Third party reproduction is when someone (married, single, straight, gay lesbian, intersex) has a “gestational carrier” (legal term) as a “third party”carrier to deliver a 
lovely baby. Commonly this is referred to as surrogacy. What are the effects of using third party reproduction and when sometimes laws fall short? What is the impact on the innocent child? Also, one has to differentiate between “intent” Vs. “state of laws and its effects”. The scenarios below can be any fertile person who wants to help an infertile person, this could have been you. That doesn’t mean infertile people are bad OR infertility is wrong, it just means just like everything else in life, there are a few bad apples and we need laws to both protect and ensure rights of innocent and provide a “check and balance” system so it can serve as a deterrent for a few bad apples to even contemplate something so heinous. How much enough is enough? Rosa Parks stood up against prevailing laws because it was enough. Seeing our innocent children get punished and hurt is enough for an intersex, immigrant, IVF family to speak up.
Legally, IVF children born through donor and surrogate who are not your spouse are deemed as children “born out of wedlock”. As offensive as it is (insenuates affairs, infidelity, etc) and deserves its own separate discussion, then how does an infertile couple have a child “born in marriage” legally? What are the legal implications on innocent children born this way? What rights do children have when born during a divorce? Are they legally non-existent and invisible? Why double standards in dealing with two IVF/Surrogacy children who are born exactly the same way? One was lied about while other was being truthful. Is the message that lies which happens to break laws should be rewarded? And how does this status quo help change unequal laws? The real threat is the unequal laws and so more unsuspecting, innocent fertile people (men or women) will be targeted and so will their IVF children “born out of wedlock”. Sadly our lives are ruled by laws (equal or unequal) and not ruled by compassion. Its ironic that compassion is lost in some cases because at the very core of surrogacy, its the compassion to help a fellow human being.
1) First, “surrogacy” or “third party reproduction” itself is controversial. You may find people who are strictly opposed to it Vs. those who find it necessary to have a child. Neither came to this decision overnight. What is right or wrong, who is to decide? What is unacceptable today may be acceptable 10-20-30-40 years from now. Regardless of which side of the discussion one finds themselves, rights of all involved including the child and surrogate should be respected and protected by laws. Lack of laws leads to denial of rights and denial of justice to the innocent like the IVF/Surrogacy child.
2) If a woman uses donor egg and donor sperm and using IVF gets pregnant and carries the children to term and gives birth, is she a “surrogate” or a “gestational carrier” or a “mother”? Her every intent was to have children and raise them lovingly. Lack of laws leads to denial of rights and denial of justice to innocent like the IVF/Surrogacy child.
3) If a woman uses donor sperm and surrogate and using her own egg has IVF/Surrogacy children, are the children “siblings” as intended and is she the “primary care provider” by actions and is she the “mother”? Her every intent was to have children and raise them lovingly together. Lack of laws leads to denial of rights and denial of justice to innocent like the IVF/Surrogacy child.
4) If a man uses donor egg and surrogate and using his own sperm has IVF/Surrogacy children, are the children “siblings” as intended and is he the “primary care provider” by actions and is he the “father”? His every intent was to have children and raise them lovingly together. Lack of laws leads to denial of rights and denial of justice to innocent like the IVF/Surrogacy child.
Rarely are siblings split. Even rarely, IVF siblings are split up. In fact, loving IVF parents go through great lengths to keep IVF siblings united despite the archaic laws. Then why are IVF children of an IVF father being split? Can we spare the innocent children?
Like any other technology, it can be used for good or bad. While a few bad apples may ruin it for all, it is the responsibility of government to provide laws which ensure and protect the rights of all and provide appropriate checks and balance in the system. If Commercial Surrogacy is banned within countries like US (some states), UK, Australia (some states), Canada, France, Germany, etc., one can imagine what havoc it can create when surrogacy is involved internationally especially with some areas operating either with no laws or laws are being broken, how does one get justice? It is a fact there are NO international laws for IVF/Surrogacy while we do have international laws for child abduction and child adoption in the best interest of the child. So who PROTECTS and ENSURES the rights of an international IVF/Surrogacy child? Or should people who manipulate the inconsistencies at the cost of innocent children denying their rights and surrogates be let off?
Corollaries
1) While rare, it may occur that a woman is raped and gets pregnant. Instead of making sense of the trauma of being raped, its a very sensitive time for her as she decides what to do with the child? Worse, she may be subjected to “blame the victim” approach during this horrendous time including name calling, false allegations, defamation, etc.
2) Sometimes a woman may have got pregnant with deceit where a male partner promises support for the child to be but only to abandon the child when born and the left-behind parent is left to pick up the pieces. If there was NO consent, there would be NO child.
In both these cases, there are laws to protect the victims and especially the innocent child. Is the same true for innocent children born through international IVF/surrogacy? Child is a child, right?
