Recent news of Elton John’s surrogate baby, Nicole Kidman’s “gestational carrier”, and Kelly Preston’s introduction of her new baby seems to have the media and bloggers alike all a-flutter about the current state of fertility options and infertility treatments.
What I’d really like to say to everyone is “leave them alone!” But, clearly that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
I fear that all of the scrutiny and judgment and crazy theories about these celebrities will only serve to make fertility treatments even more secretive. After all, what celebrity wants to deal with the blogging and tabloid world spreading rumors and gossip about the genetics of your child, why you used a surrogate, or anything else about the blessing that is a child coming into their family?
Yes, I realize that some people want celebrities to come clean about how their children were conceived. And yes, it may serve to normalize the use of surrogates and egg donors – much like it is now “no big deal” for someone to use donor sperm. But I don’t think anyone should be forced out of the fertility “closet” so to speak.
Of course, the danger is that young women will see these mothers in their mid to late 40s having children, and they might think that they too can wait that long. And while it is possible in your 40s to get pregnant naturally or through IVF with your own eggs, it is much, much harder and the risks of issues due to egg quality are certainly higher. But really, is it the celebrities job to educate the public? Why aren’t the OB/GYNs or fertility clinics talking to their patients and doing PSAs to let women know how dramatically fertility declines after your 20s and early 30s?
And on the subject of using surrogates – the phrase “gestational carrier” is not de-humanizing the surrogate. It is part of the accepted language to describe a particular type of surrogacy. It can be used interchangably with “gestational surrogate” and describes a surrogate who has no genetic link to the child, she is simply carrying the child for the parents. Clearly, we have a long way to go in the fertility world when it comes to educating the public about the proper language to use related to fertility. And by the way, a gestational surrogate is not the child’s mother; nor is an egg donor any kind of “mother” (genetic or otherwise) to the child that comes from her donation; nor is a sperm donor a “father”.
While any pregnancy of a woman in her 40s generally has people wondering….donor eggs? I always try to remind people that lots of babies are born these days from frozen embryos created several (or many) years ago. And as egg freezing technology becomes better, it too will offer options for women to prolong their fertility.
Really, what does it matter if someone uses an egg donor or not? It is about as important as it is for the world to know what sex.ual position someone was in when their child was conceived. File it under “none of your darn business”.
While I agree that how one’s child is conceived isn’t anyone else’s business, there is no getting around the fact that celebrities are the royalty of our country. When one decides to use their celebrity for good, good follows. I liken it to the gay celebrities and athletes who courageously came out in the 80’s and early 90’s when it was unpopular and perhaps career ending to do so. However, they put a face to a completely misunderstood and maligned orientation and paved the way for a younger generation of gay people to see someone who was like them and be able to stand in their truth and lead an authentic life from a much earlier age. And look how far we’ve come.
Until we treat infertility like the disease it is and bring it to the forefront, it can’t get the attention it needs. And, attention is what brings about change and funding, hopefully like mandatory infertility health coverage. I see it as something that needs to be de-stigmatized and like it or not, celebrities have the power to do it.
Why would you say that the woman who donates the egg is not the mother of the child in terms of genetics? The child is her offspring. The child is her descendant and is related to all of her relatives in the same exact way that any offspring she might raise are related. Do you just mean legally she’s no kind of mother? Because scientifically, medically, genealogically, biologically she is the child’s only mother. Clearly the woman who delivers the child is legally recognized as being the child’s mother which is unfortunate in terms of the birth record being accurate as far as the child’s medical history for inherited traits etc. A gestational carrier influences the development of the unborn child in uteri but she is irrelevant in terms of what is meant by doctors when they are asking about maternal and paternal medical histories. Her high blood pressure is only relevant to the child for that 9 months while the unborn child is gestating.
