This post on FamilyScholars is interesting, about a mother with a seven year old daughter who is freezing her own eggs because doctors think her daughter might not be able to produce her own eggs when she is an adult. I don’t think I would want my mother-in-law to also be the mother of my children, that would make her visits even more awkward, like I was married to my mother-in-law, not my wife. And if I was that girl’s father, I wouldn’t want my daughter to diss me and have my wife’s child with her husband, as if my genes were some sort of cancer that she regrets having. I think that if stem cell technology enables my wife to restore her own eggs, of her genes from her mother and father, that is infinitely preferable to having her mother’s baby, or some other donor woman’s baby. It isn’t legal for a woman to marry her daughter’s husband, that means that this conception would be illegal. Yet this is what would be going on here, if a husband has children with his wife’s mother. Hopefully this seven year old will not feel pressured to carry her mother’s child and medicine will give this girl real options to have her own children.
…was the first line of a redneck joke…
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Thank you for introducing me to this idea. It had simply never occurred to me. I know I’m not going to use my own remaining eggs – they just get flushed away one by one on the monthly menstrual tide. So I’m going to march myself right down to the fertility clinic and see about popping a few into the deep freeze for posterity (and progeny). It is a sin to waste what God has given! Every sperm is sacred, every ovum divine!!!
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p.s. I think I’ll call my cousins and sister in law. Maybe we can get a group rate at the clinic.
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Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations -Spock
Very funny, Laurel!
This guy’s ad comes up when you do a google search on donor sperm. He created a website freevials.com to give away his sperm to as many people as he can, he hates to waste it. He says he thinks lots of his kids being born will help the world more than anything he could invent or do. I like how he put pdfs of all of his junior high school science papers up there, and still remembers that he won the pushup competition. What a geek! And he says he’s “2/3 English, 1/3 Scottish”, which is irrational.
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There’s nothing illegal about cheating on your wife with her mother. I’m not encouraging folks to do it, but it isn’t illegal.
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Good Lord, when will it end with your (not “Your”) wish for control over other people’s gametes?
Of course there is. First of all, sex with someone you are not married to is illegal. Second, it is illegal for a woman to marry her daughter’s husband (after the daughter’s marriage has ended, obviously).
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As to gamete donation, though, they evade the law by pretending it isn’t sexual intercourse.
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What is it with me? I’m trying to preserve marriage and the idea that we all have a right to have our own children with the person of our choice (except if there is a supportable basis to prohibit that type of relationship). This 7-year old has a right to have her OWN children someday, and it weakens that right to act as if someone else’s eggs are equally legal for her to use. We don’t have a guaranteed right to raise children and be a parent, we only have a guaranteed right to marry someone if someone wants to marry us, and try to procreate with that person. It’s disrespectful of marriage’s rights to act as though there is a right to be a parent.
Where’s the movement to preseve marriage by outlawing divorce? Doesn’t it water down the meaning of marriage when someone–say Newt Gingrich or Rudy Guliani or Liz Taylor–gets married more often than they get their teeth cleaned? And where is the movement to jail adulterers in order to protect the sanctity of marriage?
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The right to marry someone if someone wants to marry us is limited, not guranteed. You can only marry once at a time. You can only marry a person of the opposite sex, in most states. You can only marry someone of appropriate mental capacity. And I think you can be prevented from marrying if you’re in prison.
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I mean no offense, but there are more important things in this world going without respect than your marriage or the institution itself. Before you worry about respecting the institutions used to define the parameters of relationships, maybe we could work on getting respect for some of the individuals first.
Maybe one of the lawyers around here (David, Raj?) could confirm it, but isn’t the fornication law unenforceable?
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In Massachusetts Versus Cusack, the SJC found that since dinner and a movie ALREADY exceeds $30, this statute has “built-in enforcement.”
Thanks, he’s here all week. Try the veal.
they look at you funny if you order the veal.
You’re on a roll, Goldstein. Thanks for the chuckles!
On a John Howard diary, scrambled eggs are the anti-christ.
… adoption weakens our right to have our own children?
… surrogacy weakens our right to have our own children?
… sperm donation?
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And those who might be biologically incapable of reproducing? Sucks to be them?
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I can almost understand your concern with the slippery ethical slope of genetic manipulation for reproductive purposes. Almost. But then you make an incomprehensible argument against same-sex marriage or go off on one of these tangents and lose me completely.
Why yes, it sucks to be infertile. Some people don’t mind apparently, and some even do it purposefully, but many people are terribly anguished by it. But medicine can help, and even better, healthy living can prevent it. If people adopt because they don’t feel justified having their own kids, then it does weaken our right to have our own children. Surrogacy is often done to help a couple have their own children. Sperm donation certainly weakens our right to have children, since now we have to compete with the sperm of genius pushup champions.
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Regarding marriage, do you agree that all marriages are allowed to conceive children together?
The state? Church?
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And how many people do you know who are refusing to have children out of wedlock because they “aren’t allowed” to do so?
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And as for sperm donation, do you know of examples where a heterosexual woman went with donated sperm over the objections of her husband because she just didn’t think his genes were good enough?