3) Sometimes, what if a male who is part of an infertile marriage and in order to help infertility, jointly with the infertile spouse consents to have an IVF/Surrogacy child. Using his own sperm and with help of compassionate egg donor and surrogate decides to have a child with joint consent alongwith the infertile spouse. Later, the infertile spouse decides to not take custody of the child and abandons them. Its rare for a male to be deceited in pregnancy, but that’s what new technology like IVF/Surrogacy presents in some cases. What are the protections and forms of relief that laws provide? If there was NO consent, there would be NO child.
4) What if both intended parents abandon the child, is the surrogate left in a very sensitive situation as she decides what to do for the child she wasn’t planning to raise? What are the rights of an abandoned surrogate? Who pays her? Who raises the child?
Its rare to get pregnant when raped, its rare to have an abandoned IVF child as a surrogate, question is what do you do when it happens? What are the protections and forms of relief through justice that laws provide?
What if a male partner who used his sperm and had a child with compassion of egg donor and surrogate but did NOT abandon the child, should he (rather his innocent child) be getting help from the laws or should there be a “blame the victim” approach against the left-behind IVF parent during this horrendous time including name calling, false allegations, defamation, etc. Is his fault NOT wanting to abandon the child or is his fault for daring to state the truth and for seeking justice for his innocent children? In the bigger sense, he helped infertility where laws itself fall short, what have others and the laws done to help infertility? It is one thing to want to solve world hunger and another to actually take specific actions to ensure no one sleeps hungry.
For any person, discrimination is hard to digest. We all would like to live in a discrimination-free world but reality is different. For a parent, as an adult, they learn to accept facts on discrimination of various kinds but to have their children be discriminated, its the straw that breaks the camel’s back and one has to speak up. Life is unfair, life is unequal but why should innocent children have to be the ones to learn it, shouldn’t it be something an infertile adult understands meaning shouldn’t they be petitioning for equal fertility rights rather than splitting innocent siblings?
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17 thoughts on “Third Party Reproduction and Its Effects”
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The real threat is the unequal laws and so more unsuspecting, innocent fertile people (men or women) will be targeted and so will their IVF children “born out of wedlock”.
First of all there is nothing wrong with being born out of wedlock, all it means is that your bio parents were not married to one another at your birth. The UPA protects kids whose parents are not married and entitles them to both bio parents care and support and entitles them to have both bio parents named on their birth records same as if they were married to one another. The law protects kids whose parents are unmarried by making their parents share custody and work it out so the kid gets all they deserve from both parents under less than ideal circumstances under two separate roofs. That is great and all minors deserve that level of protection when they have unmarried parents. Sadly minors who have parents that donated gametes are exempted from those legal protections and that is where the law needs to change to provide those innocent kids with equal rights. They need to be considered kids with unmarried parents because they are! The last thing they need is to have their step parent listed on their birth record as their parent under some antiquated thinking that it needs to look like they were a biological product of a married couple when they are not – its a lie and right now the law forces those people to live an entire life under a false identity because one of their bio parents wanted to create the illusion of “having a child born in marriage’. It’s absurd its fake its phony and it needs to be stopped completely by preventing donors from giving up parental obligations for their offspring as part of a gamete donation agreement.
Bottom line is that if a person can’t have kids, they can’t have kids. They can raise another person’s kid but if so do so in an ethical way as their step parent or their adoptive parent or adoptive step parent or their guardian and the separation of that kid from bio parent needs to be for the kids safety not the parent’s convenience or preference. If the other bio parent is not a physical threat to the kid like incarcerated for child abuse then damn it work it out come up with a custody arrangement and involve your infertile spouse as best you can as a step parent. It’s just not going to be possible for them to be a parent to their own kid. Adoptive parent to an adopted kid or step parent to a step kid but not parent to their own kid – its all just pretend and that pretending is very damaging to the kid and half their family.
“) If a woman uses donor egg and donor sperm and using IVF gets pregnant and carries the children to term and gives birth, is she a “surrogate” or a “gestational carrier” or a “mother”? Her every intent was to have children and raise them lovingly. Lack of laws leads to denial of rights and denial of justice to innocent like the IVF/Surrogacy child.”
