Who Owns Pre-Embryos? 374
An anonymous reader writes: Scientifically and legally, frozen embryos are not the same as a living child. Nevertheless, they can inspire legal battles that resemble custody disputes. This article follows a case between a couple who had been dating for five months when the woman received a cancer diagnosis. Before beginning chemotherapy, she and her boyfriend of five months decided to harvest and set aside some fertilized eggs, just in case. (If the treatment saved her but destroyed her ability to have kids, and the couple stayed together and decided they wanted kids, the pre-embryos would preserve that option.) She survived, but their relationship didn't. With no explicit contract in place, the disposition/custody of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested. "[R]eading over the case, one gets the sense that there's a fundamental lack of language to describe what's at stake. There may be an emerging field of law and legal precedent, but the terms at hand don't adequately capture the nature of the dispute."
Freezing Fertilized Eggs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Freezing Fertilized Eggs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Frozen embryos survive thawing much better than frozen eggs. Also does anyone know why we are calling these pre-embryos? Pre-embryos would be sperm and egg cells.
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Also does anyone know why we are calling these pre-embryos? Pre-embryos would be sperm and egg cells.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proembryo#Preembryo_in_context_of_human_development
I'll take this one and its simple (Score:5, Insightful)
This way some morality police lawmakers can't step in and turn this in to an abortion/anti-abortion debate where the actual consumer of these services then lose.
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It will never be that simple... For example, if the contract said something like "once fertilized, the woman has the option to use these embryos and the man has no veto" then her boyfriend would be under immense pressure to agree to have children with her after only being together for five months and with cancer looming over both of them.
Currently in the UK both parents are required to agree periodically just to keep the embryos frozen, let along to use them. Even if that were in the contract there would st
Close to owning (Score:3)
intellectual property. Two artists record song but don't release it. They split, who owns the tune?
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You're right, on second thought.
Basically, the fertilised egg ought to be seen as being part of the woman's body if it's inside the womb or outside. So it's her choice to do whatever she wants with it. The woman owns it.
Re:Close to owning (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ethically eggs whether fertilised or unfertilised whether in the woman or outside is part of the woman's body. She has exclusive rights to do as she pleases with them regardless of the desires and opinion of the man who fertilised the eggs or paid to remove and incubate the eggs.
So the woman should equal able to implant, store, or toss the eggs into a bin. Just as she has the moral right when they are inside her to do as she pleases with the eggs (the pill, abort). It's her body regardless of any scientific
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reproductive decisions are joint up to the point of fertilising the egg. After that point, I think that it is reasonable to hold the blanket belief that the woman is the residual claimant of all remaining reproductive aspects.
Re:Close to owning (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd say "until actual incubation of the egg in the woman's body" I'd agree. When the fertilised egg is implanted in her, either the natural way or via IVF or other artificial method, it's hers to decide whether to keep it or have it aborted or whatever. Do keep in mind that the implantation is not necessarily in the egg donor's body.
When fertilisation takes place outside of her body, as long as the egg/embryo remains outside of her body, both partners should be equally involved in what happens next. That's just sensible. If you claim the egg cell is the mother's and the mother's only, this should equally apply to the sperms being the man's and the man's only. Logic extension of this means that the combination of the two, a fertilised egg, belongs to both.
The moment the egg is implanted in a woman's body, things change: the woman who has the egg in her body should then be called the owner. Even if she's not the egg donor. I believe this part is already pretty well established when it comes to surrogate motherhood.
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If I cut off my foot and preserve it in such a manner as it can be re-attached at a later time. Would someone who took that foot and threw it in a dumpster commit battery, or just destruction of property?
In the US, detached bodyparts/material are considered to be property and do not receive any special protection. There have been several cases regarding this when it comes to 'Medical/surgical waste'.
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Doesn't makes sense to be honest.
Let's take an extreme hypothetical. Sometime in the future an egg is fertilised outside a woman's body and grows for 8 1/2 months in a "test-tube" following the kind of growth patterns we know happens in the womb.
Someone comes along and chucks the tube in a bin killing the foetus. Should we charge him with murder. My answer is yes sure.
Similarly, the frozen fertilised egg in the fridge is as much a part of the woman's body as if it were in her womb. She can do as she pleases
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She can do as she pleases with it
As long as the state can force the father to pay child care, I would argue that the father has some say in the matter.
