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diggLesbian fertility rights
Two California doctors endure an eight-year legal vendetta for declining to help bring a fatherless child into the world.
In the case of the lesbians versus their doctors, the California State Supreme Court continued its war against religion by declaring that equality trumps liberty of conscience. But, contrary to the impression created in the media, the case of Guadalupe Benitez v. North Coast Woman’s Care is not over. The case still has to be tried. The Supreme Court’s ruling only means that the doctors cannot use religious liberty as a defense for violating the prohibition on sexual orientation discrimination.
Very well, then. Let us argue the case without reference to religion.
As it happens, I have a feature length article on this case in the September issue of Town Hall magazine. Rather than repeat the details of that article, this column defends the doctors’ conduct, without reference to any religion.
The complaint against the doctors is simple: they have a policy of not performing artificial inseminations on unmarried women. Benitez and her allies in the gay rights movement find this offensive and wish it to be outlawed. I believe the doctors’ policy should not only be permitted, but positively celebrated, praised and supported by law.
That is because I believe that every child is entitled to a relationship with both of his or her biological parents. Children have a right to know and be known by both parents. Every child has a right to their genetic and social heritage. Every child is entitled to care, bonding and attachment with both parents.
Children cannot possibly defend these rights by themselves. Adult society must protect them by preventing harm, not through restitution after the fact. By the time a child is old enough to grasp that something of value has been withheld from him the damage has been done. He has gone through a significant part of his childhood without his father. That loss can not be restored.
Children are sometimes separated from one or both of their parents. But these situations are universally recognized as unavoidable tragedies. No woman, gay or straight, has a right to make a lifelong plan that her child will have no relationship with his father. Deliberately depriving a child of his father is grotesquely unjust and unspeakably cruel.
This is the harm that doctors Brody and Fenton sought to prevent through their policy of not inseminating unmarried women. Society should positively support and affirm doctors who promote the rights of children. Any rights that same sex couples may have should not be permitted to trump these more basic rights that every single child has by virtue of their membership in the human race.
The doctors did no tangible harm to Guadalupe Benitez. They helped her ovulate. They prescribed medication for her. They advised her when she performed self-insemination at home. But as a matter of principle, they would not take the final step of inseminating her with sperm from a man her child would never know or see.
And when she strolled in with fresh sperm from a friend, the doctors had even more medical and legal reservations. Like most responsible infertility clinics, they do not use fresh sperm from a non-spouse. They use only fresh sperm from the woman’s husband, or frozen sperm from a sperm bank. Sperm banks routinely freeze donor sperm, so it can be quarantined while the sperm bank tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Sperm banks also make sure the donor gives fully informed consent.
So when Benitez demanded the use of fresh, non-frozen sperm from a friend, the doctors declined to participate. And for declining to participate, they have endured an eight-year legal vendetta, along with irreparable harm to their medical practice, their personal finances and their reputations.
But the doctors are in the right. Benitez and her army of left-wing lawyers are wrong. Children are entitled to a relationship with both of their parents. The state has no business helping mothers disrupt that most natural of relationships by creating artificial barriers between fathers and their children.
And to require each and every doctor to assist these women is more than cruel to the child. It is unjust to medical professionals who really deserve our respect and gratitude.
Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, is the Founder and President of the Ruth Institute. http://www.ruthinstitute.org/
Maria, you are the only one so far who has hit the nail on the head !!well done, the world needs more of this and less verbiage so people know whats actually happening here. congrats
Why do we want to complicate the laws of nature? No one messes up with animals and their ‘cycle of life’. Why can’t we just accept the reality of our sexuality? We are MEN and WOMEN. We happen to be made FOR EACH OTHER, both physically and psychologically, we compliment each other. In a child needs nurture, education, example and care from BOTH a man and a woman. What is it to be conceived as a ‘normal’ human being? Babies come from a sexual act between a man and a woman.
Just because we have the CAPACITY to create powerful nuclear bombs does not mean we SHOULD use it to exterminate entire cities. Just because we have the CAPACITY to create outrageos technologies to defy our nature does not mean we SHOULD use it to exterminate several ‘tube’ babies by testing and then bring ‘ab-normal’ babies that will have serious identity crisis.
Where does our intelligence come from anyway??? Who gave us these ‘powers’ or ‘capacities’ anyway? Where does Life com from? It is all under our own control? Must be the same one that can take our lives is a split second… Is it just ‘fun’ to play ‘God’? I wouldn’t want to be around when he decides it is time for us to account for messing it all up.
