BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #040811 - 08/11/2004
The Wisdom of Solomon: How Remaking the Family Hurts Children

In the July 25 issue of the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, Peggy Orenstein told the
story of two little girls who might never see their mother again. That's because
their "other mother," as Orenstein puts it, took them across the country and
is
keeping contact to a minimum.

Read carefully: This gets confusing. The two women, identified only as K. and
E., were "domestic partners" living in California when they decided to have
children. K. supplied the eggs, but E. gave birth to the twin girls. (Their
father -- not that anyone's interested -- was an anonymous sperm donor.) As the
clinic required, K. signed a form waiving her rights to the eggs. But they
raised the girls together for years, and both of them considered themselves the
girls' mothers.

That's what K. says, anyway. E. denies that she thought of K. as a
"co-parent,"
and when K. wanted the girls to know she was their genetic parent; E. felt
threatened. Their eventual breakup was caused by what the article calls "the
struggle to stake out their motherhood." Okay, no surprise.

E. moved the girls to Massachusetts; K. sued for joint custody and lost.
Although she had signed away her legal rights when she donated the eggs, she
hoped the court would take into account the concept of "psychological
parenthood." Some states do that, but not California.

Many people believe that if only the meaning of marriage changed, things like
this wouldn't happen. K.'s lawyer, for example, said, "That [egg donation] form
would never have been used for a married couple." Of course, California and
Massachusetts already have some of the county's most liberal marriage laws. K.
could have legally adopted the twins, but her partner didn't want her to.

The truth is that if the government were more lenient about who can claim
parental rights, things would soon get, if possible, even more confusing.
Orenstein writes of another mind-boggling California case: "[A] couple used a
donor egg and donor sperm to create an embryo that was then gestated by a
surrogate. One month before the baby was born, the couple split up, and the
husband refused responsibility for the child. A lower court found that the
[baby] girl . . . had no parents whatsoever. (The decision was later overturned,
and the divorcing couple were declared her mother and father.)"

How could you possibly create laws to deal with such a monstrosity? Throw in
legal recognition of "psychological parenthood," which can be used for
people
who are not even involved in the conception or birth, and you would really have
a mess.

On the last page of her article, Orenstein points out, "It is, of course, the
children's voices that are missing from this debate." And how. No matter how
strongly K. and E. feel for these girls, they guaranteed that the girls would
not have a dad, could not agree on whose children they actually were, and took
away the only family they have ever known. Their decisions were all about
themselves.

I'm reminded of the familiar biblical story of Solomon. He knew that a child's
real mother was the one who wanted what was best for the child. Sadly, if that
is the case, an increasing number of children today are finding themselves
without any real parents at all.

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THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. "BreakPoint with
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FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION
Peggy Orenstein, "The Other Mother," NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, 25 July 2004.
(Archived article; costs $2.95 to retrieve.)
<a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine/25CUSTODY.html?pagewanted=1&ei=50..' target='_blank'>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine...anted=1&ei=50..</a>.


BreakPoint Commentary No. 040525, "Seeking Justice: Same-Sex 'Marriage' and the
Children."
<a href='http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/..' target='_blank'>http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/B...Commentaries/..</a>.


BreakPoint Commentary No. 040414, "It Doesn't Add Up: When Two Plus One Equals
Too Many."
<a href='http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/..' target='_blank'>http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/B...Commentaries/..</a>.


BreakPoint Commentary No. 040218, "Ward and Ward Cleaver: The New Stay-at-Home
Parent."
<a href='http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/..' target='_blank'>http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/B...Commentaries/..</a>.


BreakPoint Commentary No. 031016, "Two Are Better than One: How Marriage
Protects Children."
<a href='http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/..' target='_blank'>http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/B...Commentaries/..</a>.


Timothy J. Dailey, Ph.D., "Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk,"
INSIGHT, Family Research Council, 30 October 2001.
<a href='http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS01J3' target='_blank'>http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS01J3</a>


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Forum, and BreakPoint is for informational purposes only and does not
necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.

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Playing God?: Facing the Everyday Ethical Dilemmas of Biotechnology -- This
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i only read about half. I'm guessing this is something about the "evils" of same sex marriage? At about the half way mark I realized this is just another couple that seperated and have custody issues. After skimming through the rest it looks like the author is pissed that people might have to make some laws to deal with new situations. Wow, whoever thought a changing society will forever need to ammend existing and make new laws? Oh yeah, the founders of this country.

Fanatical Wrote:i only read about half. I'm guessing this is something about the "evils" of same sex marriage? At about the half way mark I realized this is just another couple that seperated and have custody issues. After skimming through the rest it looks like the author is pissed that people might have to make some laws to deal with new situations. Wow, whoever thought a changing society will forever need to ammend existing and make new laws? Oh yeah, the founders of this country.

Sorry that you don't quite get it. People are being penalized as others demand their rights to change society.

Next time you could try reading the entire column (hey read it twice if you don't understand it) before you "guess" what it's about.

Maybe that's a problem w/ our democracy...too many people just guess at an answer, instead of taking the time to be informed.

or journalists don't write columns very well

I'll admit that I could be wrong about this, but it sure seems that a married couple deals with custody issues upon divorce that don't involve whose egg and whose sperm was involved (unless the baby was born prior to marriage - then an adoption is necessary).

K might have automatically been considered a parent if they were married when the conception was arranged. But they apparently were not, and K signed over her egg. At that point, IMO, she loses her right to custody. In this odd situation, it does seem that the way to be involved would have been to adopt the baby later, but I'm not sure what the law is on that among "domestic partners" that are not married.

I don't see this case as a reason to argue what can-o-worms would be opened if same-sex marriages were allowed. I see this as a case of what can-o-worms would NOT be opened. Then it becomes a custody case. Right now it appears to be a backing-out-of-a-legally-binding-document case.

Confusing stuff, but I would say that K has no claim to legal custody.