It's her body and no one else's
The egg only has 50% of her DNA, so it's not her body.
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He chose to pay child care when he fertilised the egg. It's like signing a contract.
The matter would have been entirely different had unfertilised eggs and his sperm been frozen separately.
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You're right, on second thought.
Basically, the fertilised egg ought to be seen as being part of the woman's body if it's inside the womb or outside. So it's her choice to do whatever she wants with it. The woman owns it.
Why exactly? Why does the woman have more right to it than the man? Why couldn't the man opt to raise it with a surrogate?
It's exactly 50/50 in my book. I would prefer a technical solution like refertilizing with a different sperm donor but I don't see how
it's any more the woman's than the man's.
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because he has no use for it without her and she has use for it without him.
But all in all, because women own their bodies exclusively.
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because he has no use for it without her and she has use for it without him.
But all in all, because women own their bodies exclusively.
Yes, women own their bodies and men own their bodies.
But this embryo is not part of the woman's body so that argument doesn't hold.
This embryo is one egg from the woman and one sperm from the man.
It is not any more a part of the woman's body than it is part of the man's body.
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women own embryos, and lose ownership when they become life.
men own their sperm, and lose ownership when it fertilises an embryo
simple, no?
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simple, no?
No, otherwise everybody would be agreeing with you.
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Societies that allow abortion agree with me. Societies that don't, don't agree with me.
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I am generally supportive of abortion, but I disagree with you.
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And this is now technically NOT her body.
She and her ex have a tissue sample in storage.
It is most certainly no more part of her body than it is his. Why the hell should she have the right to force him to become a father with her after their relationship ended?
Sorry, she essentially peed in a cup. This bit about her exclusively owning her body would be true if this was still her body.
But this isn't her body any more. Which means you can't say tha
It gets really interesting in a jurisdiction where (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
Its about child support (Score:5, Insightful)
If she keeps those eggs on ice for ages and then randomly decides to defrost them and germinate a few in her magic garden... then the guy is responsible child support.
No really.
Child support laws basically assume that birth control and the last 100 years of medical science didn't happen. The concept of them is that if she got pregnant in any fashion by your porn star energy drink... then you've apparently consented to be a daddy.
You go on a one night stand with a girl at a bar... use a condom... she says she's on the pill... she calls you six months 9 months later to tell you that you're a father... Congrats, you're playing child support.
Here some lackwit is going to say I'm not being a chivalrous gentleman. That's because chivalry is dead. Look, responsibilities and rights go hand in hand. When men were responsible for everything they had all the rights. And women didn't have any options. If they got knocked up they couldn't really do anything about it. And the culture of the time put great significance on being "chaste". If she already had some other dude's baby then it was a lot harder for her to get a husband which was a serious problem.
Today none of that applies but the child support laws don't care.
There was a dude that was literally drugged, woke up tied to a bed with a girl on top of him, he ejaculated in her because men really don't have any control over that if you're bouncing on top of them, he told the police about it immediately, the police did nothing, she got pregnant, gave birth, filed for child support, and the courts made him pay for her rape baby.
Yep.
So, the issue with those eggs set aside is child support. If she signs something to the effect that he's not on the hook for any of the child support... I'd see no reason for him to care one way or the other.
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So, the issue with those eggs set aside is child support. If she signs something to the effect that he's not on the hook for any of the child support... I'd see no reason for him to care one way or the other.
Well, when the children grow up, they may want to meet their biological father. He may not be interested in that. It has the potential to cause some emotional harm to one or more people involved.
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A biological father being introduced to adults that were raised entirely apart from him... are unlikely to cause that man any trouble in the 21st century western world. It might be a little weird for his wife but probably there wouldn't be anything negative about it.
The issue is more that when they're growing up he might get a phone call that says something to the effect of "hey, your children need money for college... pay for it."
As to emotional damage to the children... that would only happen if the mothe
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So, the issue with those eggs set aside is child support. If she signs something to the effect that he's not on the hook for any of the child support... I'd see no reason for him to care one way or the other.
The support is to provide for the needs of the child, not the mother. The right of child support belongs with the child, and not the mother. The mother is the custodian of the support. The mother can claim that she will never request child support, but the state can garnish money from the father whether the mother likes it or not. If the mother ever goes on welfare, WIC, or the child on medicare, the state will seek repayment for its expenses from the father regardless of the mother's thoughts on the ma
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Were that the case then the woman would not have custody of the child.
