be great to keep in touch.

About our family: Katie is an avid cyclist, and has completed many 100 and 200 mile day-rides and long tours when she lived in the West. She tries to fit biking in whenever she can in our city, though it's not great biking territory. She's healthy, and comes from a healthy and long-lived family. I've become quite close to that family. Katie's mom was a great beauty and Katie inherited her fine bone structure, perfect eyebrows, and beautiful eyes.

Oh pshaw! Sonia had more to tell our recipients but this was enough for them, and you, to think over for now. More tomorrow...

DID THEY REALLY WANT THREE KIDS?

2007-01-22T07:50:00.000-05:00

I wanted to donate my embryos to Jenny and Erin but only if they knew all the reasons not to take them. One possible problem was their desire for three children, all genetic siblings, and our almost certain inability to provide that with only three embryos to donate.

It was also important that we were all on the same page about the ideal relationship between the donor and recipient families. We had also started to share more information about my wife's background and my own. Here was their response.

"That is insane that your wife grew up so close to Erin and is also Episcopalian...Anyhow, we are definitely interested in hearing your wife's perspectives.

Relationship with donor: Erin and I have talked about this quite a bit since finding out that there is actually the option of knowing our donor. This is exciting to us. Although we would raise the children as our own, as we have said, we would be honest with the children regarding where/how they were created.

We had actually talked about what interaction the children would have with the donor. We plan to be open with them from the beginning, explaining that the donor gave part of themselves so that they could be here with us. To be honest, like you said, this is all new to us, and we completely think that interactions should be a mutually agreed upon decision.

For us, an ideal relationship with our donor would be one that included updates on the children (both ours and theirs) and visits. For us, the advantage of having an open donor is that it will benefit the children by giving them the opportunity to have relationships with their biological family. What do you plan to tell your children about their biological siblings if there are any resulting from these embryos?

If one child was born from these embryos, we would consider other options to have a second child. If two or three children were born from these embryos, we would consider our family complete. Erin has always definitely wanted more than one child. She and I both feel that it is important that the child(ren) have a sibling (biologically related or not).

Hope you are having a great evening"

I had thought they might not want to go ahead unless they had a better chance of getting two or more children from the same embryo donor. They knew that they might get one, or no children from this donation and they were still interested in proceeding.

Their ideal embryo donor-recipient relationship was flexible and within the realm of our preferences. We were toppling obstacles to the donation. A major hurdle remained: would they respect my concerns about children from these embryos knowing their genetic heritage?

It was time for my wife to chime in. Like Jenny and Erin she was not Jewish. What was her perspective on raising children whose cultural heritage did not match her own? I was keeping her up to date but she preferred not to get involved with this couple unless a pregnancy resulted from our donation. On this topic my wife was willing to make an exception. She would join the dialogue.

EVERYTHING CHANGES

2007-01-21T07:29:00.000-05:00

Now that I had made up my mind that Jenny and Erin were the ideal parents for my embryos, my approach to them changed. But I did not yet tell this couple I had picked them because I needed to make sure the donation would meet their own needs and desires.

I was sure about their suitability and my wife concurred. Yet there was a lot of information I needed to share before they could make an informed decision about us. We would make sure they still wanted to go forward even after we had laid out all the pluses and minuses of using these embryos, as well as the conditions under which we would make the donation.

My first email after selecting Jenny and Erin was more positive and expansive than in the past. I was also willing to share more personal information:

"Thanks for the great info about your plans, perspective on your work and parenting philosophy. You two sound like you will be awesome parents.

To answer another of your important questions: no, my wife is not Jewish. Actually, she is an Episcopalian like Erin and the two of them grew up an hour's drive from each other! Accordingly, I am going to let my wife answer all the other questions you asked about religion when she has a moment. I think her perspective will be of interest to you. Obviously she and I have discussed these issues a lot.

Before I answer about my preferences regarding recipients and my relationship to their kids, I would like to ask you this: if everything works out the way you want it, what would be your ideal relationship with your embryo donor and/or your kids' genetic siblings.

BTW, my wife and I don't say I'm the "biological" mom of our kids [referring to the term Jenny and Erin had used about an embryo donor]. IVF and embryo donation are so new there are no standard terms, but my perspective is that I just provided the blueprints, my wife created the children from her own flesh and blood. So she is more the "bio" mom than I am. In our case, we say she is the birth mom and I am the genetic mom or gen-mom. I would not expect the recipients to call me any sort of "mom", but rather the donor. (Of course our children call us "mommy" and "mama" not "birth mom" or whatever).

The only other question I have for you at the moment is this: I think it is very likely that you would get at least one child if you used these embryos. Actually, if you used our clinic I think you have a good chance of getting two kids. The fact that your clinic said they would only implant two embryos at a time shows they think you have a great chance of getting pregnant because clinics usually make exceptions and implant more embryos with older women or women with problems indicating a low chance of pregnancy.

Statistically, I do think it's unlikely (thought it is possible) that you would get three kids from these three embryos. So how would you complete your family if you only got two kids from these embryos? What would you do if you used all three embryos and only got one child?"

Jenny and Erin had made it clear that they wanted three children. It was important to them that those children be biological siblings if possible. That is why they were not using anonymous donor embryos through their clinic: the guarantee was that they would not get genetic siblings that way.

We had only three embryos to give. If Jenny and Erin wanted to be certain their children would share the same genes, we were not the donors to pick. And if they would only be happy with three genetic sibling they really needed a donor who could provide six or more embryos. It was almost impossible that our three embryos could become three children.

I had to make sure Jenny and Erin were comfortable with these caveats. They were the perfect recipients for us but we might not be the right donors for them. They needed all the facts before they could be sure. I was about to provide them.

I MAKE MY DECISION

2007-01-20T06:13:00.000-05:00

I had nagging doubts about giving my Jewish embryos to a Christian couple. Doing so would contribute to the millions of people who did not realize they had Jewish roots and whose loss to assimilation diminished my culture.

After corresponding for a couple of weeks I had exhausted all my hard questions for Jenny and Erin. They had failed to give me a reason to reject them, other than their culture of origin. But while there was a lot I liked about them, they had not yet given me a compelling reason to accept them, either.

Both had fertility issues and they wanted my embryos to start their family. Their response below was the email that finally made up my mind as to whether or not to give the embryos to these women.

I had asked them under what circumstances they would abort. They were unaware of my preference that they terminate a pregnancy if their fetus was badly disabled. I do not want to cause suffering and I feel that carrying a baby to term just to see it die or live in pain would be awful for everyone involved.

Would they reduce if they were carrying multiples? We had not discussed this, but to ensure a healthy pregnancy I hoped their answer would be yes if it were triplets or more.

I also hoped one of them was planning to stay home with their children, though I had given them no indication of my wishes. My wife and I are doing this, at great financial sacrifice, because we feel it is best for our own children.

I wondered if they planned to move to another state. The Southern state in which they live is very conservative. It would be easier for for them to protect their children elsewhere.

Finally, I needed to make sure they were not planning to hit their children. My wife had grown up just a few miles from where they live. She attended elementary school in the 1970's when it was policy all over the South to strike children for breaking rules. She herself had been beaten in front of the class for some minor infraction. The South is not known as the most progressive social laboratory. Had it shaped the discipline methods of these potential parents?

The recipients did not know that these were the make-it-or-break-it questions. They did not know what I wanted to hear. Here is what they said:

"It's good to hear that you both arrived [home] safely [from your vacation]. The questions that you have asked are all things that Erin and I have discussed in detail and I will happily answer them."

As always, Jenny and Erin were both involved in this process. They were good partners. They were thinking things through in preparation for welcoming a child into their lives.

"Moving: We love our house and the historical features and charm that it has. It is plenty big (three bedrooms, two baths and a decent sized fenced in yard) but it is an older home, and with older homes come projects. We both agree that when we have a child, we would like to have more time with the child and less time with maintenance of a home.

Erin, being a designer would like to build a home. I, being from the country, would like to have land with plenty of room for our children to explore and play. So truthfully we would like to buy some land with plans to build.

That's our dream. The reality is that in our town, land (a significant amount of it) is difficult to come by but we have already been looking at new construction and would consider one or two of the construction companies here to build a home in one of the newly developed subdivisions.

We are pretty rooted in this area, with Erin's parents being from here and mine less than two hours away. It is not in our plan to move away, both of us are pretty established with our careers and family/friends here. Moving out of the country, I can say with a great amount of confidence is out of the question.

I had been afraid of this. It was a huge plus that the families of each of these women were so supportive and so close by. Gay and lesbian families suffer when their own families of origin are openly hostile to them. Family support makes a huge difference to new parents. Jenny and Erin's parents and sibling were behind them 100%.

Still, as lesbians they faced tremendous legal and social prejudice in their home state. They planned to do a second-parent adoption but they might not even be able to accomplish this if they stayed in the South. Nothing compares to having loving family and friends surrounding and supporting a new family. But knowing the bias they would experience if they stayed put troubled me.

I moved on to the question about discipline. I hoped they did not believe in spanking or hitting children. Adults who cannot think of any other way to help a child understand correct behavior are not terribly creative. Just as I don't understand how we teach people not to kill by killing killers, it doesn't seem logical that children will learn not to be aggressive or hit others by being hit themselves.

