According to a recent newspaper report [1], an IVF clinic in the Netherlands may have impregnated up to 26 women with a stranger’s sperm due to a mix-up. The question is, in an age when we are told that the natural ties don’t matter, why we should be concerned about this?
As we reported in an earlier blog, a new law [2] in Ontario has just struck the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from the statute books and declared, in effect, that the natural ties are of little or no consequence in the life of a child. How can they be if it is all the same whether a child has two mothers or two fathers, as distinct from their own biological mother and father?
Indeed, this same Ontario law allows for a child to have up to four ‘parents’. Where does nature fit into this scheme of things? It doesn’t.
Given this worldview, which is now the official worldview in a growing number of countries including Ireland and the Netherlands itself, why should anyone be concerned if an IVF clinic impregnated some women with the wrong sperm? Surely all that should matter is that the child will be well loved by whoever raises them?
DNA tests will show in no time when and if these ‘mix-ups’ have, in fact, occurred. If they have, the clinic can expect to be sued. What will be the basis of the lawsuit? Will it be that the commissioning couple wanted to have their own biological child? But that would imply that the natural ties matter after all.
Or will it simply be on the basis that the women were impregnated with the wrong sperm and it is immaterial that the ‘right’ sperm was to come from the man who would be both the biological father, and the ‘social father’ of the intended child? The ‘right’ sperm could as easily have come from an anonymous sperm donor in Denmark (the world leader in donor sperm) who is tall, good-looking, athletic and intelligent.
In other words, the ‘right’ sperm is simply the sperm the commissioning couple or woman chose for themselves.
Going down this route, the lawsuit would proceed purely on the basis that the commissioning couple’s ‘consumer rights’ had been frustrated.
Logically speaking, given the current view of the family, this is the only way to go, or else we have to admit that the natural ties do indeed matter.
Despite the passage last year of same-sex marriage and the appalling Children and Family Relationships Act, I doubt very much if most ordinary people really believe the natural ties don’t matter. If that is what they really believed, then they wouldn’t bat an eyelash if they were sent home from the maternity hospital with the wrong baby. But of course, they would care, very much so.
Proof that the natural ties matters is also found in the fact that very many adopted children go looking for their natural parents (especially their mothers), and thousands of donor-conceived children are now looking for their sperm-donor dads and egg-donor mothers.
Sooner or later this second category of children will bubble to the surface of public consciousness, then we will have to re-evaluate unjust laws like the Children and Family Relationships Act.
PS. One final thought; if we really believe the natural ties don’t matter, then why do the vast majority of couples who use IVF opt to use their own egg and their own sperm, rather than an egg and sperm from the most physically and intellectually ‘optimum’ donors they can afford?