If I'm paying for the child then why is the child with someone that can't take care of the child? If I can pay for the child and she can't... then I am obviously more qualified to take care of the child all things being equal. Now maybe I'm a drug addict or a psychopath or something. But lets assume nothing weird is going on and that the guy is a normal guy and the woman is a normal woman. Let us say that she can't support herself and the
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hyperbole and strawman.
I didn't say anything about not taking care of children. The issue is custody, the relevant rights and responsibilities of the parents, and ultimately what is required for either party to have rights or responsibilities or not.
The way the system is currently set up, men have almost no rights. If she gets your seed by any means and gets pregnant then you're responsible for the child. And while being responsible you have no rights over it. That is completely out of balance.
Rights and re
Re:Its about child support (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-... [rolereboot.org]
It isn't a fantasy... it is just rarely reported. Men don't run to the cops when they get coerced or forced into sex. At least usually not.
The reasons for this are many but it is still rape. And the fact of the matter is that under the law, if she gets pregnant, he's as responsible for the child as if it were not rape.
That's about as fucked up as forcing a woman to marry a man that rapes her. It is the same situation with reversed gender roles.
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What exactly is wrong with that? You both made a decision to have sex, knowing that contraception is not 100% reliable and that the other person could be lying, and decided to chance it. The result is that you created a baby, and you are held responsible for your actions.
What if the condom worked reliably, but while the guy was in the bathroom, she recovered the condom from the garbage bin, and impregnated herself ?
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This is what feminists actually believe.
Somehow I doubt they would say this if the issue was a man sleeping around and lying about having a venereal disease.
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You go on a one night stand with a girl at a bar... use a condom... she says she's on the pill... she calls you six months 9 months later to tell you that you're a father... Congrats, you're playing child support.
What exactly is wrong with that? You both made a decision to have sex, knowing that contraception is not 100% reliable and that the other person could be lying, and decided to chance it. The result is that you created a baby, and you are held responsible for your actions.
Two people have sex and one is responsible? The problem is your are conflating "consent to sex" with "consent to children". Just because I give my consent for sex does not mean that I give my consent to become a father.
Consent to sex is not automatically consent to children!. Down that path lies madness for everyone - if you believe that consent to sex is the same as consent to children then you'd better be prepared to force females to carry their foetus to term - after all they gave consent, right?
It a
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No. Rape is a crime. It is wrong. And anyone that does it should be punished severally.
If a woman rapes a man, has a child without his knowledge or consent, and then demands child support... how does making the man pay child support punish the rapist? You're rewarding the rapist.
Lets reverse this so you can understand how fucked up this is... lets say a dude drugs a woman, and extracts some of her eggs while she sleeps. Then he mixes that with some of his baby batter and implants the embryo into a surrogate
Should be simple (Score:2)
Each person gets 1/2 the embryos to do with as they want and they give the other 1/2 up for "adoption" to the other person. If in the future either decides to implant them the other party has no say or financial obligations to the other.
Pre-nup required (Score:2)
Why didn't she bank unfertilized eggs? (Score:3)
Why didn't she bank unfertilized eggs? Why pre-fertilize them?
Pre-embryo is NOT a word!!! (Score:2)
GAH!!! If you're going to talk about scientific things, please learn the correct terminology which would be ovum in this case. Life is tough enough without people constantly trying to invent words to make themselves sound important.
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Ovum is even worse, because it only refers to a single egg, but the pre-embryo has already started to divide.
This isn't a new problem (Score:2)
Nor is it a new story, or a new anything.
Actually not really a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I've just been through this process and signed the appropriate contracts (in Norway).
When freezing embryos here, both parents sign an agreement that the embryos will be frozen for a maximum of five years, and that the explicit consent of both persons needs to be given before they are removed from the freezer, either for destruction or implantation. After five years they are destroyed anyway.
Problem solved.
Re:Both own half. (Score:5, Insightful)
Each 'contributor' owns 50%. No decision regarding the subject pre-embryo may be be made without a majority. Case closed.
So, what? You want to divide it in two and give each party one half? The problem you are missing is that one party may want to dispose of the pre-embryo while the other party may want to (eventually) birth and raise it. Those are mutually exclusive options.
