Desperately Seeking Daddy: A Critique of Pratten v British Columbia (Attorney General)

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (02) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Lori Chambers ◽  
Heather Hillsburg
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Genetic Knowledge ◽  
Sperm Donation ◽  
Sperm Donors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Court Of Appeal

Abstract Current Canadian law, by silence rather than explicit choice, does not prevent anonymous sperm donation. Anonymous sperm donation, however, may soon disappear. In the recent Pratten decision, the Supreme Court of British Columbia determined that anonymity violates the constitutional rights of children born of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). While finding that children should have access to genetic knowledge, the court failed to consider the impact of the elimination of anonymity on other parties to ARTs, both sperm donors and ART families. The case was appealed by the Attorney General of British Columbia and heard by the British Columbia Court of Appeal in February 2012 and was overturned. While agreeing with the decision of the Court of Appeal, this article argues that the court failed to provide a fulsome analysis of issues related to privacy, genetic knowledge, alternative family formation, and the false assertion that sperm donation makes a man a father.

scholarly journals Informal Sperm Donation in Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 481
Author(s):  
Irina G. Polyakova
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Sperm Donation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Marital Relations ◽  
Traditional Family ◽  
Sperm Donors ◽  
Medical Tests

Rising infertility across the globe has created a growing demand for assisted reproductive technologies (ART). In recent years, apart from sperm donation in formal settings such as fertility clinics, informal donation practices have emerged and spread across Russia. These reproductive donation practices have become possible due to the development of social networks and private online platforms. We conducted a pilot study (eleven semi-structured interviews) of the informal sperm donation in Russia and analyzed donor-recipient interactions, donors’ expectations and experiences of finding recipients online. We focus on donors' motivations and on the meanings, which donors invest in this practice that consumes significant resources on their part (medical tests and artificial insemination costs, travel and accommodation expenses, sometimes mutually agreed financial support of future offspring). We interpreted the practices that coalesced around informal donation from the perspective of symbolic interactionism, because it allowed us to showcase how actors reflected on and formulated the meanings of their actions in the absence of externally imposed rules (legal regulations, established moral conventions). Since informal donation practices do not fit into the traditional schemes of interpretation, such research requires the actors involved in informal donation either to create their own schemes or to modify the existing conceptual frames in creative ways. The study shows that informal donors do not only provide their genetic material but also spend time and invested considerable resources to ensure their procreation, including eventual financial support of the child. At the same time, these men are not interested in marital relations or paternal relations with their offspring. Thus, the informal sperm donors do not associate the parental project with traditional family and its values. We conclude that ART engendered a new phenomenon, which might be described as extramarital reproduction. Assisted reproduction outside marriage ­gains footing in Russia and requires more detailed further study.

Surrogacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Lyndon Shanley
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Parental Status ◽  
Parent Child Relationship ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Child Relationship ◽  
The Impact

The development of assisted-reproductive technologies sharpened perceptions of the differences among three major criteria for parental status—biological (genetics and gestation), volition/intention, and caregiving/functional. This chapter surveys the development of these justifications. It argues that of these, caregiving—and the underlying philosophic framework of the ethics of care—is the most satisfactory grounding of parental status for three reasons: first, it places relationship at the centre of its theoretical and practical concerns; second, caregiving focuses attention on the child; and third, thinking about relationships of care ensures that we consider the impact of social factors, such as race and class, on reproduction and family formation. But despite its strengths, this chapter concludes that caregiving is not fully satisfactory for grounding recognition of a parent–child relationship. It advocates a pluralistic account that regards the relationships established by all three criteria, as significant to both social and legal groundings of parental status.

scholarly journals Alteration of Genomic Imprinting after Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Long-Term Health

Life ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 728
Author(s):  
Eguzkine Ochoa
Keyword(s):  
Embryonic Development ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Genomic Imprinting ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Early Embryonic Development ◽  
Global Methylation ◽  
The Impact

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are the treatment of choice for some infertile couples and even though these procedures are generally considered safe, children conceived by ART have shown higher reported risks of some perinatal and postnatal complications such as low birth weight, preterm birth, and childhood cancer. In addition, the frequency of some congenital imprinting disorders, like Beckwith–Wiedemann Syndrome and Silver–Russell Syndrome, is higher than expected in the general population after ART. Experimental evidence from animal studies suggests that ART can induce stress in the embryo and influence gene expression and DNA methylation. Human epigenome studies have generally revealed an enrichment of alterations in imprinted regions in children conceived by ART, but no global methylation alterations. ART procedures occur simultaneously with the establishment and maintenance of imprinting during embryonic development, so this may underlie the apparent sensitivity of imprinted regions to ART. The impact in adulthood of imprinting alterations that occurred during early embryonic development is still unclear, but some experimental evidence in mice showed higher risk to obesity and cardiovascular disease after the restriction of some imprinted genes in early embryonic development. This supports the hypothesis that imprinting alterations in early development might induce epigenetic programming of metabolism and affect long-term health. Given the growing use of ART, it is important to determine the impact of ART in genomic imprinting and long-term health.