What the minor does not need a protected relationship with a woman that bought them or was given them as a gift that’s freaking slavery! That is like saying slaves should have a protected relationship with their masters vs having a protected right not to be sold in the first place. That hypothetical woman cannot actually buy what she’s looking for she buys the ability to emulate it and in so doing forces a human being to emulate being her child. Who the hell cares what her intent was! So what if all she wants to do is lovingly raise a child the law needs to protect that kid from being purchased or given over into a situation like that one! The law needs to protect the kid by making gamete donation just gamete donation, no implied transfer of parental authority, title, obligation none of that. It’s a black market adoption contract is what that is and making good on the promises made in one should be considered against public policy and it is. Problem is so long as the parties to the contract don’t change their minds nobody is the wiser and the kid goes unprotected sold off into the loving hands of someone who thought she could sneak her way under the radar around a recorded adoption so it looked like she was having a bio kid with her husband. We need to stop trying to say that donated sperm and eggs is a technological miracle that allows infertile people to reproduce. It”s not a miracle it’s not technology it’s not some medical advancement that is giving infertile people “children of their own” it’s a contract to black market adopt somebody else’s kid. The world needs to wake up infertile is infertile they are not having their own kids using “repro tech” they’re just contracting themselves into a pretend kind of parenthood that is erasable with a DNA test and an order to disestablish paternity or maternity by anyone who happens to know the truth and think the lies stink. Then that infertile spouse will have to adopt to get the authority they were sneaking to get. Sheesh. Don’t make out like kids are entitled only to what their purchasers want to give them. We need to protect them from those people not solidify their control over them
There is nothing wrong with gestational surrogacy so long as the woman who delivers is handing the baby over to BOTH of his or her bio parents. Not just one of them with the other missing under a donor contract somewhere. They don’t need to be married but both need to be on the hook. Even if one is dead they need to be the one’s named on their birth record. So if a doctor can’t prove the embryo will be the bio offspring of the two people she’s obligated to hand the kid to – they should not put the embryo in her. And every parent should just have to be tested against the kid they claim to be the parent of in order to certify the birth record. It would just save a whole lot of trouble caused by lies.
There are plenty of people who exist who have one or two bio parents who did not consent to become parents it just happened when their kid was born. Their kid can’t control what their parent’s state of mind was before they were even conceived let alone born and they still have two bio parents just like everyone else and they really are the only two people the law can point to and hold accountable for supporting them while they are dependent minors. What is this business of a guys infertile wife abandoning him with a baby he made with another woman whose an egg donor. That infertile wife was the kid’s step parent and she did not have the authority to consent to conceive a child with him all she did was promise to raise the kid with him and so she changed her mind. She does not owe it to the kid to stick around if she does not feel like it cause – here’s the clincher, she is not his mother she’s his step mother. The woman that owes it to the kid to stick around was paid not to stick around and that is indeed the great irony of that situation. You are putting too much parental obligation on people who don’t actually have that obligation cause it’s not their kid just cause they wanted to raise the kid.
Paying a person to abandon their offspring is not “solving infertility”. Inventing a pill or a potion that allowed people to reproduce and have offspring would be solving infertility. You are trying to say that trafficking minors is some noble action to cure infertility where the law has failed? How can law solve infertility? It can’t. Provide access to healthcare and treatment that might make it possible for people to reproduce yes but aiding and abetting bio parents in the outright abandonment of their kids so they can be smuggled under the radar and forced to pretend they are the child of their captors is just too much. We need to prevent rearing bio parents from interfering with their kid’s rights to care and support from the other bio parent and certainly contracting with them to be absent for 18 years so their spouses can pretend not to be step parents should be fully outlawed
One has to look at the situation holistically and the double standards and worse is that the double standards is punishing innocent children who are bio siblings. Notice the “SEPRATOMETER” on the right hand side, thats how long two innocent siblings have been split willfully. And thats what this is about.
On one hand, if a “non-genetic” parent is considered a “parent” for agreeing to have a child through IVF/Surrogacy, then should that apply to ALL the children equally? Or can they cherry pick which child they want Vs. which one they don’t? Also, does the bio parent have any rights as to how they see their children AND siblings be raised? I am confused but I must have missed the “baby making factory” sign board and here I am all naive thinking that children are a gift and actually are an individual with their own rights and are not exactly a commodity to be “picked” at a vegetable/fruit market. Thats the logic talking and the emotions are they are MY children and how dare someone treat them like “commodity” – let alone any child. The point is given that laws require a “genetic link” for immigration purposes, then how does an infertile person get a child into the US legally who they did not adopt? Do they use false documentation and then get court orders to shut the bio parent using fear-mongering while splitting the innocent child from his bio siblings and family? Oh yeah, how is this the child’s best interest?
The child “born out of wedlock” is a legal term directly from the laws for IVF/Surrogacy children born where only one partner has a “genetic link”. This “legal term” has disastrous effects. Simply put, the laws are not in favor of an infertile person wanting to have a child through IVF/Surrogacy despite a compassionate person (partner, donor, surrogate) wanting to help. So the best answer is to alienate, abandon and split innocent IVF/Surrogacy siblings? Are some infertile people more threatened by the laws which drives them to split innocent siblings because they must have a child at any and all costs?
Agree with some of what you said but sadly the laws are not applied consistently. In fact, someone with intimate knowledge of the inconsistencies of the laws for international IVF/Surrogacy can exploit them for personal benefit while leaving innocent IVF/Surrogacy children in legal limbo. And what the laws need to do is plug these loopholes, punish the perpetrators and send a clear message that every child is equally protected and has equal rights and shall not be discriminated based on “birth type” (natural or IVF/Surrogacy). We are still waiting for justice in our case.