"Discipline: Erin and I have had conversations about this, we wanted to be sure that we were on the same page regarding discipline. To answer this broadly, we would not use any type of physical punishment. Working in a school system has really taught me a lot regarding discipline.

If expectations are clearly set and consequences are discussed then we believe that children have a much higher ability to succeed. We are both also strong believers in positive reinforcement (reward systems) especially for young children as an overall deterrent for negative behaviors.

If a child were to do something, such as "hitting" for instance, we would probably take the child aside (removing them from the situation) and talk to them openly about how they are feeling, why their response may have not been the appropriate one in that particular instance, talk about other alternatives (what could you have done differently), and discuss how they made others feel (including us) and ask them to apologize to those they have hurt.

Regarding specific incidences, we believe it would depend on the
age/severity of the problem that has arisen. We both believe that open communication is key for older children. I hope that answers your question, discipline is difficult because it spans from birth to ??? and changes throughout the process of the child's life. But, overall physical discipline is not something that we would use."

This answer would be published unedited if I were writing a behavior sciences textbook outlining the perfect way to help children learn correct behavior. As I read this phenomenal answer, I felt something shift in my heart. It was so well-reasoned, so compassionate, and so exactly parallel to all I had learned about the right way to help children learn. My wife and I were using the same methods every day with our own children. At age two, our son was already saying "please", "thank you", "excuse me" and "no thank you" consistently and without prompting. He knew what to touch and what not to touch in our home. When he wanted one of his sister's toys he brought her another one and traded. We had used positive reinforcement to teach all of this and it had worked beautifully.

I was just about ready to give these women the embryos based solely on this perfect, child-centered and thoughtful answer. But I was very concerned about not contributing to an unhealthy pregnancy. Would they agree to limit the number of embryos they implanted? Would they reduce if they were carrying triplets? And most important, would they abort if the fetus was severely disabled? Their response could not have been less in sync with my preferences:

"Chances of aborting, none. Chances of reducing, none. I work with special needs children with severe disabilities day in and day out. They are the reason I get out of bed in the morning and often wake up thinking about them at night.

I also work with adults with severe disabilities (Autism, Down's
Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy) and see the greatness in them. Erin's mom ran a mother's day out program and also worked at the local school district's "special needs" school for children with severe disabilities, so Erin has had experience with special needs children most of her life as well.

We would be DELIGHTED to have twins, triplets would be challenging but we would be grateful and happy!. We initially set out on this journey with the thought that we would like to have three children. We were told that they would only implant two embryos at once so, if we had twins the first time, wonderful! We would also want to try again with the third embryo.

Plans for childcare: Erin of course would take off the first three
months with the child. I am off during the Summer and other various breaks during the year and would keep the child(ren) home with me during those times. Erin's mother is ten minutes away and would probably keep the child(ren) some.

My school also has a day care program available to take children from six weeks of age. The day care is housed on school grounds and is for educator’s children only. It is of course educationally based and at age three they would be in a separate (preschool program for educator’s children).

I hope this answers all your questions. Please feel free to ask more if you have any!

Yes, it answered my questions, but in the opposite way I was hoping for. Their perspective on aborting or reducing were diametrically opposed to my own and that was a problem.

But their reasoning about taking on the care of a disabled child was so beautiful, and so moving. I loved the part about "seeing greatness" in her disabled clients.

My own belief system dictated that I would not continue a pregnancy if the fetus would be born into pain. But I was giving the women the embryos to create their child, not mine. If they were willing to open their hearts and dedicate their lives to a child even if it meant watching him or her die or live in suffering, then God bless 'em.

They still were not Jewish, but I had come to the realization that I needed to select the best parents for these embryos, not just the best Jewish parents. If they were open to it I had suggestions to help these women give their child(ren) some sort of sense of Jewish identity. They had already given me their assurance of good intentions to do just that.

I also had ideas about how address their naive enthusiasm for twins or triplets. And there was a difficult yet feasible way for them to circumvent the draconian anti-family laws of their home state.

Would they accept these suggestions? I hoped so. But these were just details. We would work this donation out one way or another. The recipients had finally sent the email that made up my mind. I felt happiness and great relief. The search had ended. I would give these wonderful women my embryos.

THE FINAL QUESTIONS

2007-01-19T04:12:00.000-05:00

Jenny and Erin were a nice couple I was considering as recipients for my embryos. After asking them lots of nosy things about themselves I had invited them to ask me some questions. The first thing they wanted to know was if we were negotiating with any other couples and what we were looking for in recipients.

I told them we had finished considering all other past inquiries before discussing a donation to them. Over the course of the two weeks we had been writing to each other, several other couples had contacted me. I told each one that I was in serious discussions about donating to Erin and Jenny and offered to retain the new couples' information in case things did not work out. Some accepted this offer, some declined.

In terms of what my wife and I were looking for, that was simple: good parents who were lesbians. One or both members of the couple would ideally be Jewish. Honesty within the family about the children's conception was crucial to me.

The rest of their questions were pretty intense. I would only answer them if I made up my mind that these were the recipients for my embryos. Before that could happen, there were a few final questions Jenny and Erin would need to "get right". I continued:

I will answer your other questions in detail. In the mean time, a few more from me:

When you say you want to move is that to a bigger home in your city, to another city in your state, to another state or to another country?

How would you discipline your child(ren)?

What are your plans for childcare after the birth of your child(ren)?

Under what circumstances would you abort or reduce? In other words, would you carry twins? Triplets? Quads (possible even w/3 embryos due to increased risk of identical twins from each IVF embryo). How disabled of a child would you be willing to raise or to abort (Down's syndrome; Deafness; congenital malformation etc). We have no medical issues with our kids or other kids in our family but you never know what could happen and I'm just wondering about your thoughts on this.

I had liked this couple's attitude and goals so far. These final questions were crucial to me. Was the move they were considering to a US state with better laws and social climate for gay families? They seemed pretty rooted in their conservative Southern home state.

For the abortion question, I wanted to make sure I did not contribute unnecessarily to a child's pain or disability. It was important to me that the recipients I chose would do everything they could to avoid carrying twins or triplets. Every couple trying to start a family through IVF think that twins would be ideal. If they end up with twins they soon change their minds.

Our clinic, like many others, suggests women transfer three embryos at a time. The reason is the clinic's "success" is judged by how many women get pregnant on the first embryo transfer attempt. The government's analysis of IVF clinic success rates shows that in 2004, half of women under 35 who became pregnant at our clinic had twins or triplets. In nature the rate is under 3%. Because the clinic transfers several embryos at once, they artificially raise the rate of twin and triplet pregnancies by more than a thousand-fold. That is unsafe, unhealthy and unnecessary.

I have worked with too many patients who were disabled solely because they were part of a multiple pregnancy. There is no reason to subject a child to permanent disability by implanting too many embryos per cycle. The success rate at our clinic is 15-20% per embryo transfered. That would hold true if those embryos were transfered one-by-one or simultaneously.

It is more expensive to do three 1-embryo transfer than one 3-embryo transfer but the rate of live births that result is ultimately the same. And when the huge incidence of birth trauma-induced disability among twins and trips is considered, saving two or three thousand dollars with a multi-embryo transfer doesn't seem like such a bargain.

The fertility clinic had a different agenda than the recipients and I. The clinic wanted to look good to future patients by putting in too many embryos at once and getting the recipients pregnant right away with multiples. The recipients and I wanted a healthy baby to result. Would these recipients agree to transfer the embryos one at a time? If they somehow ended up with triplets would Jenny and Erin reduce to save the other two kids?

My same concerns applied to a pregnancy where the embryo was so disabled s/he could die upon birth or live in pain for a short time. I would hate to subject a little baby to a miserable, brief life. Would these recipients spare their child this torture?

Speaking of torture, what were their thoughts on discipline? If they admitted to thinking that spanking, under any circumstances, was an appropriate method of correcting a child, they were out. I have two children who are one and two respectively. They can be quite a handful. I have never hit either of them and I never will. This was another important issue to me.

My last question was about childcare. My wife and I have taken on a huge financial burden by foregoing her income for several years while she stays home and has the primary childcare responsibility during the day. If these recipients were planning to stick their baby in day care as soon as possible or rely primarily on a nanny I would not feel comfortable giving them the embryos.

These were the final potential barriers to my donating embryos to Jenny and Erin. They seemed like great women. Would they pass these last tests?

THEIR QUESTIONS FOR ME

2007-01-18T04:04:00.000-05:00

Since I still was not sure whether or not to move forward with these great but non-Jewish embryo recipients, I had asked what questions they had of me. Here's what was on their minds.

"We first want to say that we completely understand the privacy issue. I suppose there are some questions that we would like to ask. Of course if we are chosen to receive the embryos, we would ask for more personal information so that we could share with the children.

About you: What do you like to do in your free time? Could you describe your personality? Do you have any chronic health issues? What is your family like?

About the process: Is this a decision that you and your partner are making together or primarily you? Are there other couples that you are considering at the current time?