Plenty of people were raised by someone other than their mothers and fathers but that does not alter the fact that they are the child’s mother or father at minimum genetically. Mother is a scientific term as well as a legal term. If one were mapping out the child’s relationship to other people in his or her maternal line what would one call the child in relation to his cousins and siblings and grandparents aunts uncles and cousins? Those are real relationships and its unfortunate they get no legal recognition because that can prevent them from dating or marrying their relatives.
I suppose you meant legally not a mother but it bothers me the way I read mothers degraded sometimes as if they are not mothers to their own offspring regardless of their intent or the law you know? Its like they should have no responsibility for the lives they choose to create. Ultimately its their choice to bring their offspring into the world that way and their choice to allow someone else to raise their offspring. That authority over the disposition of a child is the hallmark of parenthood. Social parents require the parent’s permission to take on that roll. That is something people tend to forget when they are claiming to be real mothers of children that are not their own offspring; were it not for the permission of the child’s mother they would not be able to play that roll in the life of a child they did not create. Something to think about anyway.
Thank you for your thoughts on this, but I think we will just likely disagree. Most dictionaries define mother in two ways: being a parent or giving birth – and in that sense, an egg donor is neither. Mother, when used as a verb, is an act of caring for a child, parenting – those are not ever intended to be the case for egg donors. I would again say that the egg donor is not a mother, and I do not in any way mean that to be degrading. Egg donors do not go into this because they want to be a “mother” to any offspring created through an ovum donation (and many already are mothers parenting their own children). And I take offense at your suggestion that the women who give birth to children conceived with donor eggs are not the “real mother”, because that is exactly what they are – mothers.
And, in fact, the egg and sperm donors don’t want to be (nor should they be) responsible for the children conceived from their donation – no more than they would want to be responsible for the lives of recipients of any other donation of tissue that might be possible as a living donor. They are giving a gift to help someone else achieve a dream. Their gift is something they have in abundance (the ovulated egg left unfertilized that month would become nothing, sperm is made and released continually). They are not giving them a child, so in my opinion, it is proper that their responsibility ends when the donation is made.
Although the genetics of the donors provide half of the DNA, it is just one piece of the puzzle …..but it takes an ovum, sperm and a carrier – and absent any one of those pieces, the pregnancy would not be possible, the child would not be. So, I want to make this very clear – I have a huge amount of respect for women who are so generous as to be egg donors. I am not in any way diminishing the amazing gift they are giving by providing their donor eggs. But, of the phenomenal women I know who have given this gift of egg donation, not a single one would consider herself a “mother” to the children conceived from her donated eggs. Just as sperm donors do not consider themselves “fathers” of children conceived through their donation.
As it relates to mapping your genetic history, as an adult adoptee in a closed adoption myself, my lack of genetic history has really never presented a challenge for me. In my mind, my cousins, aunts and uncles are the ones from the family I was adopted into. I long ago found that most people have very limited knowledge of their inherited medical traits outside of their immediate family, and that it generally has very little, if any, bearing on medical treatments. I am not comparing egg donation to adoption – they are very different. And I am not saying that donor conceived children in some cases would not be intrigued to find out more genetic history about the person who donated (egg or sperm). But to assign the egg or sperm donor’s parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents “real relationship” status to a donor conceived child seems like a bit of a stretch – I guess that it really depends on how you define a relationship. Their health history is interesting information, and in the case of many known donors, the information is often made available prior to donation, and upon request is often updated at the child’s request when they reach adulthood. But I see no need to try to label or assign any additional “relationship” status to that genetic connection.
So, to circle back, I stand by my viewpoint that an egg donor is not a mother, and in fact should only be allowed to donate if the psych screen shows that they have no desire to mother the child or children created from their donation. I am in no way diminishing their role or denying that they provide one critically important piece of the genetics, but perhaps if you want to argue the genetic links then I would suggest that maybe it is time for us all to come up with a new term for the genetic donors – because the term “mother” and “father” are more widely used in our society related to parenting a child rather than simply describing genetic histories or links.