scholarly journals Reproductive fluids, used for the in vitro production of pig embryos, result in healthy offspring and avoid aberrant placental expression of PEG3 and LUM.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelynne Paris-Oller ◽  
Sergio Navarro-Serna ◽  
Cristina Soriano-Úbeda ◽  
Jordana Sena Lopes ◽  
Carmen Matas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Performance ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
In Vitro Production ◽  
Aberrant Expression ◽  
Low Efficiency ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background: In vitro embryo production (IVP) and embryo transfer (ET) are two very common assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in human and cattle. However, in pig, the combination of either procedures, or even their use separately, is still considered suboptimal due to the low efficiency of IVP plus the difficulty of performing ET in the long and contorted uterus of the sow. In addition, the potential impact of these two ART on the health of the offspring is unknown. We investigated here if the use of a modified IVP system, with natural reproductive fluids (RF) as supplements to the culture media, combined with a minimally invasive surgery to perform ET, affects the output of the own IVP system as well as the reproductive performance of the mother and placental molecular traits.Results: The blastocyst rates obtained by both in vitro systems, conventional (C-IVP) and modified (RF-IVP), were similar. Pregnancy and farrowing rates were also similar. However, when compared to in vivo control (artificial insemination, AI), litter sizes of both IVP groups were lower, while placental efficiency was higher in AI than in RF-IVP. Gene expression studies revealed aberrant expression levels for PEG3 and LUM in placental tissue for C-IVP group when compared to AI, but not for RF-IVP group.Conclusions: The use of reproductive fluids as additives for the culture media in pig IVP does not improve reproductive performance of recipient mothers but could mitigate the impact of artificial procedures in the offspring.

The Enduring Legacy of ‘Reckless Disregard’

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 316-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
David McArdle
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Personal Injury ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Canadian Province ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Appeal Decision ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Court Of Appeal

Personal injury at common law has spawned many cases where sports participants have inflicted injury either upon other participants or upon spectators/bystanders. This paper is not an exhaustive analysis of those ‘sports torts' cases but focuses instead upon the impact of Wooldridge v Sumner, a Court of Appeal decision that was legally sound but based upon highly significant errors of fact, and which has subsequently been advanced before the courts in two jurisdictions as authority for untenable propositions that concern both the standard of care and the duty of care owed by sports participants. While a consideration of the authorities prior to Wooldridge illustrates that there was never a basis at common law for the argument that either the standard or the duty of care differed from that pertaining in non-sporting contexts, the case has been appropriated by counsel in order to argue along those lines even though Wooldridge is not authority for either proposition. On some occasions those arguments have actually received the support of the courts of England and Wales and of the Canadian Province of British Columbia. Despite the existence in both jurisdictions of more recent authorities that ought to have heralded the demise of both concepts, they have proved remarkably tenacious.

LGBT Parenting and Family Formation

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien W. Riggs
Keyword(s):  
Research Evidence ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Division Of Household Labor ◽  
Reproductive Services ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
Lgbt Parenting ◽  
Outcomes For Children ◽  
Lgbt People

Over the past three decades, rapidly growing numbers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have become parents. LGBT people may become parents via giving birth or by adopting or fostering children. Some LGBT people may use Assisted Reproductive Technologies as part of their journey to parenthood. Other LGBT people may become parents as part of a blended or stepfamily. Overall, research comparing LGBT-headed families with heterosexual and/or cisgender-headed families demonstrates broadly similar outcomes for children. A key point of difference pertains to experiences of discrimination, which can occur when LGBT parents (and their children) access reproductive services, when engaging with their families of origin, in schools, and in terms of broader societal attitudes. Other points of difference pertain to the division of household labor, views on parenting, and beliefs about the needs of children. In many respects, the research evidence suggests that, across these three areas, LGBT parents engage in practices that positively benefit their children.

The impact of endometriosis on IVF: an evaluation using the society of assisted reproductive technologies (SART) database

2014 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. e48-e49 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Senapati ◽  
M.D. Sammel ◽  
S. Boudhar ◽  
C.B. Morse ◽  
K.T. Barnhart
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
The Impact

Genetic Knowledge and Family Identity: Managing Gamete Donation in Britain and Germany

Sociology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 939-956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Klotz
Keyword(s):  
Information Sharing ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Genetic Knowledge ◽  
Gamete Donation ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Regulatory Uncertainty ◽  
Moral Framing

Reproductive technologies involving donated eggs or sperm continue to elicit questions regarding family identity and the accessibility of genetic information in Europe. Both policy-makers and affected parents are faced with decisions about how to manage donor-data. Using ethnographic findings and policy analysis, this article compares modes of regulation in Germany and Britain, which variously authorise actors to manage kinship information and family formation. I consider the role of interest groups for affected parents and analyse how they contribute to a moral framing of the decision – if, when and how to tell a child about the donor. This ‘moralisation’, reflecting wider contemporary endorsement of information sharing within family life, tends to encourage early disclosure practices among so-called families-by-donation. German parents expressed greater anxiety about disclosure than British parents, which I attribute to greater regulatory uncertainty and to tensions between clinical pressures of secrecy and the moral pressure for information sharing.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document