What type of involvement would you like in the children's lives? About Judaism: Are you and your partner both Jewish? do you attend a services together? how do you incorporate your children's Jewish heritage into their lives?

Would you be willing to be a support for us to help our children understand their heritage?

In general: what are you looking for in selecting a couple for your embryos?

Wow, I feel like we have bombarded you with questions. I hope you don't mind. Also, if you have any more for us, feel free to ask.

Wow indeed. Lots of intense questions here, considerately phrased and all very appropriate. I could see they were taking seriously my concerns about their not being Jewish.

I had thought of several final questions which were really crucial to my decision-making process. If Jenny and Erin's answers to these last few questions were correct I'd be ready to see if we could work out the issues blocking a donation. I would wait to get those answers before tackling most of these personal questions.

GETTING CLOSER

2007-01-17T01:28:00.000-05:00

All of the answers of the couple who wanted my embryos had so far been reassuring. To avoid giving false hope, I was trying to keep my emails to them short and business-like but I enjoyed their more expansive, friendly messages.

As we corresponded, I read between the lines of their emails, and I liked what I saw. Jenny and Erin were unique in many ways, compared to other couples who had written to me. One big difference was that they were the only couple where both the potential birthmother AND the other intended parent both wrote to me, seperately and together. With all the other couples, only the person who hoped to carry the baby ever emailed me.

Jenny even apologized at one point because she thought she had mistakenly sent us a draft email she had not yet cleared with Erin. She had not done this -- my wife and I had used the exact same concepts in our email as in Erin's draft email. We all described our ideal donor-recipient relationship using the same phrases. As Erin put it "at least we're on the same page".

I also noted that Jenny and Erin had been brought up in very different family circumstances. One had been raised in what sounded like a very close-knit Norman Rockwell-like family. The other partner's family faced more difficult circumstances. It struck me as highly positive for a child's parents to have differing life experiences. Their children will interact with both sides of the family and see that not everyone lives the same way or does things the same way. Jenny and Erin will have somewhat different approaches to issues like allowance, chores and so on. It can benefit a child to have both perspectives.

While I liked what I saw from Jenny and Erin, I needed to make sure this was the right couple, and soon. It was not fair to string them along if I needed to end our correspondence with a negative decision.

To this end, I had asked the potential recipients the final questions which would help me determine whether or not to go forward with the next stage of negotiations.

They had just the right answer to my main concerns:

"Erin's blood type is O+....she is the picture of health, as is most of her family, with the exception of low ovarian reserve, which is why all this was so shocking! I on the other hand do have [a chronic, potentially serious, yet controllable condition] as does my mother and grandfather. This was another reason, even if I could get pregnant with PCOS carrying the child may prove difficult. We do not smoke. Erin has an occasional glass of red wine but I do not drink at all."

I appreciated their honesty. The drinking and smoking questions got an A+ (one glass of wine or beer per day has been proven healthier for most non-pregnant adults than not drinking at all). Blood type incompatibility would not be an issue threatening the health of their child from these embryos.

Because I feel it is morally wrong to lie to children about their conception, I asked Jenny and Erin directly what they would tell people who asked "whose are they" about their children.

I thought that people's rude curiosity would not be the same issue for them that it is for me and my wife. She and I picked a sperm donor who resembled her, since we used my eggs to conceive our children. The kids look mainly like me, but they have her coloring, thanks to the donor. That creates a visual link to both of us when people look at the children. Those who know me well see my features clearly reflected in the kids, but people like that know our story anyway. Strangers aren't so sure and they are actually rude enough to ask "whose are they?" I doubt they ask heterosexual couples how they created their own children, even though, according to the US Census, only a tiny minority of families consists of two parents never married to anyone else and children genetically related only to them.

Questions like these de-legitimize gay and lesbian families. The answer to "whose are they" is "both of ours". We even have a t-shirt for our son that reads "They're BOTH my 'real mom'". This is one reason we chose to use one partner's eggs and have the other partner carry the pregnancies. There is then no clear answer to that obnoxious question.

In the case of Jenny and Erin, I look a lot like Erin and nothing at all like Jenny. Everyone who sees their children will correctly assume that Erin gave birth to them and incorrectly think she is also their genetic mother. I wondered how they would handle the assumption that Erin, but not Jenny, was genetically related to their children from these embryos. Here's what they said:

"Erin is of course excited to know that you share similar features but is now dying to know what you look like! When you feel comfortable would you be wiling to share photos with us?"

I thought this was a very respectful way to ask for my photo. These women wanted to know more about us, but they were not prying like the recipient candidates I had rejected.

"As far as people being curious about our children, our close friends and family all know that we are doing embryo adoption so that's not really going to be an issue. If a stranger asked,
"whose is (s)he?" we would happily tell them that the child is ours and they can wonder all they want! We will have to go through second parent adoption so that I can be a legal parent. Currently there are no laws that forbid that in [our state]."

This was the perfect answer. They have been open with everyone important to them and everyone else can mind their manners. Their answer got bonus points for noting their concern and plan to protect their family through second-parent adoption. But there was a better, if inconvenient solution to this problem. I wondered if I should mention it and if they would be open to it. And I pondered everything I knew about these women as a tried to decide whether or not they were the right ones.

It seemed like the right time to try to find out where they were at with this process. I asked Jenny and Erin what questions they had for me.

BRASS TACKS

2007-01-16T08:06:00.000-05:00

Though unsure if I should give my embryos to a non-Jewish couple, I realized that it was time to put up or shut up. I needed to say "yes" or move on. I decided to ask the final questions that might rule this couple out as recipients. Here's what I asked:

"What blood type is Erin? What chronic health conditions does each of you have (diabetes, cancer, psoriassis, asthma etc). Do you smoke? Drink?"

Unlike most of my earlier questions, there was a definite possibility that the potential recipients could end the process here, depending on their answers.

If I wanted to make sure these embryos would never turn into children I had the option of getting the vials from the clinic, thawing them in my sink and bidding them adieu. Since I wanted to give another family the chance to have children, I had decided not to give the embryos to anyone who smoked or was clinically obese.

According to Medical News Today, women trying to get pregnant through IVF have a one-third lower chance if they are smokers or if they are obese. I already knew that Erin was slender based on the photos she and Jenny had sent. The smoking issue was much more important than the weight issue because second-hand smoke would continue to affect the baby during and after pregnancy. Obesity would make it less likely that the pregnancy would succeed but the mother's obesity would not in and of itself kill the child the way smoking could.

I had once been asked for the embryos by a woman who was very sick with cancer. She did not reveal the severity of her condition until I asked more directly. I would not give the embryos to someone likely to orphan their children.

I wanted to know Erin's blood type because the odds were three to 4 that children from these embryos would have A-positive blood. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a normal blood type. The problem was, if Erin had a negative blood type there was a chance the embryo could die before birth or the child could be very sick at birth due to blood type incompatibility. This is not something unique to IVF. Rh-negative women who conceive naturally with Rh-positive men have the same potential problem. It can be addressed with shots of Rhogam during pregnancy, but that is not a definite cure.

An Rh-negative blood type would not be a deal-breaker for Erin and Jenny, but it would factor into my calculations, and could tip the balance against them.

These were my remaining concerns, other than the religion issue. If Jenny and Erin cleared these hurdles, I would need to make a final decision about how to approach the difference between our cultural heritages. But it would take several "correct" answers for us to even get to that point. I waited to learn if we were going forward.

CULTURAL HERITAGE, GENETIC HERITAGE

2007-01-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

As I considered non-Jewish recipients for my genetically Jewish embryos, I pondered the difference between being culturally Jewish, genetically Jewish and religiously Jewish.

Someone who wants it badly enough to attend school several times a week for two years and learn to read and write in a new language can convert to Judaism. Part of the conversion process is an immersion in Jewish culture. By the time the convert finishes this lengthy process, s/he is considered fully Jewish. It is not allowed to ask if a Jewish person has converted. There is not supposed to be any distinction between people who are Jewish by blood or by conversion.

It is also possible to be culturally or genetically Jewish with little to no knowledge of the religion. As a child I never attended Hebrew school or went to religious services. Before my children were born the only time I entered a synagogue was for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and weddings. Having watched their European relatives killed for being Jewish and facing discrimination here in the US, my parents tried to ignore our ethnic and religious heritage.

It is only since having children that I have begun to practice my religion. I mean "practice" in the most literal way: repeating simple acts over and over because I have no idea what I'm doing or saying. This is why I'm trying to find Jewish recipients for these Jewish embryos: it diminishes a person to be ignorant about one's own heritage.

My wife is adopted. Her culture is that of her parents who, by raising her, transmitted their values and beliefs. But she also has a genetic heritage from her birthmother. A child can celebrate both cultures and still know that her real family is the people who raised her.

I know several white couples who adopted baby girls from China. All of them are helping their children understand their genetic/cultural heritage through attending Chinese cultural events, sending their daughters to after-school programs in the Chinese language and culture and/or allowing their children to attend summer camp with others who share their genetic background.