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That's what King Solomon would do.
Re:Both own half. (Score:5, Interesting)
If a majority decision can't be reached than the status-quo basically gets maintained, the things sits frozen.
Just like if you die intestate and have two children and no spouse. Lets say you owned your house strait out for the sake of simplicity. Essentially both kids will have to reach an agreement on how to to dispose the property.
If they can't it will be pretty easy for either heir to ask the court require the thing simply be maintained, taxes paid etc out of the estates other funds, while a judge decides how to parcel out the estate fairly and what should be done. Same thing would probably happen here.
More interesting questions exist though. Lets say you and wife have some embryo's frozen as part of some assisted fertility process. It does not work, but their are left overs. You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support? Are you a dead beat dad if you want nothing to do with it?
Re:Both own half. (Score:4, Interesting)
Embryos seem just ripe for moral debates. Here's another one I've been thinking about recently.
The current most realistic way for humans to get to another star system is via a generation ship; it's the only way out there that doesn't require some sort of revolution in other technologies, such as long-term cryogenic hibernation or relativistic travel. Minimizing mass is of course absolutely critical. The most practical implementation would be to have a crew of three young, short-statured women with a family history of good fertility, a large embryo bank onboard, and appropriate facilities for implantation, with the embryos chosen for implantation in-transit also being female and from family histories of short stature and good fertility. One would try to maintain it so that there's always at least (but ideally not much more than) three people at or younger than a reasonably fertile age, so that there's a few chances to compensate should one woman prove infertile, die, or not wish to take part in furthering the population of the generation ship. Upbringing would be handled by the older generation, with the main focus of education being on medicine and repair skills. If a successful colony could be established on the other end then could a broader range of embryos be used to increase the genetic diversity, including males and people of larger stature and higher caloric consumption.
Now, best would be to start out with a staggered age for the initial crew of the generation ship and keep a staggered age throughout the transit. But here we start to get a problem. No ethics review board is going to approve the decision to, say, lock a six year old girl on a tiny, highly risky spacecraft for the rest of her life and give her a future responsibility to bear other peoples' children and then die in space. She's too young to give informed consent to such a monumental decision. Even if she were to travel with her mother, most ethics review panels would find that morally equivalent to a mother locking her child in a bunker for the rest of her life and refuse it. An infant is even worse - she couldn't even give uninformed consent, let alone informed. But the solution of only starting out the crew with informed consenting adults only postpones the issue. For each child they carry en-route is born without a choice in the matter, into a small, highly dangerous, probably uncomfortable craft with few to no peers, limited opportunities for enrichment, and no ability to leave the situation except death. Is that morally any better than sending young, non-consenting children to begin with?
Re:Both own half. (Score:5, Funny)
May I suggest a ratio of 10 women, selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature, for every man ?
Re:Both own half. (Score:5, Funny)
You haven't lived in a house full of women, have you?
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I work for an organization where women outnumber men 12:1. Every time someone makes a comment like this, I immediately suspect they've never been around that many women before...
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Embryos seem just ripe
Eww.
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Why not ship the frozen fertilized ova to another star system w/o any humans on board? Once they arrive at their destination, robots should be able to handle growing them in a gestational tank and decanting them at the right time.
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Sure. All we'll need is a radical revolution in gestational engineering... which is probably even further away that a revolution in relativistic travel or reliable long-term cryogenics. The uterus is a surprisingly sophisticated organ. Or maybe not so surprising when you consider that it's designed to safely host a parasitic organism for nine months while sharing a circulatory system with its host, and preventing either organism's immune system or incompatible blood chemistry from killing the other.
Child support (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, she can and she will. At least, you produced the sperm while still her husband and would-be father of her children.
If a sperm-donor can be hit for child-support [cnn.com], you would have not a chance. And not just in Kansas, Illinois [boylefeinb...ilylaw.com] too only makes exceptions for sperm donated "through medical channels involving a doctor".
It may work the other way too — a donor may get parental rights after an artificial insemination [dailymail.co.uk].
Presumably, with the rights comes a child support obligation as well — the two better be inseparable [about.com].
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If a majority decision can't be reached than the status-quo basically gets maintained, the things sits frozen.