Apparently, helping an infertile person have a child when laws itself fall short is a crime but alienating a child from his bio siblings and family is NOT? Or abandoning a child is NOT a crime? I suppose some naive fertile people are just slaves to infertility and lack of laws. One is convinced that if the laws were “equal” then an infertile person would not feel threatened or have a need to create false documentation and use it against innocent children and siblings to split them. As a bio parent, the only wish is to UNITE the siblings as it was intended. The child also dreamed of having a sibling and being in an infertile marriage, the only way to provide a sibling to an IVF/Surrogacy child is to repeat the process. Or do IVF/Surrogacy children NOT deserve love and hugs from a sibling? Or are dreams of a bio parent and his bio child LESS valuable?
I’m loving this blog its exactly the kind of blog-crack that is so addicting to read. I swear you write like Tess. Are you Tess?
Who is Tess?
Tess is not you I thought you were someone else. Sorry. Hey can I ask what happened to you and your family? You are as passionate as I am about the issue of equality but it sound like you are actually knee deep in a situation where you want to get rid of the one area of law where donor offsprings rights to their bio parents has not been striped ad that is in immigration where thankfully its called maternity fraud for a woman to call herself the mother of an egg donors offspring. Not for long though PVED is working hard to strip that law and they are on the side with all the big bucks, donor offspring offer no boost to the economy for treating them equal.
I feel for you something obviously happened Is one of your bio kids in another country do to a custody battle with the bio mother? If that’s the case you just make the best of it the way any guy who had a kid with a woman in another country would. If some gestational carrier is claiming your kid and your spouse is really the mom can’t you prove that with a DNA test and bring your kid home? I want to understand cause you clearly are tortured by the loss of a kid to an international custody battle so it sounds anyway and I’m sure that it is anguishing for you and the bio kid your raising here.
Here is what I’m not understanding though why should society be trying to give an infertile person a way to get another person’s kid into the country without adopting them? I agree about the picking and choosing thing – I know that plenty of people get away with the whole presumption of paternity thing when its a lie and it’s wrong for them too! It’s horrible for the kids that they get away with it and we need to tighten the screws so it can’t happen for anyone at home or internationally. Reality is that they are skating under the radar they call it a presumption because being married in and of itself does not make a person become a parent and it’s not like a person needs to be married to become a parent either. So the fact that it’s presumed and often goes unchallenged does not make it really real because someone can come along and challenge presumptive maternity or paternity in court and then win and then the infertile spouse is right back where they legally belong as a step parent – the only way for an infertile person to get iron clad legal parental authority is to adopt or be appointed legal guardian. That is a good thing! It protects kids from being sold or traded by their bio parents and protects them from winding up having permanent ties to a person their bio parent might very well divorce in the future! The permanent ties legally should be connected to the person they are related to for real. It’s not possible for you or any other spouse to fix the spouses infertility or same sexness by having them raise a kid with you. You’ll cure the sadness of not having a kid around to raise and care for that’s true and you’ll get to have a kid that can be great for sure but it’s not curing their infertility at all it’s just letting them help raise your kid. They could do that while the other bio parent shared custody too people do it all the time there is a framework for that and everything Works out great for the kid because they don’t loose a bio parent or any bio family. People can’t go back in time what’s done is done but there are some alternative family building websites that hook people up with other locals who just want kids and no romance so they don’t mess up their marriages to infertile spouses. It’s hanging on to these old ideals that kids have to have married parents or have to have pretend married parents people should let all that go for the good of the kid hold hands work together
Maybe you just love your partner a whole lot and want to wish away the fact that they can’t have a kid with you and make everything seem as normal as you can. I’m assuming based on your passion for the topic pardon me if I’m projecting situations incorrectly. I’m building up this empathy for you based on what seems like sincere pain from a lived event so I have a movie going in my head of what the perdicament must be about. So listen though there is nothing that society can or should do to make an alternate reality for someone who can’t have kids because its not possible without hurting other people forced to play along the kid in particular. There is nothing wrong with being a step parent it just means their authority over the kid comes through their spouse with express permission rather than independently because the kid is theirs and their problem to take care of. It’s true though right that an infertile person has to get permission from the bio parents otherwise then they are really breaking the law by kidnapping or whatever.
You do have every right to take care of your own offspring and I hope you have that opportunity soon or are at least able to strike a workable arrangement with your child’s family abroad so your kids can grow up together even if not in the same house. Lots of kids who are not the offspring of donors have half sibs who are living in a different state or country and they are still in one another’s lives. Were you thinking you’d have sole custody of your kid and if so why is the mom like a danger to the kid? I hope you get to see them soon and I hope you are able to work it out in a way where your kids get to have both bio parents supporting them and where they get to also have a loving step parent and extended step family as well.