This would be my ideal for children from my embryos whose parents were not Jewish. However, I worry that the very thing that has helped Jews assimilate within European and American cultures will blind the parents of children from my embryos to the need for outside resources to help their children understand their Jewish heritage. The fact is that parents of Chinese-American kids are reminded of differences in their children's cultural heritage every time they look in their eyes. By contrast, my children with their blond/chestnut hair, pale skin and button noses just blend in. There is nothing about their appearance that underscores their need for information about their culture of origin.

I entered the embryo donation process hoping the parents of any children resulting from my embryo donation would understand the importance of a child's need to know both aspects of what shapes her: her family's culture, and the history behind her genes. I was surprising myself by considering non-Jewish recipients. How could I help create a climate where they would reward my gift by helping their children understand their Jewish heritage? As I struggled to resolve this issue for myself I wondered what the potential donors were thinking about all of this. I knew there was only one way to find out, and I resolved to do so.

LOSING MY RELIGION

2007-01-14T06:05:00.000-05:00

I was considered a nice couple who wanted my spare embryos. The issue on which I was stuck was religion. Being from the South, these women were Christian and church would be an important part of their family life.

As we got to know each other I had asked them a lot of difficult questions. In part I was doing this to try to weed them out since unlike me and the embryos they were not Jewish. None of the questions I was asking had a "right" answer. Everything they had told me sounded good, but there was a wide range of "good" which I would have accepted.

They owned their own house, but if they lived in an apartment or on a farm that would have been fine too. They worked in professions I admired, but a huge range of jobs would have sounded good to me. In fact, there were few employment situations I could think of that would make me reject a candidate: professional assassin wouldn't go over well. Recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan: not so good. Toxic waste dumper? Maybe not. Otherwise, I was flexible about this, and most other aspects of the embryo recipients' lives. I just wanted to make sure they were good people, and it sounded like these women were just that.

But the issue of religion was a sticking point for me. I strongly preferred a Jewish family because so many Jewish children have been lost to assimilation and worse. These women seemed pretty great, however. I was trying to decide if I could consider giving them Jewish embryos knowing the result could be Christian children.

Their religious denomination was the first question I had asked which definitely had a right and a wrong answer. I would not consider a lesbian couple whose judgement was impaired to the point of wanting to raise their children in a religious community whose official philosophy was to destroy gay families.

That includes many Christian denominations except for mainstream Protestants like Episcopalians. Islam, whose legal system still dictates collapsing a wall on gay consenting adults to kill them, was out of the question. Nor would I consider the more orthodox Jewish sects: I would not give the embryos to Hasidic Jews, for instance.

The only answer that would have delighted me was Universalist Unitarian. They are the one Christian denomination that fully respects the Jewish faith and acknowledges its roots in their own worship. My second choice was MCC (the "gay church"), closely followed by Episcopalian, since they seem to encourage the most thinking among their members.

Here is what Erin and Jenny told me about their religious background:

I [Jenny] was actually raised Baptist. Being from the South this is not a rarity! I went to church regularly until I was twelve and my parents gave me the option to explore other religions or stay at home on Sundays. I went to other churches with my friends and enjoyed the social aspect but never really found a church “home”. Religion is one thing that I have struggled with in adulthood. Being raised Baptist and being gay was a struggle. I had a problem with the fact that when I was ten a youth minister took me aside and asked me to “say a prayer” and “ask jesus into my heart” and I would be “saved”. All this being said, I suppose that I consider myself spiritual and I believe in God, I don’t necessarily have a denomination that I would identify with at this point.

Erin was raised Episcopalian. She stayed involved in church through summer camp until college. For a while, she didn’t really feel comfortable going to church as she struggled with her sexuality. Although the Episcopal Church is traditionally liberal, she still felt like she didn’t belong. Recently, she has been wanting to go back to church and raise a child within a church family that is welcoming and accepting. We have visited several churches and are considering joining a non-denominational church that seems very welcoming to us. We still attend church with Erin’s parents on
occasion but would rather find our own church home (she grew up with half the congregation!).

Although we are not Jewish, we would happily expose the children to their Jewish heritage. We plan to be very honest with our children at an early age about who they are and where they came from. We plan to share with them that their biological mother is Jewish and explain what that means. Although we know some things about Judaism, we would have to do research and would ask that you might also be a resource for us.

This was the best answer I could have hoped for but it still didn't feel quite right to me to deny children in my bloodline their full cultural heritage.

I struggled with my feelings: on the one hand I was liking these recipients more and more. They just sounded like wonderful women who would be great parents. On the other hand, the murder of over 95% of my family during World War II meant I had very few relatives. Giving the embryos to these women would mean cutting them off from a rich culture which sometimes seemed to be dying. I tried to picture a way past this sadness but I came up empty. So I continued to ask Jenny and Erin hard questions. Would their wonderful answers over-ride this seemingly insurmountable concern? Or might the increasingly intrusive questions scare them away? The embryos' fate hung in the balance as I waited to find out.

THE NITTY GRITTY

2007-01-13T03:10:00.000-05:00

I was warming to a couple who had contacted me about spare embryos I had on ice. My dream for these embryos was to help strengthen the Hebrew people, decimated during World War II, by finding Jewish parents to take these genetically Jewish embryos. That goal, however, took a back seat to the greater importance of helping a lesbian couple overcome the ridiculous legal barrier gay couples face in having a child.

The lesbian couple with whom I was corresponding sounded great. But they were certainly not Jewish. Right off the bat I was asking them challenging questions. If they said "no" to any of them I would have a concrete reason to reject them as candidates and could continue looking for a Jewish couple. But they were agreeable to everything I asked of them and their friendly, open attitude drew me in.

Now we were moving on to the most challenging issues. First I asked them how they felt about an issue which had, luckily, been a deal-breaker with a couple I promised embryos to before discovering how unpleasant those candidates were. That issue was doing the embryo transfer at the excellent and reasonably-priced fertility clinic where the embryos were stored.

After explaining the fact that our clinic has the best success rates in the nation and costs one-third of what their clinic charges I asked if this new couple would consider traveling one trip of several hours by airplane to do the embryo transfer at my clinic.

On our two-hour car ride to visit my parents yesterday, we had actually talked about the possibility of traveling to a clinic to have a procedure if it would make the odds better for us. I would hope that the clinic would accept our fertility clinic's records. I can’t really think of any reason why not but that would be our only question, otherwise; we would certainly travel to your clinic.

Well that was easy. These women were just not being considerate about giving me reasons to reject them, other than their culture differing from mine. So I decided to tackle the thorny issue which was causing all of my concern: the differences between our religions and cultures.

So many Jewish people have forgotten their roots due to assimilation. Having lost nearly my entire family to anti-Semitic murderers during World War II how could I contribute to the extinction of my own culture by giving Jewish embryos to Christian parents? These nice women were promising to raise children from my embryos to know their genetic roots and learn about that heritage. But as the Jewish comedian Jackie Mason puts it, "You can't be both a table and a chair".

There is no such thing as a Christian Jew. Jews who believe that Christ is the Messiah promised in our Bible are no longer Jews, they are, by definition, Christians. The whole point of Judaism is to better ourselves and our people so the messiah can arrive on earth.

"Messianic Jews" are simply deluded. They are, by definition, ignorant of Judaism and have absorbed the anti-Semitic attitudes of the society in which they live. They may like Christ, but they all, to some degree, become Christian because it is easier than being Jewish in an anti-Jewish world. Clearly they lack the courage of their conviction: instead of becoming Christians and calling themselves Christian they create an intrinsically oxymoronic status. A Christian Jew is an inherent contradiction, like a vegetarian who only eats beef.

If children from my embryos are raised in a church they will not be Jewish. No one who believes that Christ is the Messiah is a Jew. That belief is simply incompatible with Judaism.

How could I even expect Christians to raise a Jew? The closest analogy I could make for myself would be if I were trying to adopt a child whose genetic and cultural heritage were Native American. I understand that these cultures were cruelly suppressed and members of those tribes murdered simply because of their genetic heritage. I agree that it would be unfortunate for cultural assimilation to absorb more children from those backgrounds into a bland European-American melting pot. Yet I am ignorant of what sorts of things a Navajo, Hopi, Cherokee, Cree or other aboriginal parent would want to impart to their child. If I were adopting an Indian child, what could I tell the genetic parents to assuage their concerns within my limited abilities to do so?

This is how I phrased my concerns:

Since you mentioned God would you mind telling me what denomination your families are?

Do you currently belong to a church?

If you have children from these embryos how would you help them understand the Jewish part of their heritage?

I wondered what Jenny and Erin would say. I wondered what, if anything, they could say that would work for me. They were batting 1000 so far. Would this, the most important question yet, be a home run or a strike out?

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

2007-01-12T19:19:00.000-05:00

An interesting couple had contacted me about the embryos. Their positive attitude about open embryo donation intrigued me. I was really hoping for a Jewish family for these embryos, so I asked them lots of hard, personal questions right off the bat. It was only our third email exchange and already I was writing to them about their jobs and whether or not their doctor thought they could get pregnant. In a way, I was looking for an excuse to turn them down so I could keep looking for a family whose culture matched my own.

As requested, they sent me pictures of themselves. What I saw was a well-matched, happy young couple. The dark-haired woman looked like me around the eyes and in her general facial structure. She could easily be taken for one of my relatives. Her partner did not resemble me or my children at all.