I actually wrote a couple of articles about this, and I interviewed some lawyers and medical ethicists.
The general legal principle was: You can't force someone to have a child without their consent.
When you have sex, you've given your irrevocable consent.
When you donate your sperm through a legal procedure for anonymous sperm donors, you've given your irrevocable consent. That's the only way you can donate sperm without being legally responsible for the costs of bringing up the child.
When you store your spe
Very tricky issue indeed. (Score:3)
The woman may have her reproductive capability destroyed and so may only have this option to reproduce. However, the guy may not want to be a daddy with this woman.
Personally, I'd try to make some sort of deal to settle the issue, like if she raises any of these embryos over his objection, he bears no responsibility, ever, for the progeny. But if you RTFA, that's already the case, and he still objects to being a father to kids he won't be involved with.
It seems (from TFA) that every state is coming up wit
Re:Very tricky issue indeed. (Score:4, Informative)
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Isn't that what adoption does?
Re:Very tricky issue indeed. (Score:4, Insightful)
the state steps in and forces support for the benefit of the child
Humans respond to incentives. What the State actually accomplishes is encouraging mothers to get rid of the father because she'll get his money anyway (in the vast majority of the cases) without having to deal with him. While this outcome is predictable, empirical evidence has borne it out too. Broken households don't benefit the child, in the vast majority of cases (the empirical evidence bears this out too).
Besides, parents are the holders-in-trust of the child's rights, not the State. The State is a legal fiction and as such cannot hold any natural rights, so it's a non-sequitor. Yeah, they can send the boys in blue to enforce any arbitrary rule, but that's not sound moral reasoning.
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As with any business contract, party B would be free to buy party A out of their half of the contract. Presumably, this would absolve party A of owing any sort of child support later down the road.
Don't overcomplicate things. That's a good part of why our legal system is so corrupt.
Re:Both own half. (Score:5, Interesting)
As with any business contract, party B would be free to buy party A out of their half of the contract. Presumably, this would absolve party A of owing any sort of child support later down the road.
Don't overcomplicate things. That's a good part of why our legal system is so corrupt.
You can't contract out of child support, much like you can't contract into slavery. You can write the contract, sure, but no court will enforce it. The only way to (currently) do so is to donate sperm to a state-endorsed sperm bank. If you simply just donate sperm you will still be on the hook for child support - this has already been tested in courts.
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Parents give their children up for adoption. How would it be different for one parent to give up rights/responsibilities for an embryo?
Certainly, it wouldn't take much of a law to allow the same legal ability.
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There was a case on Slashdot.
Basically, if you're doing anything even slightly out of the ordinary that may be very expensive, consult a lawyer. They aren't all that expensive for a short consultation, and in any event are a whole lot cheaper than eighteen years of child support. The people involved had tried rolling their own agreements, a very bad idea in many cases.
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"As with any business contract"
Parenting is not a business contract.
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You want to divide it in two and give each party one half?
Yes, and the true owner will relinquish their share: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
=)
Re: Both own half. (Score:2)
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Re:Both own half. (Score:4, Insightful)
When it comes to abortion no one seems to care about the father's opinion or feelings on the matter even though without him there'd be no fetus. It's all about a "woman's choice" while utterly ignoring the other side of the equation. Western society in general seems to value females more than males. So I'm guessing this will end up the same way.
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I am not sure it works in this case. In the story the king operates under the assumption neither party wishes to see the child destroyed (children were valuable laborers after all), but perhaps one party cares deeply enough for the child their desire for its well being trumps their selfish desire to possess it or wish to spite other party by denying possession.
In these cases we very likely have one party who wishes to see the embryo destroyed. It does not make sense to turn something over to someone who h
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It's only a side point, but for what it's worth that's a possible verdict under Scottish law, not under English.
Re:Just my take (Score:5, Insightful)
The woman apparently has said that she will not be demanding any support or anything more from the father.
Except that her agreeing to this now means nothing if circumstances change. If she falls on hard times in the future, the state may then go after the father for child support no matter what the couple agreed to previously.
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Yep. Whether or not the children receive support from the absent father is wholly up to the judge. She cannot deny the children's right to support.
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This is true. They've even overturned "clean break" agreements where a lump sum or property has been given as a one-off payment.
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Kansas, last year. Lesbian couple want a child. They enlist a male friend to provide the sperm.