Sometimes you write about transgender or somehing called intersex parents. I don’t know what intersex is but one of my best friends boyfriends had a full on sex change and he was married to a woman and in fact stayed married to that woman to this day and it’s been years since the sex change 10 maybe close to 20. I could see where things might get a little complicated trying to bring a bio kid home born over seas if spouses appeared to be two women when in fact they are not say he stored sperm prior to the operation and the wife could conceive but not carry. But still you’d just level and have the dna test prove that one is the bio father and one is the bio mother and be done with it – cause in reality he’s still a guy chromosome wise for the purpose of a birth certificate even if he’s now living life as a female. I’m just throwing it out there – that would be a case where they are not actually infertile just really challenged in getting their kid home. But an unrelated person has no business trying to bring a kid anywhere as their child without guardianship or adoption decrees we just have to protect minors from that.
I just hope you don’t start thinking that it would be right to cut a kid off from one bio parent to bring them home to be raised as the child of an “intact marriage” when really they are the child of unmarried parents and that intact marriage is not a marriage to their mother but their step mom or step dad as the case may be. I am big on marriage equality so kids have a right to support from their parent’s spouse if they want to be married to one another but not as their parent as their step parent. The hand picking and choosing with presumption is really frustrating so don’t think I think its OK for the ones getting away with it now I reunite those families that got separated by the ones that got away with it and its super ugly for them. For all the wreckage I see with the fake birth records its way better to just have everyone be themselves in relation to the kid and be collaborative about it. I just reunited an adopted person from Australia forced adoptions with her 7 paternal siblings here and she is going to become a US citizen here. I am very passionate about what you are doing these kids deserve citizenship in the countries where their bio parents are from.
Peace
No worries. And thanks for your concern. You can ask any question, the fundamental reason why the siblings are split because of secrecy and lying. And its one too many lies. The story is simple. Due to infertility in the marriage, we did IVF/Surrogacy in India while living in the US using biological sperm of the spouse, and anonymous egg donor and surrogate. Using lies the child was brought to the US and all families and friends were lied to in the US and pretended there was no IVF/Surrogacy but rather the child was natural born. The father is not just the bio parent but also the primary care provider due to some other medical issues with the other spouse and thus forming a deep bond with his son. A few years later, the child wanted a sibling and despite lying to everyone else, the father knew the only way he could provide a sibling for his child was to repeat the IVF/Surrogacy process. Again through joint consent, went back to India and after several failed attempts and few years, a second IVF/Surrogacy child was born who was again kept a secret and lied about. Except this time the infertile spouse filed divorce in the US while the second IVF child was 6 months term in India in a surrogate’s womb. Due to several inconsistencies of laws (state laws in US contradict US Immigration laws which contradict Indian laws where the child is born), the child was abandoned in India and left in legal limbo as a stateless child who could NOT leave India. The bio father could ALSO abandon the child in India or move to India to raise the innocent child. In the meantime the infertile spouse used the false documentation showing them as the “birth and bio mother” to get custody of the son in the US and prevented him from leaving the US and thus both siblings have NEVER met. Interestingly, the reasons why the IVF daughter cannot get to the US are the same reasons why the IVF son ALSO could not have entered the US legally. When this was pointed out to the US authorities, the “discrepancy” for the IVF son in US was considered as a “minor issue” while for the IVF daughter in India the same “minor issue” was a BIG enough issue for her to be prevented from entering the US. Perhaps the US government should pass laws to allow infertile people to bring in IVF/Surrogacy children with NO genetic link so that infertile people are not threatened to break the laws and so desperate that they split innocent siblings.
Obviously several questions are raised especially for the innocent children. Turns out the spouse is infertile because of intersex which was also hidden and frauded about. Legally, intersex people cannot marry in India just like same-sex marriages were banned in US until recently. Being intersex is not wrong but lying about is, especially in a marriage. Went through the most horrific experience medically in the US with more lies and again false documentation was created which again came to haunt in a court hearing. Most people may not understand but intersex people who have been treated using lies for decades can attest its the wrong approach. And now an intersex, immigrant, infertile person wants to LIE again to innocent IVF children and expect different results? Its time to change the laws.
Intersex marriage should be legal. People should have equal IVF rights. Because if both these existed my innocent IVF children would not be split as a person does not feel threatened. One is lucky to be alive after this horrific IVF terrorism and is lucky to have great parents and family.
What do you think?
Oh sweetie! Jeeze that’s all kinds of f’d up. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I think you should be with your kids raising them and not in shared custody with your ex though. I think what happened to you and your kids is a mess and should be fixed to your and their benefit of long standing bonded relationship but I don’t agree that you are necessarily looking at the right laws to change nor are you exactly seeing how the law needs to protect ALL kids from being trafficked and sold and abandoned by their bio parents.