From their body language they appeared to be very much in love. They looked right for each other and they seemed to be sweet, decent people.

Here is what they said:

The doctor explained that if we were a heterosexual couple it would be possible for Erin to get pregnant, it just might take years. Since we do not have the luxury of free sperm, it would be very time consuming and financially draining. She is a perfect candidate for embryo donation.

For myself: with PCOS, it could be possible for me to get pregnant but miscarriage is highly possible and this process could also take a lot of time and money.

Financially, it was going to be 24,000$ minimum for us to use my
eggs and with PCOS we were not even sure it was going to be possible. With embryo donation it will cost around 6-8000$ and we would like to have more than one child. We just decided that financially, time wise (we have both missed a lot of work for appointments etc ) and emotionally this was our best option. This child will not have a biological link to either of us, but we will raise it TOGETHER and it will be ours...When we were going through all our options, that’s exactly what I said, “I don’t have to have to have [our own] biological child, what is important to me is that we have a healthy baby and we raise it together”.

That’s when our decision was made. Our doctor told us here the embryo donation is anonymous and we would more than likely get singletons. We would implant two different embryos from two different donors. We would be put on a list and there was not a timetable given. Our preference would be to have biological siblings or have the ability for our children to make contact with biological family.

With regard to the sperm donor being an anonymous donor, we would love to have some information regarding medical and personal information that the sperm bank typically provides. The important aspect for us is that the child(ren) have the opportunity to contact other members of their biological family. We think it is important for them to understand where they came from, and although we are not Jewish, we are happy to discuss and share their heritage with them.

Drat! They didn't mind the anonymous sperm donor. He may never agree to meet children he helped create but he does have a lengthy family health history and a great essay to share with children conceived with his DNA. I was growing more interested in these women and they were not being very considerate about giving me a better reason to reject them than their lack of Jewish blood.

In fact, the email these women had sent really moved me. They were disappointed by the fact that their family would not be created the way they originally thought. Still, it was obviously more important to them to have a baby to love than to chase that dream of a bio-kid into financial and emotional bankruptcy. They sounded practical, loving and well-grounded.

I was concerned that their jobs might be too type-A to ensure they had enough time for their children, or too type-B to provide properly for the three kids they want. Previously, a potential recipient had opened an email asking for my embryos by lauding her "wonderful nanny" who was raising her first child while she persued a professional career. My first thought was "perhaps the nanny should be writing to me instead" since she was the one who would be raising a child from my embryos.

But these new candidates even had the perfect jobs. Jenny was a Physical Therapist in the schools. She worked in a helping profession because she cared about kids. It also meant she was pre-screened by the state licensing board as safe to be around children with no legal convictions against her, etc. Her job was, co-incidentally, very similar to mine. Erin was an interior designer, working professionally in a field my wife loves to dabble in for fun.

I was starting to think of these women as viable candidates for the embryos. But they still were not Jewish. They were willing to tell kids from these embryos about their genetic heritage, but how can someone raise a child to know a culture s/he is not familiar with?

How serious were these women about having a kid, and from these embryos in particular? The first time I was asked for the embryos I said yes because I didn't know how to properly screen candidates. That couple used an awful fertility clinic that hated lesbians and single heterosexuals so much their doctor was only allowed to use their labs as a guest. Yet they refused to use the clinic where my embryos are stored, even though it welcomes all women and has the best frozen embryo transfer rates in the US. My clinic is so good at what they do, and so inexpensive due to efficiencies of scale, that most of their patients are from out of town.

My ideal recipients would happily agree to use the clinic where the embryos are stored. Serious candidates would want to maximize their chances of having a baby by using the best possible clinic and avoiding shipping the delicate embryos.

In the case of the women I was now considering, their clinic would charge them $6000 to $8000 per embryo transfer. My clinic, with far better success rates, charges $2500. Jenny and Erin could transfer the embryos in three separate cycles at my clinic for the cost of one less successful attempt at their local clinic. Would they agree to do their transfers at my clinic? It meant flying one round trip and staying in a hotel at least two nights. Their answer would tell me how commited they were to a positive outcome.

SURPRISING ATTITUDES

2007-01-11T00:10:00.000-05:00

Something different had popped up in my embryo donation mail box. A committed lesbian couple, barely out of their 20's was already having trouble conceiving a child. They were Southern, not Jewish, and I was only considering Jewish recipients. But there was something special about their attitude and their email.

When I wrote back I let them know they did not meet my criteria but out of curiosity I also asked why they were looking into using donor embryos and if they lived near where I was vacationing at that moment. Here's what they told me (again, I have their permission to reprint this):

We were basically told that Erin's egg quality and
quantity were diminished at this point and the best option was either for me to get pregnant (which would also be difficult since I have polycystic ovaries) or to do IVF with egg/embryo donation.

After much thought and consideration, we both decided it would be best for our family to choose embryo donation. We are so excited at the possibility of having children and feel like this option is a fresh start. We actually left our clinic yesterday excited about the possibility but also with concern about finding donors (especially because we are lesbians).

Our other concern regarding this was the fact that our clinic only does anonymous donations and we both have a strong family connection and would want our child(ren) to have the chance to have that same opportunity with their biological family. We chose an open sperm donor for this reason.

We would love to have two or more children and having biological siblings would be fantastic! Please ask any questions you have, we are more than willing to answer honestly and sincerely~
Jenny & Erin

Well that was a funny co-incidence. Their home area, which I gleaned from the name of their clinic, was in the same county where my wife grew up and where all of her relatives still live.

These women were different in every way from the other folks who had written to us. Instead of listing the increasingly desperate ways they had tried to conceive before finally having to accept the last choice option of embryo donation, this couple was positive about that option and had embraced it quickly.

It must have initially been a deep disappointment to give up the dream of their own genetic child. What a rip-off for a woman in her late 20's to find out that her eggs would make it hard to conceive naturally. Who expects that at such a young age? I would have been angry and frustrated. Yet this couple's realism and positive attitude signalled to me that their concern was having a baby to love, not having a baby who looked like them regardless of the costs.

In considering embryo donation they took the child's viewpoint, accepting that all children want to know as much as possible about where they come from and would naturally want to know their genetic roots if possible.

Delightfully, they had addressed the fact that we were looking for Jewish donors without resorting to the formula we had heard from all other Christian recipients: "We're not Jewish but our neighbor's dentist's third grade teacher was and he promised to tell us all about it."

These women had a refreshingly healthy approach to embryo donation. The fact that they were not Jewish meant I really could not consider them for my embryos, but I found myself wanting to know more about them. They interested me but I felt even more strongly as I considered them that I only wanted Jewish recipients. If I asked them more questions perhaps I'd find they were strong believers in something I abhor like "spare the rod and spoil the child" or maybe there was a medical reason they could probably not carry a pregnancy to term.

If so, I could put my curiosity to rest having given them a fair shot. And since our sperm donor is not an ID release donor they might change their minds about considering us. I decided to put our negatives out on the table; maybe they would bow out. In case they didn't, I asked for a photo of the two of them. A lot of potential recipients had sent a photo of their families. I found that these shots revealed a lot. So, half hoping it would be a deal-breaker for them, I wrote them back:

Hi Jenny and Erin,

Thanks for the info. Hope your Thanksgiving was good.

I am sorry the IUI did not work. If I understand correctly, Erin has decreased ovarian reserve and Jenny has PCOS. What did the clinic say about pregnancy for each of you? I hope you don't mind these questions. They are, of necessity, extremely intrusive!

I was wondering what you do for a living and if I could see a recent photo of the two of you.

Also, our sperm donor is anonymous and not an identity release donor. Not sure if you are interested in having only the sperm donor profile/essay/medical history to share with any children you might have.

Best wishes,

This couple's candor and positive attitude was so refreshing. But they still were not Jewish. My email would be a deal-breaker if they didn't want an anonymous sperm donor, or perhaps their photo would reveal to me that they had antennae. Or maybe they each worked 147 hours per week as corporate lawyers and shouldn't be considering having kids.

I had previously found it a lot easier to turn down potential recipients who did not meet our criteria. But there was something compelling about these women. Perhaps I had given them a reason to say "no", or maybe they would give me one. I waited to see what they would say next.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

2007-01-10T12:23:00.000-05:00

We were hearing from more infertile Jewish lesbians than we could have dreamed existed. All were in their forties or 50's, in long-term relationships, and had one child who was inevitably begging them for a sibling. Many were nice but none of them was quite right as parents for those embryos we had on ice.

Soon after creating this blog to try to cast a wider net for recipients we received the following email. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the couple's privacy but I have permission to publish what they wrote to me:

Hello! We are relatively new to this whole process but came upon this website and found your profile. We are a lesbian couple, ages 31 & 30 who have had several failed attempts at IUI. We have recently found out that embryo donation is our best option. Living in the South, we were uncertain of our opportunities to adopt. It is very important for my partner to go through pregnancy and bond with our child.

We are interested in having two to three children and would love the opportunity for them to share a biological connection. The only downside of the embryo adoption for us was the fact that the child would not have the opportunity to know their biological parent(s). Anonymous donation is the only such type at our clinic.