A couple years later, the female couple breaks up. The custodial mom applies to the state for financial aid. The state goes after the sperm donor for recompense. And gets it in court.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/... [cnn.com]
I believe there was a similar case in Sweden a couple of years ago.
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Re:The male gave consent... (Score:4, Insightful)
"He cannot force her to give them up any more than he could force her to abort the fetus or give the child up for adoption"
So can she not force him to pay child support if it's her decision to keep them?
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That entirely depends on the jurisdiction - a similar case went to court in the UK back in 2000 - 2007 and the man won his case.
The woman appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and lost her case completely.
The issue is that the man withdrew his permission for the embryos to be used - up to the point at which they are implanted in the woman, they are jointly owned and cannot be used without express permission of both parties. Embryos are also not legal entities, and as they are not yet p
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That entirely depends on the jurisdiction - a similar case went to court in the UK back in 2000 - 2007 and the man won his case.
The woman appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and lost her case completely.
The issue is that the man withdrew his permission for the embryos to be used - up to the point at which they are implanted in the woman, they are jointly owned and cannot be used without express permission of both parties. Embryos are also not legal entities, and as they are not yet part of the womans body, she does not get automatic final say over their use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
Would your argument work for you if the man was able to take the fertilized eggs and have them implanted in a surrogate who brings them to term? Surely the woman should have some say in that?
Since the legal matter is still being sorted out, I'm trying to look at it from an ethical standpoint. If she had agreed to have her eggs fertilized knowing that they might be implanted in another woman so that a friend/boyfriend could have a biological child in the future, then I think that it would be true that she already gave consent.
If you read the article, you'll find that the couple had been friends for a decade before they started dating and neither seemed to think their romantic relationship was
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So what if he wanted to take the eggs and have a kid with another woman - what would your stance be on that? The combination of the two constituent parts should surely mean that if he wants to use them without her ongoing consent he would be allowed to just as much as she does now...?
Too many people here are jumping to the conclusion that the fertilised eggs are solely the property of the woman even though they are the result of two donations - why should the mans contribution matter less in these cases?
Complex issue (Score:2)
He is the biological father, he is half responsible for these children if they are born.
The problem is that there are NO children yet. Only cells with 2 half nuclei inside (= pre-embryos)
The problems are very real, but concerns children which do not exist yet, but due to biology and the existence of those cells could very well come into existence.
He cannot force her to give them up any more than he could force her to abort the fetus
The notion is different.
- the "abortion" case is about the mother. It's her body, she decides what she's doing, nobody can force her to undergo a procedure that might has consequences on her health / ability to proceates further.
- here the cells are i
Corrections (Score:2)
The problem is that there are NO children yet. Only cells with 2 half nuclei inside (= pre-embryos)
Small correction: apparently [wikipedia.org] you still call it "pre-embryo" even later than that, as long as they aren't implanted into an uterus yet (and they haven't formed a primitive streak. I didn't remember at all this latter part).
Re:The male gave consent... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like saying you can rape your wife because, at one point, she gave consent. It's completely idiotic.
Sorry, but by the time they've split up, he has withdrawn consent, and if she wishes to have a child he has the right to say "not with my sperm you don't". What's that, you now can't have children unless they're mine? Too damned bad.
This is very different from forcing her to abort a fetus, because it's outside of her body and frozen -- which means it's a tissue sample until someone goes to fairly extraordinary lengths to put it back.
I don't think this is nearly as cut and dry as people think. You can't just say "it's her egg, and he's already knocked her up" ... because she isn't pregnant, and this isn't about what she can do with her own body.
Is her ex legally required to have a child with her now that they've split up? Because it's not like in most cases you knock up your ex long after the breakup.
Suddenly a tissue sample in cold storage comes down to "can she force him to have a child with her now"? Because since it's not in her body, it's not like that is the deciding factor.
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That's like saying you can rape your wife because, at one point, she gave consent. It's completely idiotic.
Sorry, but by the time they've split up, he has withdrawn consent, and if she wishes to have a child he has the right to say "not with my sperm you don't". What's that, you now can't have children unless they're mine? Too damned bad.
This is very different from forcing her to abort a fetus, because it's outside of her body and frozen -- which means it's a tissue sample until someone goes to fairly extraordinary lengths to put it back.
