As we report in this week's BioNews, a story has emerged about a pair of twins who were born in the UK following the use of IVF with both donated embryos and surrogacy. The media story is made all the more complicated by the fact that the woman who acted as surrogate is also the maternal grandmother of the twins.
What this has meant to journalists of some UK newspapers is that these twins have been born with 'five parents'. And, indeed, it has apparently taken three years for the UK's High Court to come to a decision on the status of the children and allow them to be formally adopted by the couple who were, and are, raising them as their own. Why should this be the case? Or, more to the point, why wasn't it simply the case that these children had two parents, the couple who intended for them to be born? After all, the embryos had been donated, so the genetic parents had no wish to be the 'real' parents of these children. Nor, presumably, did the grandmother, who acted altruistically to carry the children for her daughter.
The couple had repeated attempts at IVF using donor eggs because the woman was made infertile by cancer treatments some years ago. When IVF didn't work, it was realised that she was also unable to actually sustain a pregnancy. So her mother, wishing to help, offered to carry to term an embryo created using her son-in-law's sperm and a donated egg. While donor eggs had been found in the past for the couple's IVF attempts, the supply had dried up. But there were donor embryos available, and these were used instead, resulting in the birth of the twins in 2001.
The clinic at which this all took place says that many 'ethical hoops' were jumped through in order for the arrangement to go ahead. And it's likely that many emotional hoops were jumped through too. It can't be easy to have reconciled yourself with not being able to produce your own eggs, let alone later (after the expense, inconvenience and invasiveness of four attempted IVF cycles) finding out that you can't carry a baby. When no eggs were available, the couple had to reconcile the fact that neither of them would be the genetic parents of their children, but were obviously still happy to go ahead. They also had to be happy with the fact that the woman's mother would give birth to the children. Probably not many people would go through all of this, but the fact that this couple (and the grandmother) did deserves respect. They are the true parents of these children, as they intended to be from day one.
Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a pro-life pressure group, said that this arrangement shows that 'we are looking at the total disintegration of social and family values'. Why this should be is not clear. Two healthy children were born into a family who worked hard together to achieve this. It seems to me that, in this case, 'family values' are exactly what were shown. What is sad is that this couple had to adopt these children in order to be legally recognised as their parents. The original birth record would have shown the birth mother (grandmother) as the legal mother and her husband (if she has one) as the father. That formulation, and the ensuing lengthy legal hearing, seems more destructive of social and family values.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.