We are not Jewish but are very spiritual and have very strong family values. Both sets of parents are very supportive in all our endevours and we would love the opportunity to raise a child in a happy, loving, supportive home. Please feel free to contact us with any questions/comments. We look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,
Jenny & Erin
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!

This couple was not Jewish so we couldn't really consider them as recipients, but something in their email really made me stop and think. They had the option of receiving donor embryos from their clinic but they prefered a known embryo donor.

As someone who conceived her own children using a sperm donor I could really relate to this. The only thing we regret about our donor is that, unlike many of them, he is not an "open identity donor". That means it is extremely unlikely that our kids will ever have the chance to meet him or even see an adult picture of him.

Considering the fact that sperm banks allow each donor to help conceive ten or more kids, I could understand from the sperm donor's perspective why he might not want to meet so many children who share his DNA. They might have unrealistic expectations of him and there would probably be a heck of a lot of them.

But if I were this lesbian couple I would prefer an open-identity embryo donor too! Their clinic was willing to give them embryos, but from all different donors. They had no choice in the matter and would only know the barest medical details about the donors. They wanted more than one child, and the clinics' system guaranteed that the children would not be biological siblings. If I were these women I would opt out of this bizarre system if I had any other choice.

The attitude expressed by these women was the opposite of all the other emails I had received from potential recipients. Everyone else seemed to regard the embryo donor as a necessary evil on their path to parenthood. The proof of most recipients' hostile attitudes towards embryo donation is the fact most who become parents this way actively choose to lie to their kids. They pretend to be their children's genetic parents.

These recipients who had just contacted me, by contrast, felt so secure about themselves that they refused to deny their children the knowledge of their genetic roots. They planned to tell their kids they were conceived from donor egg and sperm because they respected their children's right to know and thought it would be something special the kids would enjoy.

Even though they were not Jewish and thus not the recipients for us, I was intrigued by their healthy, secure mindset. And I was, as always, curious: where were they in the South? Perhaps we were right next door since I happened to be down South for Thanksgiving. And why was a couple that young having trouble conceiving?

Making it clear that I was looking for a Jewish family for my embryos I wrote back a brief note with my questions. Whether they answered or not, their child-centered approach to embryo donation was giving me a lot to think about.

INFERTILITY AND JEWISH LAW

2007-01-09T00:59:00.000-05:00

If you want to see an Orthodox Jewish perspective on infertility treatment you might want to check out the group ATIME at http://www.atime.org. I have no affiliation with this group. I have seen their magazine but I am unable to get much out of it because I was raised as a secular Jew.

Because of my lack of religious upbringing I am not able to analyze the politics or agenda of ATIME. I assume they are affiliated with the most fundamentalist of Jewish denominations, the Orthodox. But really, I have no idea.

There are some aspects of the Orthodox approach to fertility treatment that I think are flat-out wrong. Part of the reason is IVF did not exist when my people wrote the Bible, so trying to decipher God's will about it is a lot like speculating as to what type of car Moses would have driven.

But ATIME is giving it the ole college try. They publish a magazine, run an informative website and sponsor support groups. If you're reading this blog you already have some interest in infertility from a Jewish perspective. Click the comment link below to share any info you have on this or other Jewish infertility resources.

SHOULD EVERYONE DONATE EMBRYOS?

2007-01-08T00:36:00.000-05:00

Donating embryos is an act that has lifetime repercussions. The recipients' children may want to meet the donors or their kids. If a medical issue comes up which has a genetic link, the two (or more) families may need to work together to make sure all the children stay healthy. Even if nothing bad happens, donor and recipient families may have lifetime contact, and that could be wonderful or not.

Donors must choose wisely to make sure their are not burdening their genetic offspring with unhappiness. But recipients need to be careful too.

I found a pretty scary embryo donor ad publicly posted on an embryo donation website. It is not a secret. Anyone can see it, but they must register first. Accordingly I have faithfully paraphrased the information.

Title : Searching for a family to love our baby...

We have a beautiful female blastocyst (6-day old embryo). I want to hear from married couples who are hoping and praying for a child. I know a single embryo can be hard to place but I'm always praying for a nice family for her to be born into. I have a picture of our blastocyst's "big sister". Please contact me so I can send you the photo, and I am certain you will agree that we made a beautiful baby girl!!! I can only get pregnant through IVF and we wanted to have a boy, so we did PGD to make sure any embryo we implanted was a boy. Unfortunately, it did not work for us. Now we have our perfect female embryo and she needs a family.

The donor goes on to say that she is Caucasian and her husband is from the Indian subcontinent and of Indian (not Native American) descent.

Are you looking for donor embryos? Run away from this donor as fast as you can. Do you see what gives me the creeps about this listing? Reading between the lines it is obvious what is going on here. This couple had a daughter. The wife wanted another baby. The husband is from a culture where sons are prized. He agreed to have another child as long as they used PGD to ensure they only implanted male embryos. The woman was in her 40's and produced few healthy eggs. When the male embryos did not "take" this couple's chances for a son were over so they had a left-over female embryo.

The wife still dreams of having a daughter from this embryo. She has privately named her and elevated her to the status of an actual baby. That's why she describes her repeatedly as "ours" and as "beautiful". Remember, she's discussing a microscopic ball of eight cells, not a real baby or even an embryo. It's a pre-embryo.

The sense of ownership and intricate fantasy life this woman has built around her embryo mean she is not really interested in giving the embryo away. She is going to be destroyed emotionally when this pre-embryo fails to become a baby, and chances are that is just what will happen. Besides the fact that it was created from 40-something year old eggs, fertilized eggs frozen on day six are much less likely to thaw and grow than those frozen upon fertilization.

If the pre-embryo does become a baby, this woman is always going to see the baby as "hers". She will never see the baby's parents as legitimate. They are a convenience, raising "her" child because her husband does not value female children.

Are you considering donating your unused embryos to an infertile couple? You owe it to everyone involved to carefully examine your motives first. If your goal is to get another couple to give birth to "your" baby or worse, your "beautiful daughter", you have not yet reached a healthy mindframe for embryo donation.

There is simple too much baggage attached to the egg described above. It is a testament to the desperation of potential recipients that a match is already pending between this donor and someone willing to overlook all the red flags furiously waving in her post. I wish them nothing but luck and happiness. But I wouldn't want to be the child who might result from this donation. Not everyone is emotionally ready or capable of donating their embryos. This is the most egregious example of that fact I could have possibly found.

CASTING THE NET

2007-01-07T00:54:00.000-05:00

So many nice, interesting families had contacted us to ask for our spare embryos. None was quite right. Our preferences were so specific: the couple had to be lesbians and we really wanted to find women who were Jewish, like our family. Our hope was to ensure that children in my bloodline continued to see themselves as Jewish since so many of my family members were killed in World War II. Our culture is valuable and I wanted to help it continue into the next generation, not to hide or assimilate one more Jewish baby.

We had been surprised to hear from many more Jewish lesbian couples that we had expected to find. Women had written to us from, among other places, Washington state, Pennsylvania, Maine, California, Florida, Massachussets, Oregon and our own back yard.

We gave everyone a try. We asked a few vital questions to try to find out how healthy the couple was both physically and emotionally. It became apparent in each case that the couples who had contacted us so far were not the right families for our embryos.

It was not going to be easy to find the perfect infertile Jewish lesbians. There just aren't that many couples consisting of two women who both need fertility help. And they had to be Jewish, and wonderful. And find our embryo listing. And want our embryos, especially considering that we used an anonymous sperm donor.

Throwing the embryos at the very first couple to contact us had not worked out. They seemed unable to keep to terms they had originally accepted. Compromise was not their by-word.

Trying to give the embryos to someone who needed them as soon as possible was incompatible with doing everything we could to make sure any kids from these embryos had great parents.

We were going to have to case a wider net. Once we found more lesbian couples we would find the right couple. Even if it took a year, or two, it was worth the wait. Our first mistake had shown us that. As we wrote to more couples we were getting better at quickly discovering who had potential and kindly bidding farewell to couples who did not.

I decided to start writing about our search on the internet. My Blog, or journal, could help people who were thinking about donating their own embryos to consider some of the issues and avoid my mistakes. It would provide potential recipients with a donor's perspective so they could consider the feelings and needs of the people they were asking to help them. And if we were lucky, word of the blog might reach exactly the couple we needed to find: the parents-to-be who were just right for our embryos. I started typing the same day. I'll tell you later where it led.

MOVING ON

2007-01-06T00:30:00.000-05:00

Even a donor like me with very specific criteria for embryo recipients can consider a family which doesn't even come close to meeting those criteria. The key for us was honesty, recipients communicating a clear sense of their family's strengths, some other connection between their family and ours, and a polite acknowledgement of the disconnect between our ideal recipient and their reality.

The awesome recipient candidates who had achieved all of these goals sounded wonderful. But ultimately we only wanted to donate to a Jewish lesbian couple, preferably one without children. We regretfully declined their request by letting them know that more Jewish lesbian couples had contacted us. We received a kind and thoughtful acknowledgement in return:

Well, bummer. I was sorta hoping that the lesbian-Jewish-looking-for-donated-embryos demographic was a little smaller LOL. (kidding, kidding!) Well, best of luck and I hope it all works out and your genetic progeny bless and enrich the lives of the couple you have chosen. All the best!