In your case hind sight is 20/20 you had kids with a woman you dd not know (am I getting this right or – somebody in this situation is the male parent who fathered two kids right?) The other was a guy or was a girl and is now the opposite but either way did not reproduce and yet they managed to get custody of the kid that is here by lying. The solution is not to let people smuggle other people’s kids out of foreign countries without going to court to adopt them. The solution would be to go – OK that sucks we should not have falsified the docs saying my spouse was my kids mom whether we were in love or not. Hind sight being 20/20 take your ex to court with a petition to disestablish maternity based on your new found understanding that at minimum the kid has a right to a medically accurate birth record that does not list your ex as mother. If she wants to have parental authority then she’ll need to have it appointed to her in a court that recognizes her relationship was step mother and now its quasi-marital from having held the kid out She should not get to have all that cake and eat it too. I don’t think she abandoned your other kid not hers to abandon. You set it up in a way where the kid’s mom was not going to be around thinking that a step mom was just as good and clearly – that is not the case. If that were actually her kid she would not have just walked away and left the kid to languish in India right? Should our government really let people like that get to bring other people’s kids back to the country as their own without adopting just because they happen to be married? Look at the result your dealing with clearly step parents are not generally going to be as invested in their spouses kids as if they were their own, certainly not early on without ever caring for them. Look at you you never cared for your kid a day in your life the kid is in another country and it’s eating you alive! Know why? Cause that is your kid for real and you don’t have to even meet them to care about them and ache for them. Social parents only care and ache for kids after they do the work based on shared experience and bonding but not based on true deep obligation. No we don’t need to let anyone like your ex get away with pretending not to be a step mother.
So I get you. You just want your kid home and your other kid back and the shortest distance is to make it like you should be allowed to do what you did before that was wrong but you did not get popped for. Now with the truth out you’re stuck. But look you are stuck here now with that action in the past. Just cause you did it and got away with it does not mean we should open the flood gates and let other infertile people get away with that too – cause look what you are dealing with you see what all the false documentation and lies got you right? You were trying to be all compassionate and supportive so you participated in a lie that would make them feel equal and included raising your kid and they turned around and fkd you for it. So seems to me you are the poster kid for step parenthood tell people don’t make the same mistake don’t pretend you had a child in marriage together let your spouse just be the step parent they are so they never split on you and take your kid with them in joint or (god for freaking bid] full custody. Tell others not to dummy up the documentation just be yourselves. I sincerely think it sucks that your kids bio mothers are absent under contract but again for the moment what is done is done and you are their actual parent and they should be with you not with your ex without your express permission. You should be able to bring your child home from India I am so sorry. You have to get your ex’s name of the paperwork and just go as yourself parent that you are. Who is caring for your kid over there? Can you have the bio mother’s rights terminated to bring your kid home? It really is a mess. I do think it’s wrong that you had a kid with women who you wanted to be gone I think it’s not compassionate of them I think its tragic and now neither of your kids is being raised by you the parent that is truly invested cause you owe it to them.
I am a San Franciscian not opposed to unusual family configurations and home lives at all but it should never be at the expense of anyone’s identity or legal kinship in their bio families so for instance have a kid with someone outside your marriage as many do with gamete donors only do it with a non romantic party whose not a threat to your romantic partnership but have that person take full responsibility as a parent in joint custody that way the kid gets raised up together with the spouse who was infertile but not at the expense of the kid’s true identity or their rights to care and support from bio parents etc.
People find that idea so shocking and they are so offended by the idea that the spouse should have to settle for the title of step parent when the “presumption of parenthood” allows so many to get away with being called a parent Look it’s a big fat lie and lots of other people have to live life in a continuous charade all because they can’t just accept reality and make the best of it with their spouse and spouse’s kids. So I am in favor of all kinds of arrangements between married and unmarried people but they have to know where the boundaries are for what the limits of their rights are and when they are crossing over into other people’s rights. So allowing infertile people to be called parents without adopting is just not the freaking solution you see where it got your family and kids so far. You would not be dealing with any of this if your ex spouse was just a step parent this is where that presumption and loving lie winds nice people like u up. Marriage is a temporary opt out kind of a thing in reality even if it does not feel that way when your madly in love. Should kids really be forced to have a permanent legal tie to a woman who their bio parent might like so little that they divorce? They are not related to her either where’s their divorceability? If their bio parents are married and get divorced there is a good reason for them to have permanent legal ties to both but now your kid is stuck with someone who left you with a big old mess to clean up.
I really have no idea all them multiple competing factors your having to deal with. I do know you are right that your kids are being denied various rights by the government with the help of you and your ex but you are on your way to try and correct it. Their rights should stem from pure truth and their right to support from you and their actual mom whose just not in the picture at the moment. Forget your kid’s rights to care by your ex OK they don’t need it and the won’t want it later on when they are old enough to know whats going on they will want you and their nameless faceless mom not your ex.
