Society and artificial reproduction

by Margaret Somerville

Should the state assist with conception where it would not approve an adoption?
Two cases -- one in California, the other in Calgary -- involving the use of new reproductive technologies have been the focus of intense media attention recently.

Nadya Suleman, a 33-year-old Californian single mother, just gave birth to octuplets. . .
Ranjit Hayer, a 60-year-old Calgary married woman, just gave birth to twin boys conceived from donated ova and her husband's sperm. She had been trying for decades, including using reproductive technologies, to have a child, but until now had been unsuccessful. Canadian physicians refused her access to IVF because of her age, so she underwent this procedure in India and returned to Canada for care during her pregnancy and giving birth to premature twin boys. Both required special care -- one, neonatal intensive care -- and serious medical complications ensued for Ms Hayer.

What ethical questions do these situations raise? And what insights or lessons might they provide?

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The up side of Down

by Monica Regnal

A mother who has raised two children with an intellectual disability cannot comprehend the view that such lives are “not worth living”.

I am always bemused, as the adoptive mother of two girls with Down syndrome, when people assume that my husband and I did something particularly praiseworthy and saintly. No one seems to regard birth parents who keep children with disabilities, as Governor Sarah Palin did, so highly. Birth parents who choose to give up a child with Down syndrome can be subjected to criticism. However, if the baby is diagnosed with a disability before birth, the most desirable action for the benefit of all (including the child) appears to be abortion. Indeed, the quickest way to find “Down syndrome” in most pregnancy books is to look up “abortion”; what message does that send to pregnant women?

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Pro-family advocates fight to keep adoption amendment

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 1/28/2009

A Christian law society wants to help Arkansas residents keep a recently passed constitutional amendment. Alliance Defense Fund senior counsel Byron Babione explains the amendment. "The ballot initiative appears [as] Act 1, which is a law passed by the people that says that in order to adopt foster children in Arkansas, you need to be married and that you can't be a cohabiting couple," he explains.

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Catholic Charities would like adoption services

By William T. Clew

The diocesan executive director of Catholic Charities in Worcester has urged Catholics to “speak up” about the state’s revocation of its contract with Catholic Charities “to find faith-filled adoptive families for the state’s most vulnerable children.”

Catherine Loeffler asked that people begin a conversation with the state to grant a religious exemption for Catholic Charities to again help place the most abused and neglected children in homes with faith-filled families.

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ACLU challenges Arkansas adoption law

Charlie Butts and Jody Brown - OneNewsNow - 1/7/2009

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit to challenge a new Arkansas law that prevents unmarried couples who live together from being adoptive or foster parents.

Act 1 -- approved by Arkansas voters in November -- limits adoptions to married couples, effectively barring singles, unmarried heterosexual partners, and homosexuals from adopting children. Jerry Cox of the Family Council Action Committee of Arkansas expected the lawsuit but believes the amendment is in the best interest of the children.

"Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist or social scientist to know that the best place for a child to grow up is in a home with a married mother and father -- a stable home like that," he points out. "Anything that departs from that moves in the wrong direction. We all know that."

According to The Associated Press, nearly 30 adults are plaintiffs in the ACLU suit, including a grandmother who has cohabitated with her same-sex partner for nearly a decade and is the only relative willing and able to adopt her grandchild. The state of Arkansas now has control of the child's future. In another case, a woman who wants to be a foster or adoptive parent cannot because she is not married to the man with whom she has lived for five years. The ACLU argues that in such situations the new law denies many Arkansas children a "chance at the largest possible pool of potential foster and adoptive homes."

But Cox believes the lawsuit promotes the homosexual agenda at the expense of the children. "This measure is not about the rights of adults," he contends. "It's about the welfare of children and the rights of children to be brought up in a good, stable home."

The ACLU argues that the law discriminates against homosexuals who cannot legally marry in Arkansas. However, Cox says it affects heterosexuals and homosexuals equally. He adds that he is confident the lawsuit will fail and Act 1 will "remain on the books." The new law went into effect on January 1.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=374230

Marriage, Adoption and What's Best for Children

by Marcia Segelstein

A recent piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlights the ever-growing research that children are substantially better off when raised by their married parents.

Writer Jim Wooten cites the work of Robin Fretwell Wilson, a professor of Family Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. Wilson spoke recently at a summit on Children, Marriage and Family Law. She analyzed research studies about what is best for children, and the results were crystal clear. “In virtually every study, weighing every variable – family structure, age, income, race, education – the evidence is overwhelming that children do better in families where married adults are rearing their biological children.”

But what about adopted children? Perhaps because Wilson herself was adopted as a child, she has paid special attention to this issue. In preliminary results, she found that adoptive parents “invest more [of themselves] in adoptive chidlren, on average, than biological parents do in their children.” She believes that adoption “shows that adults can be bound to children and protective of them…But what distinguishes adoptees from kids in boyfriend households that are fraught with peril for some kids is that both adults are committing to the child, permanently, for good, and with identical connections to the child. And they mean to be conneccted to the child, not just to one another.”

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Blog/Default.aspx?id=354276