Actually, I thought the demographic of Jewish lesbians looking for embryos was smaller too. But none of the couples that did meet our criteria seemed right. All were in their forties or older, many had medical issues, and all had one or more children and only wanted one more.

There were messy divorces; two bisexual women who had split up then both ended up with men (sorry, not facing discrimination in adoption any more); one woman whose professed method of disciplining her child involved spanking and "threats"; and other couples who didn't seem right. We gave everyone a chance, asked the same questions of all recipients, but after brief email exchanges none of them appealed to us for further consideration.

Then we got an email that was completely different than all the others. I'll tell you about it another day.

BEING OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES

2007-01-05T04:36:00.000-05:00

Did you read my earlier posts wondering why people contacted me who in no way fit my stated recipient criteria? The part that bugged me was when they either ignored the fact that we were looking for Jewish lesbians or pretended they were suffering from worse discrimination in adoption/fertility treatment than that faced by gay couples.

One nice family who I would not otherwise have considered took the opposite approach. Details have been changed for privacy:

Hi there.

Well, I'll just throw this out there, because, erm, nothing
ventured, nothing gained, right?.... We are a Catholic straight married couple, pretty much the opposite of what you requested. We are also not infertile. Our son has autism and is high-functioning and bright and wonderful, but as autism is an incredibly heritable disorder we are not able to have biological children. We also have other boys who are neurotypical (uh, the disability community's PC way of saying "normal").

We are a loud, joy-filled, happy family. Mom and Dad both have IQs over 130 as well(in fact, we met in the gifted program in school). Our children would welcome another sibling, we have long
felt that our family is not complete. I know it might seem selfish for us to long for four children, but there it is. We LOVE having a large family, we love the noise and the bounty and the bigness of it all. I had homebirths and breastfed and nourishing and nurturing my children has been a most precious stage in my life. We are interested in a semi-open arrangement, with letters, pictures, visits, etc according to the donor parents' comfort level.

If you are interested in talking further, please contact me by email. If our stats are pretty much a conversation killer, contact me to let me know! Thank you for your time and consideration.

This was the best embryo request I had received to date. It was perfect. The recipient started out by acknowledging that her family did not meet our preferences. Yet she creates common ground by discussing the gifted program she and her husband attended together (I had listed my IQ and my sperm donor's in the relevant section of the embryo listing form). Since I attended a gifted program as well I wondered which one they were in and what their take was on that kind of experience for children.

I loved it that she had such good things to say about her son with autism. Her family sounded great and I enjoyed her writing style. It communicated that she felt weird about asking for the embryos, and why not? It's a weird interaction. She bravely points out that her family's striking dis-similarity to our donor criteria might mean we had no interest in considering her embryo request.

Strangely, this well-written proposal did make me consider her, despite the fact that her "stats" on paper should have been "a conversation killer". Because of my experience working with people who have severe disabilities I deeply respected the decision of this woman and her husband to stop having their own biological children. They sounded like great parents in general.

This was going to be the trickiest request to date. My wife and I discussed how to handle it. I'll let you know what we decided later.

DISCRIMINATION?

2007-01-04T00:17:00.000-05:00

Earlier I wrote about my surprise when a huge number of heterosexual couples contacted me to ask for my spare embryos. I had specified that I would only donate to Jewish lesbians.

Why did so many Christian heterosexuals think they would be better recipients than those I preferred? Aside from my other suspicions (discussed in an earlier article below) there was one final reason people who did not meet our recipient criteria claimed they were contacting us:

A SENSE OF PERSECUTION

Since we specified we would only donate to a lesbian couple due to the bias we face in adoption, we received a lot of requests from straight Christians claiming that they had themselves been targets of discrimination.

We found their conception of "discrimination" to be questionable.

For example, one single woman said she was discriminated against because she "also lives an alternative lifestyle". Despite the ellipses, the quote below is unedited except for email address.

I'm a creative, single woman, who makes her living in that field & live what conventional people would describe as an
alternative lifestyle. Though, i'm a straight, divorced woman i'm
a natural-born adopter - when i was 3 a cat followed me home, after this i adopted a succession of other animals,
then friends, "outsiders", etc...until
i've created a lovely community of all races, genders, ethnicities, that i consider my "spiritual" family & support team. I have a Masters Degree & have travelled extensively & worked as Humanitarian post-war
w/traumatized children & teens...
I am highly spirited & independent, yet
loving & nurturing & am eager to have
a child at this point in my life. I feel
there's blatant discrimination against
single, independent women who lead positive yet "alternative" lifestyles
(ie. creative & open)...& would love to
talk w/u more in detail. If you're interested in starting a dialogue to get
to know me better, please feel free to contact me at this email:

Thanks, but we do not live "an alternative lifestyle". That alientated my as quickly as the woman who wrote saying "I am not a gay". Our "lifestyle" is that we are parents of toddlers. We go to sleep by 11pm and wake up when our baby does, at 6am. We rarely go out to eat or see a show: my wife stays home to raise our children so our budget is pretty tight. Out-of-town travel is limited by the prodigious amounts of baby gear needed on such outings. We attend religious services with the children each week. When we entertain it's usually by way of a dinner party.

And the whole cat-following-her-home thing didn't speak much to me about her suitability as a parent. In fact, her whole email just made her come across as, well, nuts.

But, OK, at least my interest was piqued. What did this woman -- who was in every way the opposite of what I said I wanted in a recipient -- mean when she said she lived "an alternative lifestyle" as she supposed I did.

I wrote to her to find out. Perhaps she was a Pagan or a internationally famous touring musician. Maybe she lived in a tree house. Or she could be a survivalist who are only what she herself grew or shot. I was really eager to hear about her professed alternative lifestyle.

Disappointingly, it turned out that what she meant was:

i practice meditation
& other forms of spirituality & believe in the tolerant
belief system that buddhism offers. I also have a circle
of my chosen "family" that consists of gay couples,
singles & lesbian friends (& some who are not quite
yet sure what their sexual preference is yet) who are sensitive,
socially responsible, highly supportive & nurturing & mainly work
in the creative or new media arts, as do i. My friends are of
all ages, ethnicities & we share in common a sense of humour,
integrity, tolerance & respect for everyone's lifestyle choices.

This seemed to me to fall into the category of trying too hard. This woman claimed she suffered "blatant discrimination" for her "lifestyle" which apparently consists of having only gay friends, some who are not sure of their "sexual preference" (yet they're gay?). Even we have straight couples as friends, unlike this woman. If they're still unsure about their sexuality in their 30's and 40's I hope they figure things out before they hit retirement age.

Look, I want to give the embryos to Jewish dykes. Weird single women or Christian straight couples didn't win any points with me by pretending to be oppressed. Quite the opposite.

If you decide to contact someone whose recipient criteria rule you out from the get-go, reconsider. It's intrusive. If you just can't stop yourself, don't patronize that person by making up some new form of discrimination that doesn't exist. In fact, the woman with five kids who wanted a sixth appealed to me the most of anyone who had contacted me so far. Even though she already had five kids I actually considered her, if very briefly. In another column I'll tell you why.

WE REFINE OUR RECIPIENT CRITERIA

2007-01-03T00:24:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in an earlier article, we had received a flood of requests for our embryos within just a few weeks of listing them with MiraclesWaiting.org. We had specified we would donate only to a lesbian couple since lesbians face discrimination from adoption agencies, fertility clinics and genetic parents.

There was one thing that all of the lesbians contacting us had in common. They all had one child. Their inability to have another child reflected secondary infertility, or infertility of the partner who was parenting but had not yet given birth herself. At least one of the partners in each couple had already carried a child to term. But with only one child, these women felt their families were not yet complete.

Each couple wanted exactly one more child. We have three frozen embryos. Our clinic has the best success rate in the country with frozen embryo transfer. Fully 65% of frozen embryo transfers at our clinic end in pregnancy. Their successful thaw rate per embryos is an impressive 95%.

Chances are excellent that one of our three embryos will develop into a child. It's statistically probable that two of them could become children. And you never know, lightning could strike three times.

But all the women contacting us only want one baby. So if they have a child using one or two of our embryos they will have no use for the remaining embryo(s). Since any unused embryos usually revert back to the donor, we would have to go through the entire donation process all over again with a new family. And potentially have on-going contact with two families instead of one. This did not appeal to us. The fact that these women all wanted only one additional child was not a plus.

One heterosexual couple had written to us saying that she and her husband had five children. They wanted a sixth but their youngest son had autism. Since that condition has now been found to have a strong genetic component, this couple had made the admirable decision not to give birth to another child who might also have this problem. I respected that their family did not seem complete to them, but the fact that they already had five children when couples with none were writing to us affected the direction we took next.

Donating our embryos is the greatest gift we will ever give someone, unless we donate an organ to a person who faces death without it. That gift will be far more meaningful if we help a childless couple start a family versus allowing existing parents to complete their family.

