Technology is a wonderful thing in most ways — but it’s posing new challenges for sperm donors and their desire for anonymity. Rachael Lehmann-Haupt has an interesting piece up on Slate’s Double X today about how DNA testing and Google can lead to parents and children tracking down their sperm donor, whether he wanted to be found or not.

She follows the case of a donor from California who donated when he was young, and left a little bit of information in his donor profile — namely, that his father was in the Baseball Hall of Fame and his mother was a nurse, his birthdate, and his college major. Along with those things, he made it clear he didn’t want to be found. Continue reading »

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Babies conceived via IVF are hardly news. Going back for treatments and procedures into a third decade like Monica and Neil Ward, however, certainly catches one’s attention.

At long last, the British couple are the stunned and elated parents of twin sons, following a quarter of a century of fertility treatments. Twenty-five years! And how does daddy Neil describe it?

A living hell. Continue reading »

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Mention the words “buying” or “building” a baby to anyone in the adoption or infertility communities and you are guaranteed to raise a few hackles. So I’m sure this story in yesterday’s New York Times is setting off quite the firestorm.

It’s a look into several different surrogacy arrangements gone bad, but the main part of the story centers around two couples from Michigan, the Kehoes of Grand Rapids and Laschell Baker of Ypislanti. Baker acted as a surrogate for the Kehoes, and then decided she was taking back the twins she bore when she discovered that Amy Kehoe had a mental illness. She and her husband already have four children. Continue reading »

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A woman who left her wife to convert to evangelical Christianity is now facing jail . . . because she doesn’t think the Vermont courts have the right to force her to send a little girl conceived during their relationship to visit her ex-girlfriend. Continue reading »

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The “where did I come from” question is one most parents sweat about. Explaining their origins to your children is one of those major “don’t screw this up” parenting moments, because if you get it wrong at worst you damage their self-esteem and at best? You’re getting mocked every time they reminisce about their childhoods with their friends as an adult.
It’s even more fraught for parents who have had some sort of help to bring their children into the world. This NYT article talks about how parents whose children were carried by surrogates address that issue with their kids. Continue reading »

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