Donna, even if that was achieved it would not make a woman a “father”. Manipulating one of her cells to make it act like a sperm cell would not make her a man. But in fact the proposed technique doesn’t even do that. It merely removes the chromosomes from the nucleus of one of her egg cells and inserts it into one of the egg cells from her partner in legalised sodomy.
John K., I know you want to bring Pedophilia into the discussion but it’s just a diversion and has nothing to do with what we are talking about. I’m sure you’ll bring up bestiality next. All the studies quoted in the APA article show that Lesbians do at least as well bringing up kids as straight people. They are not cherry-picking because there are are no other studies. You, however, cherry-picked my post. So don’t start rambling on about pedophiles, but instead show me your proof that lesbians are not good parents. Or is sarcasm the only arrow you have in your quiver?
So if they are all going to be female are we going for planet of the Amazon Women? How sad to live in a world with no men or very few men.
David Page excised two passages from different portions of the text, and combined them to write:
“Jennifer Roback Morse said: “Sperm banks routinely freeze donor sperm, so it can be quarantined while the sperm bank tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Sperm banks also make sure the donor gives fully informed consent.” and “That is because I believe that every child is entitled to a relationship with both of his or her biological parents.”
“Aren’t these two statements contradictory?”
Well, let’s just try that, too:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” And “We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”
Aren’t these two statements contradictory? LOL. Anyone can carpenter text in this manner. That intellectual honesty is behind such manipulation is questionable.
“In my experience, lesbian mothers go to great lengths to keep biological fathers in contact with their children.”
Vast experience speaks. Case closed.
“Here is a summary from the APA… “
This would be the same APA which from 1994-2000 in the DSM-IV held that “behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child” only served as a criteria for a diagnosis of pedophilia if the *actor* felt “marked distress or interpersonal difficulty,” and only adopted the modified criteria in the DSM-IV-TR that makes behaviors *acted out* serve for diagnosis in 2000, under intense pressure from conservative groups? The same APA whose leadership wanted to remove pedophilia altogether from the DSM a few years back, using the same reasoning used to remove homosexuality in 1973? LOL.
Luis:
The response would no doubt be , “ Well, of course, the first attempts would have nasty side effects ! That’s why experimentation takes place in animals first, so that such things are ‘ironed out’ before it is used in human beings. “
BTW, I’m not saying any of this would be a good thing. I’m just saying that it’s probably going to happen and we had better be ready. Arguing that ‘a child has a right to know her father’ might backfire once a child’s biological ‘father’ being a woman is a possibility .
Jennifer Roback Morse wrote: “The complaint against the doctors is simple: they have a policy of not performing artificial inseminations on unmarried women.”
Now that gay marriage is legal in California will they change their policy? Or is the policy just a cover story?
Jennifer Roback Morse wrote: “I believe that every child is entitled to a relationship with both of his or her biological parents. Children have a right to know and be known by both parents.”
Does this include abusive fathers and children conceived in rape?
Jennifer Roback Morse said: “Sperm banks routinely freeze donor sperm, so it can be quarantined while the sperm bank tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Sperm banks also make sure the donor gives fully informed consent.” and “That is because I believe that every child is entitled to a relationship with both of his or her biological parents.”
Aren’t these two statements contradictory? Studies show that children of divorced lesbian mothers have more contact with their biological fathers than children of divorced heterosexual mothers. In my experience, lesbian mothers go to great lengths to keep biological fathers in contact with their children.
Jennifer Roback Morse started her article by saying she would argue the case without using religion. Of course, without the few passages on homosexuality in the Bible, she has no argument.Here is a summary from the APA.
(Results of research to date suggest that children of lesbian and gay parents have positive relationships with peers and that their relationships with adults of both sexes are also satisfactory. The picture of lesbian mothers’ children that emerges is one of general engagement in social life with peers, with fathers, with grandparents, and with mothers’ adult friends-both male and female, both heterosexual and homosexual.)
It’s not that simple. The experiment made on mice produced offspring with certain diseases.
Actually, as science marches on, the point may become moot. A technique to alter female cells to act as sperm is in development - I believe it has already been used to conceive mice. When that technique is usable in human beings (and barring the Lord’s return in glory, it probably will happen), a lesbian couple will be able to have a child who really will, genetically, have ‘two mommies’- or, rather, a mommy and a ‘daddy’ who happens to be female. Such children will all be female, as there will be no Y chromosomes in either parent.
I would not be surprised if there are self-reproducing, ‘male-free’ communities by the end of the century.
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