25.1–25.3: How do animals reproduce?

Parent and child King Penguin.

Thirty-year-old Diane Blood wanted to have a child with her husband, Stephen. And then the High Court in England ruled that she could not. The problem: her husband was dead.

Stephen Blood had died two years earlier, but when he was in a coma, his wife asked the doctors to freeze a sperm sample from him, which they did, the day before he died. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, however, ruled that because he hadn’t given written consent, his sperm could not be used.

Figure 25.1: In the headlines: ethical issues and reproductive technologies.

This case illustrates a type of ethical and legal quandary that is becoming increasingly common (FIGURE 25-1). Technology is making pregnancy possible in many situations where it previously was not. But along with many happy outcomes, there are also numerous complex legal battles and, as yet, few consistent legal decisions on such matters. Here are some examples.

• Do couples have the right to make contracts with a surrogate mother, a woman who carries and gives birth to their child? And, if so, can they pay her? In North Dakota, the surrogate actually becomes the legal parent of the child. In Washington, DC, and in many states, a couple can pay the surrogate’s expenses, but nothing more.

• Do egg donors have any rights (and responsibilities) with respect to the children conceived with their eggs? Do sperm donors? States have ruled differently on these issues.

• Do children conceived from sperm or egg donors have a right to know who the donor was?

• If a couple has embryos frozen for later implantation but then gets divorced, who retains custody of the embryos? In one Tennessee case, custody was given to the mother, against the wishes of the father. A Texas court, on the other hand, refused to give frozen embryos to the mother. With almost half a million frozen embryos in the United States, this is likely to become a common case in courts.

  Q

  Question 25.1

  Are frozen embryos divided up like other marital assets at divorce?

In this chapter, we describe how men produce sperm and women produce eggs, as well as the process by which fertilization occurs (or does not occur). We also explore the early stages of development, following fertilization, including the steps through which an embryo is triggered to develop as a male or a female. Lastly, we investigate the perils and promise of a variety of assisted reproductive technologies.

But first, a resolution to the case we opened with. Diane Blood was eventually allowed to take the sperm to another country to be inseminated (after re-mortgaging her house to pay for the expensive legal battles). The law in England still prevents storage of sperm from a man without his written consent, but an appeals court made an exception in her case, and Diane Blood was able to conceive a child (and, three and a half years later, another child) with her (deceased) husband’s sperm.