Topeka sperm donor mentioned in Senate hearing

Opinions on assisted reproduction bring together odd allies

Posted: February 20, 2013

 

By Andy Marso

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

 

A group of unusual allies gave presentations to a Senate health committee Wednesday, urging more regulation for assisted reproduction.

 

Researchers from Christian groups, as well as a prominent abortion-rights group, the National Organization for Women, said the United States has become a "Wild West" for "commercial surrogacy" that exploits and endangers women.

 

A host of ethical concerns surrounding fertility treatments were raised, including the case of a Topeka man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple.

 

Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture in California, said that incident spurred her to make the trip to Kansas.

 

"The couple has since separated, and they are seeking financial support for the child," Lahl said. "The case is now in your courts to see if the man who donated his sperm is responsible for paying child support."

 

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, asked the chairwoman of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee if there is a bill regarding assisted reproduction. Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, said there isn’t, adding that Wednesday's presentations were purely educational.

 

“So little is known about it and it is a wild, wild west out there with a lot of cowboys," Pilcher-Cook said. "I think women’s safety, health and their very lives are at stake, and we are also at risk of commodifying human life — buying and selling human life, designer children. I mean it’s one thing after another, and I think it’s very important that we as legislators directly inform ourselves on this subject.”

 

Pilcher-Cook said legislators should weigh the short-term desires of individual citizens against the "long-term ramifications of how this technology could affect our society."

 

William Marotta, the Topeka man embroiled in a legal battle with the state after answering a lesbian couple's online ad for a sperm donor, was mentioned, but Wednesday's presentations mostly focused on fertility treatments' effects on women.

 

David Prentice, a professor with the Family Research Group, said conceiving children with the help of technology has been controversial since the first "test-tube baby" was born in 1978.

 

"It involved conception and manipulation of human embryos in the laboratory," Prentice said. "While the technique has helped some infertile couples to have children, the practice of manipulating human embryos has also opened the way to areas of ethical concern and to cavalier views of nascent human life and of women, including stockpiling of 'excess' human embryos, and instrumental use of women for buying of their eggs or use of their wombs as surrogates."

 

Prentice's organization is Christian. He was joined in his concerns by Kathleen Sloan, who is on NOW's board of directors. Sloan said the surge in "commercial surrogacy" has led to wealthy infertile couples exploiting low-income women for their wombs.

 

"Surrogacy degrades a pregnancy to a service and a baby to a product — an entitlement for those with the financial means to procure one," Sloan said.

 

Sloan also said fertility treatments often include hormone injections that carry risks of bleeding, infection, ruptured cysts and other potentially fatal side effects.

 

"Given all these risks it is scandalous, not to mention grossly unethical, that women contemplating selling their eggs or bodies are not provided with relevant information before they give their consent," Sloan said.

 

No couples who successfully conceived through assisted reproductive technology told their stories Wednesday, though Prentice said his group estimates 5 million children have been born worldwide using such methods.

 

The committee did hear from Dana John Onifer, a doctor whose wife's fertility treatments failed. Onifer said he had reservations about trying in-vitro fertilization from the beginning, but his wife argued: "You would treat me if I had lung cancer. Well, I have infertility, why not treat that?"

 

"OK, but what is a good, right and Christ-honoring treatment?" Onifer said. "I don't know if IVF is good or right or Christ-honoring."