I don't think this is nearly as cut and dry as people think. You can't just say "it's her egg, and he's already knocked her up" ... because she isn't pregnant, and this isn't about what she can do with her own body.
Is her ex legally required to have a child with her now that they've split up? Because it's not like in most cases you knock up your ex long after the breakup.
Suddenly a tissue sample in cold storage comes down to "can she force him to have a child with her now"? Because since it's not in her body, it's not like that is the deciding factor.
There are further implications to this: the laws are drafted so that a child is always entitled to maintenance from a parent. Should the courts let her have a baby and agree to regard him as merely a donor and thus relieves him of his obligations there is a greater than even chance that sooner or later a court will be forced to accept that letting a man say "I don't want this obligation" before the first trimester ends is very similar to letting a woman say "I don't want this obligation" before the first tr
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So, who does the "biomatter" belong to when the "biomatter" is a fertilized egg?
It's not her DNA, it's not his DNA. And the fertilized egg is not a human in the eyes of the law...
So, who does the "biomatter" belong to? And why?
Pre-embryo (Score:4, Informative)
Who Owns Pre-Embryos?
From a scientist: What the fuck is a pre-embryo.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] is your friend.
Basically:
- Bunch of cells, still disorganised (apparently, you wait until for the primitive streak to call it proper "embryo". I didn't remember that from my lectures)
- They float around, they haven't implanted into an uterus yet. (That I vaguely remember from my medical studies).
(Well, of course, they were fertilized *in vitro*. It would be hard to find an uterus to implant onto at the bottom of a test tube).
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Who Owns Pre-Embryos?
From a scientist: What the fuck is a pre-embryo.
Which scientist? I was a researcher for seven years, mind...
the disposition/custody of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested.
If the biomatter belongs to a specific person, then it is their biomatter. If you spit on a judge, your biomatter has incriminated you in the act of contempt. If you rape, then your vaginal secretion/sperm is accounted for by the prosecution during your trial as evidence and considered during sentencing. If you froze eggs, they're yours. At best the whole complaint here is a mysoginists tantrum.
Even leaving aside the fact that the biomatter in question belongs equally to both parties, you're still wrong and here's why: biomatter not attached to your body is not legally considered to be your part of your body. It's considered medical waste or similar and as such it is handled by the legal system as any other property; IOW you may be found responsible for it but you're certainly not going to be the default owner of it. You'll be accountable
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Things like clones and identical twins aside, the scientific way to attribute a certain glob of biomatter to a specific person with a high certainty would be DNA analysis.
The problem here is that this scientific way completely fails for fertilized eggs, as their DNA is clearly different from either biological parent.
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They mean frozen fertilized eggs. The eggs have to be fertilized with the male's sperm before freezing. I'm not an expert but apparently that's how it is, they can't be frozen and then fertilized later.
So, there are some fertilized eggs that would grow into human beings if implanted back in a women. Half the material is from the female, half from the male. In the UK both people's consent is required just to keep them on ice, let alone use them.
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This is easy. Based on current legal standards, to force the woman to become a mother against her will is rape. To force the man to become a father is merely a call for more stringent child support enforcement.
Not to mention the woman has the absolute right to destroy the embryos if she so chooses.
Summary judgement for the woman unless you want to upend hundreds of years of law.
Current legal standards are based on the embryo being attached to the woman's body and you have to
violate her person to remove it so the scale is tilted to her favor.
In this case the embryo is not part of the woman's body or the man's body so they have equal right to it.
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So far, she hasn't carried any embryo for even a second. And your first argument is totally bogus - if you have a limited amount of money, that doesn't give you the right to claim a large chunk of Bill Gate's money directly from him "because he has more."
This whole thing is stupid from the get-go. The fact that she doesn't consider her current child as a "real child of hers" makes it clear that she would unfairly treat is as second-class if she could get pregnant from the eggs. That's the same as treating
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I think I voice the majority view when I say I'm tired of seeing you spam discussions repeatedly with this completely off-topic crap.
The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release
With a title like that and a game like that, it undoubtedly deserved to die. Besides, nobody is obliged to give you a soap box or distribute your crappy derivative game, no matter what your views are. Suck it up - you suck!
Don't like it? Then market it yourself and let it stand or fail on its' own merit. That's the way the world works.
Now go ahead and rage because someone