Fight the good fight but forget about them having any right to the care of the infertile spouse as other than a step parent because that situation denies them half their family and in cases like yours – all their family. I want you to win. 🙂 your kids to win YOU back. I’m sorry about your relationship you are a nice person and once you fix things with your kids I’m sure great things and people will come into your life.
posted a long ass response that got lost in a nut shell on your side. The whole truth is what to fight for though. They deserve you and their mom’s care not your ex.
yes intersex same sex opposit sex marriage should all be legal. And that has zilch to do with who should be legally recorded as kids parents. You see where it got you to record a step parent as parent – be the one who campaigns against that. There is nothing wrong with being a step parent because their authority comes through the spouse not independent of it. Now your kid is stuck in a permanent relationship with someone your divorced from and they are not related to that person so WTF? Get rid of the presumption of maternity and paternity and instead lets have proof of it iron clad. Fertile spouses need to not get duped into pretending a whole charade so they don’t hurt the feelings of the infertile spouse. It costs the fertile spouses kid’s their identities half their families and in your case their whole family and now they don’t even have you the only parent they had that wanted to raise them.
Wow you are such a great example of what can happen to a person when they put their spouse ‘s feelings and the survival of their marriage over everything else – over themselves over their kids and their kid’s identities their kid’s other half of the family. People go to the mat for their spouses who just suck the freaking lives and identity out of them and their kids! You know I’m thinking if it’s a good relationship they don’t ask you to live a total lie for them and they accept your kids for who they are which is your kid who has another parent that is not them. Now your ex I am sure loves your kid very much but has erased their mother completely and now is trying to erase you too. Go get your damn kids back tell the world that you did not get an instruction book and your learning as you go along but tell them you changed your mind about pretending at your kid’s expense. I’m so totally rooting for you. Sorry I think you should focus less on what’s unfair to infertile married people and more on what’s unfair to a fertile person’s kids. Fertile spouses can’t fix infertility you have real problems to deal with your kid rights being all violated. Don’t worry about infertile people’s feelings so much – you can take kindness and compassion overboard if you’re not careful you’ll loose yourself and your babies in the process. Your still fighting for your infertile ex spouse’s right to be a parent with you it’s so loving but for Chriminy sake man pull yourself together the allegiance is clearly not mutual and fighting for that perceived right to be the parent of a kid whose not their offspring is what got you and your family all hog tied and ham strung. You’ll get untangled if you cut that sht loose.
Appreciate your concern and willing to stick through the conversation. You see, we are dealing with some very “taboo” subjects of our time and also for which laws have not been made yet. Regardless of what decade or century, willfully splitting innocent siblings will always be wrong and willfully splitting an innocent child from their biological family will always be wrong. Personally, it is the government who has to take the most critical action and accountability and responsibility. It is a fact that infertile people cannot get IVF children into the US legally, so the best answer is to SPLIT innocent IVF siblings? The government has to step in and apply the laws consistently – either allow the LIE again for a second IVF child and both siblings are in US together or deport the illegal IVF child in the US to India and again both siblings are in India together. The question is the current status quo is “whose best interest”? And if the government feel so strongly about infertile people, then they should change the laws accordingly instead of splitting innocent siblings. The irony is after the truth has come out, a loving fertile parent has been threatened with criminal acts for helping an infertile person, so do pray, what’s your (government) solution to provide children to infertile people? Steal, fraud, alienation, abandonment, look the other way when laws are broken, forced silence, intimidation, threats, coercion, etc? All these has been tried during the failed “baby scoop era” only to offer apologies decades later.
While the “court” and others ask questions like has the infertile spouse abused or not provided for the child? We have to reconcile this that the last we know is she abandoned a child, a sibling of the child she claims to love. And if she is providing the “proper care” then why was Ann Pettway convicted and sentenced? Why was a son of a US Citizen father, David Goldman, in Brazil reunited with his biological father? Its this double speak which is very confusing AND is what is hurting the innocent children. The message is clear, if you are infertile and lie, cheat, fraud, break laws, abandon children, alienate children, split siblings, its OK. If you say the truth, you will be intimidated, threatened, coerced, defamed, etc. WHat a terrible message for the innocent children? This is no way to solve infertility.
I suppose now you may understand terms like “modern day slavery”, “IVF terrorism”, and so on. To us this is a simple case of wanting a child at any and all costs where laws itself fall short. Why should our innocent children have to learn that life is unfair and unequal? It makes no sense.
You know as a woman you can understand that if you were living in the 1900s and got raped, the immediate reaction was to “hush” it up or one could not even get a criminal case registered, there was no emotional, moral, legal, financial support and a “blame the victim” approach was used. Today there are rape trauma crisis centers, while sadly rape still occurs but our way to deal with it both through tough laws and other support has got much better. Is the same true for an international, immigrant, intersex, IVF family in 2000s? Who protects and ensures our rights? Splitting innocent IVF siblings will NEVER be the right answer as is the status quo.
