Category: Ethics

Parents can use sperm harvested from their dead son to make grandchildren, judge rules

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West Point cadet Peter Zhu, who was unmarried, died after a skiing accident on February 23, Judge allows parent to use harvested sperm.

He had been found unresponsive on a ski slope on the grounds of the military academy in upstate New York.  Zhu was then taken to a hospital, where he was declared brain dead days later.  Judge now rules that parents may use their son’s harvested sperm.harvested sperm

In March, his parents petitioned the court to allow the hospital to have their son’s  harvested sperm retrieved and frozen at the same time harvest his organs for donation.

The petition was granted and the sperm was preserved at a sperm bank after the retrieval.  His organs were also harvested to help those waiting for a lifesaving transplant before he was buried in the West Point Cemetery.

According to CNN, the Supreme Court Justice John Colangelo’s ruling gave Zhu’s parents the ability to attempt conception with a surrogate mother using their late son’s sperm.  “At this time, the court will place no restrictions on the use to which Peter’s parents may ultimately put their son’s sperm, including its potential use for procreative purposes,” Colangelo wrote.  “They shall possess and control the disposition and potential use of their son Peter’s genetic material.” 

Zhu’s case isn’t the first incident of this type, according to AP.In 2007, a court in Iowa authorized recovery of a man’s sperm by his parents to donate to his fiance for future procreative use.  In 2009, a Texas woman got a judge’s permission to have her 21-year-old son’s sperm extracted after his death, with the intention of hiring a surrogate mother to bear her a grandchild.

StandardMedia.com, May 30, 2019, by Charles Odero

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Which Box Do You Check? Some States Are Offering a Nonbinary Option

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As nonbinary teenagers push for driver’s licenses that reflect their identity, a fraught debate over the nature of gender has arrived in the nation’s statehouses.

Ever since El Martinez started asking to be called by the gender-neutral pronouns “they/them” in the ninth grade, they have fielded skepticism in a variety of forms and from a multitude of sources about what it means to identify as nonbinary.nonbinary

There are faculty advisers on El’s theater crew who balk at using “they” for one person; classmates at El’s public school on the outskirts of Boston who insist El can’t be “multiple people”; and commenters on El’s social media feeds who dismiss nonbinary gender identities like androgyne (a combination of masculine and feminine), agender (the absence of gender) and gender-fluid (moving between genders) as lacking a basis in biology.

Even for El’s supportive parents, conceiving of gender as a multidimensional sprawl has not been so easy to grasp. Nor has El’s suggestion that everyone state their pronouns gained much traction.

So last summer, when the Massachusetts State Legislature became one of the first in the nation to consider a bill to add an “X” option for nonbinary genders to the “M” and “F” on the state driver’s license, El, 17, was less surprised than some at the maneuver that effectively killed it.

Beyond the catchall “X,” Representative James J. Lyons Jr. (he/him), a Republican, had proposed that the bill should be amended to offer drivers 29 other gender options, including “pangender,” “two-spirit” and “genderqueer.” Rather than open the requisite debate on each term, leaders of the Democratic-controlled House shelved the measure.

“He articulated an anxiety that many people, even folks from the left, have: that there’s this slippery slope of identity, and ‘Where will it stop?’” said Ev Evnen (they/them), director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, which is championing a new version of the bill.

As the first sizable group of Americans to openly identify as neither only male nor only female has emerged in recent years, their requests for recognition have been met with reservations that often cross partisan lines. For their part, some nonbinary people suggest that concerns about authenticity and grammar sidestep thornier questions about the culture’s longstanding limits on how gender is supposed to be felt and expressed.

“Nonbinary gender identity can be complicated,” said Mx. Evnen, 31, who uses a gender-neutral courtesy title. “It’s also threatening to an order a lot of people have learned how to navigate.”

And with bills to add a nonbinary marker to driver’s licenses moving through at least six legislatures this session, the expansive conception of gender that many teenagers can trace to middle-school lunch tables is being scrutinized on a new scale.

NYTimes.com, May 29, 2018 by Amy Harmon

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Case against State Department for refusing to recognize citizenship of child of binational lesbian couple goes forward

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A district court said Wednesday that a case filed against the U.S. State Department for refusing to recognize the birthright citizenship of the son of a binational lesbian couple will go to trial, and he denied the government’s motion to dismiss it.

The case, filed by Immigration Equality, the country’s leading LGBTQ immigration rights organization, on behalf of Allison Blixt and her son Lucas Alexander Zaccari-Blixt challenged the U.S. State Department’s refusing to recognize birthright citizenship in children of lesbian parents.lgbt family planning

Blixt, who’s American, met her wife, Zaccari, a citizen of Italy, when she was on vacation in New York City. They wanted to stay together, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act (which was later struck down), Blixt could not sponsorZaccari loved for a permanent visa, so they decided to move to London. They got married and started a family, giving birth to their two boys, Lucas and Massi.

They conceived their children using their own eggs and sperm from an unknown donor.