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Like I said, there are valuable discussions to have about various forms of reproductive and genetic manipulation, but you really do a good job suppressing them with the way you manage to frame the arguments.
It was a simple question: Regarding marriage, do you agree that all marriages are allowed to conceive children together?
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I’m talking about the state allowing it, but it’s true of churches also, and parents, too. All marriages are allowed to conceive children together. No one, whether from the church or the state or the neighborhood, prohibits any marriage from conceiving children together. Do you agree with that? If not, can you name one of the marriages that are not allowed to conceive children?
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I do think that many siblings do not conceive children because they are not allowed to. And many couples really do wait until they are married before conceiving, because they know that’s the legitimate way to do it. Not all do, of course, but we aren’t talking about the actions of unmarried people, we are talking about the rights of married couples.
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I do think that women have chosen donor sperm over the objections of their husband, yes. Certainly they choose donors over their boyfriends all the time. Of course I don’t know of an example, as that would be very private. I bet it usually results in the end of the marriage when that happens, unless the man eventually agrees that his own sperm is bad. I have heard men claim that they don’t want to reproduce their own father, they want the line to end.
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And by all means, please share your thoughts in whatever frame you prefer.
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Yes, because all people that are not direct family (as in siblings or parent-child) are “allowed” to conceive children together.
Thanks for agreeing. All marriages are allowed to conceive together. People that we will not allow to conceive together are not allowed to marry (and it is more than blood relations, it is also minors, certain relations through marriage, and people married to someone else). And though people have always had children out of wedlock, it has always had varying degrees of illegitimacy/disapproval. In some places it is punishable by death to this day, and even here there is no real right to have have children out of wedlock; it is only quote-unquote “allowed” in that we don’t punish anyone and no longer deny any rights to children born out of wedlock (because now we have paternity testing and can enforce obligations on fathers, essentially acting as though they married and divorced). But it isn’t a right, no law or court case has gone that far, even Eisenstadt didn’t go that far (hence the logic of the Zablocki decision 5 years later).
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Marriage has always meant that we officially now allow two people to conceive together, using their own gametes. We approve of the concept of children – the conception of children. Marriage marks official consent of all parties and sets in place obligations and responsibilities. No marriage is not allowed to conceive together, and it is important that we preserve that right of marriage as the sine qua non, the essential right of marriage.
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eury13, do you still think it is an incomprehensible connection?
Marriage = conception rights. Therefore, to prevent same-sex spouses from creating little frankenbabies, we have to outlaw same-sex marriage.
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Oversimplified and myopic? That’s another story.
that married couples are allowed to vote if they are citizens over 18 years of age, drive a car if they have a driver’s license, and to choose whether to have tea, coffee, or neither with breakfast.
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Amazing how many things married people are allowed to do!
Not every couple is allowed to conceive together, CMD. Or, to put it better, a person is not allowed to conceive with just anyone.
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A person should not be allowed to to conceive with someone of their own sex. This is something that some people are going to want to try, but we should not allow it.
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All marriages should be guaranteed a right to attempt to conceive children together.
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Unmarried couples can be prohibited from conceiving children, married couples cannot be.
This is 2007. Unmarried couples cannot be prohibited from conceiving any more than married couples can be required to conceive.
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As a practical matter, the link between marriage and procreation has been broken for a very long time. Neither has anything to do with the other any more.
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Nor, frankly, should it, in the eyes of a non-denominational and non-theological state.
But same-sex couples should be prohibited from conceiving. And it is as true as it ever was that every marriage is allowed to conceive. That link has never been broken, all that has happened is we have decided that illegitimacy laws punished the wrong people, and denied people born out of wedlock with equal rights. But doing that never ever stripped marriage of conception rights. There are billions of male-female pairings that are not allowed to conceive together, and every single one of them is not allowed to marry. Because every single marriage is allowed to conceive together.
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Marriage gives same-sex couples the right to conceive together, and they shouldn’t be given that right. In a non-denominational state.
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As long as we continue allow same-sex conception, though, then of course same-sex marriage should also be allowed. But we should enact an egg and sperm law to restrict all conception of people to male-female couples (agree or not?) and protect the right of every marriage to conceive children together, using their own genes (agree or not?).
And how do you feel, btw, about the case in this post? You apparently feel that a man should be allowed to conceive with his wife’s mother? That the resulting children aren’t going to have any issues with their father having regular sex to their half-sister or their mom’s mother being their mother also? Shouldn’t they pursue medical solutions or adoption, not incestous adultery?
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And note Laurel, all of these people are heterosexuals, and I feel this should be prohibited. It’s not as urgent to stop as GE is, from a bio safety perspective. But I do think we should eventually ban using donor gametes completely if we can, or at least ban using gametes donated by unmarriable people like in this case, both as a matter of children’s rights and to strengthen marriage. But it isn’t a part of the egg-and-sperm law, nor does it necessarily follow from the law or the civil union compromise I’ve been promoting, though it certainly would fit.
of this entire subject.
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Change the station, John. Or find a new hobby. It’s gotten old.