Thanks for your kind words and can appreciate some of your sentiments. But we helped an intersex person when laws didn’t (intersex marriages are illegal in India), we stayed with an intersex person despite what the medical professionals did to all (the intersex surgery done has since been asked to be STOPPED by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture), we did IVF/Surrogacy and lied to help infertility, we raised the IVF/Surrogacy child since birth because the infertile person was dealing with other medical issues, we stayed silent through all the trauma, abuse, violence despite the laws NOT coming to our assistance because we were guided by words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in this world”. Why change now? Truth is our saviour, truth is our power. We know the ex- also has gone through a lot of trauma, we were there, were others including the laws? The biggest lesson learnt is do NOT lie on legal documents be it the doctors, lawyers, “good natured people” because all it takes is one liar to exploit these lies and that too against innocent, voiceless children. Stealing candy from a baby is easy, but what have you proven?
So we will continue the fight but with civility, humility and dignity. And hopefully people can see the trees beyond the forest if they take the time and effort to understand the complete MESS made here for the sake of innocent children. Keep us in your prayers and keep all IVF children and families in your prayers because the right answer is to have laws so that people do not manipulate inconsistencies in international IVF/Surrogacy for personal benefit.
You asked what the government should do to provide infertile people with children and the answer is NOTHING. They are not objects to be ‘provided” to anyone. You either have them or you don’t Adopt them if they are available for adoption. Listen it seems like “providing” kids to the infertile got you in a jamb so I don’t get why that issue remains important to you. Your trying to get your bio kid back.
Also on the topic of willfully separating biological siblings…you know you did that by having a baby with a woman you don’t know right? That she in all likelihood as other kids that are your kid’s siblings and they’ll never meet them unless you work very hard at uncovering her identity for them and you might in the future feel inclined to do that for them. It would be a good thing for sure. But you almost can’t go on a tirade about the government splitting up siblings when the whole process of mating with an egg donor is designed to split them up. The two that are yours that you know of you can work on getting back together. No I don’t think an unrelated caregiver who bought their way into parenthood is the best place for a kid even if they are not abusing them because it rewards trafficking and child buying and lying and all that. Of course if they are married to the bio parent they’ll be the step parent so they’ll be around but naming them as parent? No.
Points well taken. When one speaks of the government, it speaks of all branches (executive, judiciary and legislative). The government has got involved. First it has passed laws for IVF/Surrogacy children meaning they recognize their existence. It is true that the laws are based on “genetic link”. Second they ignore their own laws even after being notified of the fraud and take no action. Here is the kicker, they uphold the laws for one sibling while take no action for the other sibling citing the exact same laws which is called inconsistency and clear case of IVF discrimination. By selective application of the laws, they are trying to give a child to an infertile person where there own laws disallow them, further they are taking away a child from a bio parent who desparately wants to raise the child lovingly and with his siblings. All this has been tried before during the “baby scoop era” only to be apologized about decades later, why will this set of lies be any different? We don’t want an apology, we want the opportunity to grow up together as an IVF family. Splitting innocent siblings will never be the right answer to solve infertility.
To your point, an IVF father committed this mistake by wanting to help an infertile spouse who happens to lie and forced us to lie, lesson learnt. But certainly my innocent childrne did not lie or break laws, so why are they being punished? Let us make it very clear, our fight is first to give a VOICE to the innocent, voiceless children and then we can discuss rights of adults – both infertile and fertile. As a male with a left-behind girl child and the fact she was born with IVF/Surrogacy (something not looked upon favorably in 2009 in India), it was very awkward and dehumanizing to have to answer questions of how she came about. My first question was if a female is left-behind with a child, she has support for the child through laws, why is the “equal support” not available to our innocent child? How is it her fault? She is just a child like anyone else but sadly laws do not treat her the same way. In fact, the laws erased her “legal identity” and her “legal existence”. It has taken over 5 years just to get her a legal identity! It’s ironic how people talk about women rights, child rights, etc. but are unwilling to help an abandoned, left-behind girl child born via IVF/Surrogacy. Perhaps leaving her at an orphanage would have been better and easier than to fight for her? Statistically, in India and most places in the world, lot of the teenage to adult sex workers are from an orphanage or a broken home. It is NOT why we went through the trauma of having a IVF/Surrogacy child. We love her and cannot abandon her. She was born after several failed IVF attempts, she was born to be loved, not to be abandoned and be used as a leverage against her own brother. What’s next? Human cloning a child for organs to save someone’s life? Disgusting.
The government is involved because of lack of laws. And some infertile people are threatened by the lack of laws for them to have a child so splitting IVF siblings is the right answer? Had IVF rights existed, some infertile people may not feel threatened and for us it would have been enough to see our children united. We want our children to be united, wouldn’t any parent want that including a non-genetic parent (legal term)?