April 24, 2008
Note to self: Never doubt Yuval Levin (a TNA senior editor). Medical experts are weighing in on the Aliza Shvarts controversy, and are saying it’s a hoax: “The most likely scenario,” said Dr. Edward Funai, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of obstetrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital, “is...
April 24, 2008
Human Future blogger Jennifer Lahl interviews Wendy Kramer, creator of the Donor Sibling Registry. I’ve just finished a piece on donor-conceived children, and I found this part especially moving: Lahl: I’ve followed your story and founding of DonorSiblingRegistry.com for some time now. When you founded the registry it was a...
April 23, 2008
The Yale Daily News delves into the workings of the Yale Oocyte Donation and Surrogacy Program: The women who donate their eggs are primarily motivated by a desire to help others to conceive a child, Dorothy Greenfeld, the Yale program’s social worker, said, though the sum is often what first piques their interest when they see an...
April 22, 2008
A new fertility test may help women push back childbearing later still: Pamela Barbasetti di Prun, 45, a mother of three grown children from her first marriage, wanted to try to have a baby with her second husband. When her FSH levels came back elevated, signaling her fertility was on the wane, her doctor suggested the Staten Island,...
April 22, 2008
Forget “Heather has two mommies.” What if Heather’s mommy is her dad? The Washington Post has an interesting story about how ART and other trends have made the old “birds-and-bees” talk that much more complicated: Changes in reproductive technology, a new openness about formerly closeted subjects and the...
April 22, 2008
Baby Mama opens this Friday in the United States. Here’s the full trailer: Anthony Lane has a review in the New Yorker: Forget the title, the target audience, and the taglines: what fuels “Baby Mama” is not the eternal quest for motherhood, or the topical conflict between parenting and careers, but an old-fashioned...
April 21, 2008
English writer and activist Donna Dickenson has a new book out, Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled By Flesh and Blood. To judge from this op-ed in the London Times, it sounds promising: This week, leading scientists and religious representatives will meet in London to hear each other out and try to overcome the black-and-white divide...
April 21, 2008
Is the embryo a “who?” In the City Journal, Peter Lawler reviews Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. Choosy mothers choose caesareans. Why should we think that the human genome is a once-and-for-all-finished, untamperable product? Ronald Green makes the case for designer babies, and Richard Hayes...
April 18, 2008
Marie Claire writer Sarah Elizabeth Richards spent $13,000 of her savings to freeze her eggs: Egg freezing may not lead to babies, but it has let me put panic on the shelf and be excited about my future again. It has helped me get closer to my boyfriend and have tear-free Sunday summits about the pros and cons of parenting. It has...
April 18, 2008
Still more on the “curious lives of surrogates.” From the NY Daily News: [I]n real life, surrogacy is hardly a comedy, says Melissa Brisman, a New Jersey attorney who has helped more than a thousand couples through the process. “Somebody who thinks it’s a good way to make money would probably drop out when they...