Most women with no children would welcome either one or two children. That means if we found a couple with no children we could make our donation just once. If a childless couple had two children from our embryos they would be happy about it. If these three embryos beat the odds and turned into three babies it might be too many for a couple who already had a child but for a childless couple it could be just the right number.

We resolved to wait for a couple whose diagnosis was primary infertility, not secondary infertility. In other words, we decided to try to donate to a couple who did not already have a child. As additional requests came in from lesbian couples we offered to retain their contact info while explaining our preference to them for a childless couple. And we waited to see if our perfect recipients would come along.

WHY I'M AGAINST EMBRYO DONATION

2007-01-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

Some day soon we will transfer ownership of our three spare embryos to a lesbian couple. Based on our clinic's published rates of success with frozen embryo transfer, the chances are excellent that a baby, or possibly two, will result from our donation. Two loving parents will hopefully become a family, and their joy will be ours as well because we were able to give them this precious gift.

The funny thing is, I don't believe in embryo donation.

It is wrong to prioritize the "adoption" of fertilized eggs when millions of living, breathing, loving children languish in orphanages and foster care systems worldwide. Their needs are greater than a fertilized egg sitting in a freezer.

As a donor, I have had to weigh my belief that fertilized eggs have no right to life with a desire to help ameliorate discrimination. Gay and lesbian families are barred from adopting unless they lie.

If adoption agencies, genetic parents, family courts and law-makers in the US looked at a couple's suitability to raise a child without regard to whether the partners were gay or straight you would not be reading this blog. That's because I would not donate these embryos if lesbians had equal access to adoption, embryo donation or even basic fertility treatments like IUI when starting their families. My wife and I would simply donate the embryos to science.

If the "sacrifice" of our embryos led to a cure for multiple sclerosis my co-worker would no longer be confined to a wheelchair. My friend's diabetes might be cured. Would I deny a fertilized egg bearing my DNA the possibility of becoming a child? If it meant bringing science even one step closer to curing some dread disease I would do it in a heartbeat -- the heartbeat that fertilized egg is two months of gestation and lots of luck away from ever experiencing.

As it is, a lesbian couple somewhere, just this once, is going to benefit from reverse discrimination. My donation will prioritize gay parents over straight ones. This embryo donation to a lesbian couple will be my small contribution to leveling the playing field.

If you are a member of a heterosexual couple that wants donor embryos, I am sorry you have to experience discrimination based on the gender of your partner. If it feels like a rip-off I hope you will remember this feeling the next time an anti-gay ballot measure or politician comes up for a vote in your home town. It's a crummy thing for anyone to face discrimination based on the person they love. My donation will help one family compensate for a cruel, biased system. You have the power to help change that system.

My children need legal protection despite the fact that their parents are both women. Votes against gay people hurt our children. If you love children, help pass civil union or pro-marriage laws that allow gay couples to formalize their relationships. On behalf of my son and daughter, and the children of millions of other gay couples, thank you.

THE SEARCH GOES ON

2007-01-01T00:38:00.000-05:00

After we finished exploring an embryo donation to the first Jewish lesbian couple to contact us we were surprised to receive many more requests from other such couples.

When we listed our embryos for donation we expected it to take months to find even one Jewish lesbian. Within weeks we had heard from eight potential recipients.

We wrote back to one lesbian couple. They had written to say they were Jewish, experiencing infertility and not interested in receiving the embryos for a year or so. We asked them some basic questions: why did they want to wait a year to receive the embryos? What region of the US did they call home? They never wrote back.

Contacting someone asking for their embryos should not be a casual act. All they needed to do was write a one-line email saying they were not ready to receive embryos after all. As it was, their flaking out meant we would never consider them again.

Another couple wrote who were in their late forties/early fifties. Both were also ill. My own parents were in their mid-40's when I was born. As a child I did the math and realized my parents were old enough to be my grandparents. After that I always worried they would die while I was still young. This couple (and several others who contacted us) was even older than my parents had been, and sick. I did not want to give the embryos to a couple which might leave their children orphans before long.

We wrote back to another couple who were in their mid-forties. We learned that they had a lot of "dyke drama" going on over custody of a child one partner had with her ex. It sounded messy.

We also heard from Jewish lesbians who were not currently in a relationship. Being a single parent is extremely hard. We wanted to give our gift to two women, partners who could help each other, not just one.

A single lesbian wrote to us asking for the embryos and addressing just this concern. She said she was "looking for a co-parenting arrangement" with the donors. An open embryo donation can take any shape the parties prefer. But if we wanted to parent our remaining embryos we would give birth to them ourselves! Our family is complete. The whole point of giving away the embryos is to give someone else the chance to parent.

Several other lesbian couples wrote who were not Jewish. One or two of them seemed like good candidates, if only they had been Jewish. We explained to them that we were prioritizing a donation to a Jewish couple but we could keep their information in case we did not find what we were looking for.

One of these non-Jewish lesbians wrote back thanking me but saying she did not want to be picked unless she was the "perfect recipient". Since I did not want to pick a non-Jewish recipient unless I could not find a Jewish family, this woman felt she could not measure up and removed herself from consideration.

I wondered about her idea that there is a "perfect recipient". Most of the lesbian couples who had contacted me had some positive aspect to their families. We considered each request carefully, even if we ultimately rejected those we had received to date. Was there a "perfect recipient" out there? We kept our minds open to all possibilities while we waited to find out.

MEA CULPA

2006-12-31T00:57:00.000-05:00

Most embryo donation agencies are run by religious groups which are trying to outlaw abortion. I disagree with their agenda. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that at least one of them encourages open embryo donation (though they call it adoption).

On the whole I think these organizations are bigoted, misguided and ultimately destructive. Part of their political agenda is to harm and oppress gay families like mine. If they could put a stop to all IVF they would do so. It utterly disgusts me that my tax dollars are used to fund religious fanatics like these (the Bush administration just gave them an additional million dollars to promote their cause). However, it is fair to give praise where it is due. Any group that tells families that honesty is the best policy is right to do so.

Another positive aspect of their (many, incredibly restrictive) rules is that they insist that no more than three embryos be transfered at once. This is because, being anti-abortion, they make recipients agree not to use selective reduction to ensure a safe pregnancy. They also warn families that multiples are dangerous for mother and baby. Frankly, having recipients limit embryos tansfered to two per cycle isn't a bad idea, as long as you're limiting things.

Still, it is difficult to read the literature put out by these groups. They refer to a two-celled pre-embryo as a "child" to be "adopted" even as they admit that only one in three thawed embryos typically becomes a child.

No one is completely good or completely bad. I thank them for promoting honesty and healthy pregnancies, though I abhor them for all the cruelty they show to gay families.

THE NEW JEW REVIEW

2006-12-30T00:05:00.000-05:00

Having bid a less-than-fond farewell to our first potential embryo recipients we began to review the dozens of new requests we had received from parents-to-be.

We had specified that we would only donate to a Jewish and/or lesbian couple. Yet the vast majority of the requests we received were from Christian heterosexuals. The second most common group requesting the embryos was single heterosexual women.

Why did so many people write to us who were the exact opposite of the demographic groups we were requesting? I chalk it up to several factors:

1) DEMOGRAPHICS

Obviously there is a far greater number of straight Christian couples than Jewish lesbian couples. There is also a much larger group of five-foot-tall women than of seven-foot-tall men, yet short women rarely waste their time or that of others by trying out for professional basketball teams.

2) FAILURE TO READ OUR LISTING

We got several requests from people who had clearly not read our listing. I assume they simply spammed every donor on the MiraclesWaiting site. One couple described themselves as conservative, in their 30's, high-caste and from India. There was no other message or description in their email! This was the only couple to get no response from me. Despite their high caste.

3) SUPPLY AND DEMAND

For every family with embryos to offer there are thousands of hopeful recipients on waiting lists who wish to receive embryos. Among those thousands are a minority who prioritize their own desires over those of the donors. They probably write to everyone with embryos to offer hoping that even one will respond favorably.

What these people don't keep in mind is that embryo donation is an emotional issue for donor as well as recipient. Each time I received a request I thought "are these the parents for our embryos?" Then we would read their emails, hear their pain, desperation and hope, and have to write back crushing those dreams once more.

We rejected all such applicants out of hand because they had considered only their own feelings and needs. We also felt uncomfortable with heterosexual recipients because they have so many other options for starting a family, primarily adoption of existing children. That is an option that is extremely difficult for gay parents to access.

While many want the experience of pregnancy and breast feeding, we wondered if some of the straight couples who preferred embryo donation over adopting a child were not organized enough to go through the adoption process, or perhaps knew that they could not pass it.

4) A FEELING OF PRIVILEDGE

The straight Christian couples who contacted us (despite our stated preference for gay Jewish recipients) may have believed themselves to be better parents than the gay couples we sought. Straight people seem to assume they will be good parents, whereas societal prejudice makes gay couples question their own suitability to have a child. The straight Christian couples who contacted us clearly thought they were so superior to the average lesbian Jewish couple that we might pick them over such a couple. Since we are, ourselves, a lesbian Jewish couple, we did not find this flattering.

There was a final reason inappropriate candidates gave for contacting us despite our stated criteria. I will go into this in more detail in a future post.