U.S. law allows American citizens to pass citizenship onto their children, even when they are born abroad. The State Department recognized Massi as a citizen because he had been conceived and carried by Blixt; but denied his brother Lucas the same birthright, because he had been carried by his other mother.

Immigration Equality stepped in and filed a complaint with the U.S. State Department in behalf of the Zaccari-Blixt family. The lawsuit, which was filed in Jan. 2018, claimed that the policy disregarded the dignity of same-sex marriages by the birthright citizenship of the children of married same-sex couples. The State Department responded to the lawsuit by opposing the group’s demand that it acknowledge Lucas’ citizenship.

On Wednesday, Judge Emmet Sullivan decided that the case should go to trial.

“[He] didn’t rule on the merits, only that the couple had made allegations at this stage that were enough for the case to go forward. But the judge made clear that he had a problem with the real-world consequences of the State Dept’s position,” BuzzFeedNews reporter Zoe Tillman tweeted. “The govt argued the same rules would apply to an opposite-sex couple in this situation (one citizen + one non-citizen who have a kid overseas). The lawyer for the plaintiffs said the problem is this broadly affects same-sex couples (given practicalities of how they can have kids.)”

NYDailyNews.com, By MURI ASSUNÇÃO  May 15, 2019
 
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US Department of State Fighting Citizenship of Gay Couple’s Son

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Pompeo, Department of State, appeals court ruling that bi-national family’s children are American

More than a year after the US Department of State shrugged off existing same-sex marriage and immigration laws and rejected citizenship for a child of two gay dads, the agency is now appealing a federal judge’s ruling that the child is an American citizen.department of state

As it turns out, the Department of State has stuck to its posture in this kind of case for years — dating back before the Trump administration.

Israeli citizen Elad Dvash-Banks and American citizen Andrew Dvash-Banks were married in Canada in 2010 and had two sons via surrogates there in 2016 before moving to California. Andrew is the biological father of Aiden and Elad is the biological father of Ethan, but both fathers are legal parents of both kids. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) stipulates that the children — born in Canada — should both be American citizens because at least one of their parents is an American citizen.

Yet, the Rex Tillerson-led State Department argued otherwise, saying that Ethan — the boy whose biological father is not an American citizen — is also not American. In deciding the question of US citizenship for the two Canadian-born children, the State Department went so far as to order DNA tests on both of the boys.

The State Department conclusion would leave young Ethan as the only member of the Dvash-Banks not eligible for permant residency in the US; his father qualifies as the spouse of an American citizen.

Andrew and Elad, represented by the LGBTQ-focused legal group Immigration Equality, decided in January 2018 to challenge that finding in federal court in the Central District of California. The court ruled in February of this year that the boy is a “US citizen at birth” and gave the State Department — now headed up by Mike Pompeo — 60 days to appeal.

On the 60th day, the Trump administration moved forward with an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, despite that court having twice ruled that the INA should be interpreted that there need not need be a biological link between children and their legal parents in order for them to be recognized as US citizens as long as one parent is an American citizen.

gaycitynew.nyc, May 12, 2019 by Matt Tracy

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Parental Rights In New York To Graduate From The Dark Ages, Hopefully

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New York parental rights

The changes, if they go through, will significantly improve the state of New York law, and protect parental rights and donors’ rights.

New York parental rights

Many New York parents are currently in a very scary legal environment, and they may not even know it. Did you know that a hopeful single parent who turns to a known sperm donor to conceive in New York has no way to sever the donor’s parental rights? That’s right. And that means that a sperm donor can, at any time, seek parental rights to the child. Vice versa, the parent can seek child support from the sperm donor. That’s concerning! The situation is also true for egg and embryo donations.

New York attorney and adoption and assisted reproductive technology powerhouse, Denise Seidelman, spoke to me about the current problematic legal environment, as well as her ongoing efforts to fix the situation, and to protect parents and children. Seidelman and her law partner, Nina Rumbold, are among those in New York zealously advocating for the passage of the Child-Parent Security Act (CPSA).

Even The Governor Wants It!

The CPSA was introduced in 2013 by Assemblymember Amy Paulin and State Senator Brad Hoylman. Hoylman is himself a parent of two children born through surrogacy. Hoylman and his husband were forced to go outside of New York to have their children through surrogacy because, in addition to the bleak donor situation, compensated surrogacy is illegal in New York.

The CPSA has undergone a number of revisions since its initial proposal, and is still undergoing a few finishing touches. But not until this year did anyone have as much hope that this legislation could pass. Key among factors giving New Yorkers newfound optimism is the vocal support of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Governor has publicly supported the bill, explaining that “New York’s antiquated laws frankly are discriminatory against all couples struggling with fertility, same sex or otherwise.” Even more exciting, the Governor initially included the CPSA in his executive budget plan. However, it was removed in the last few weeks — possibly out of an interest in letting the legislature pass the bill with the latest updates.

What’s So Special About This Bill?

It protects children, for one! No kid should be stuck in the middle of a legal battle questioning who his or her legal parent is, merely because New York’s laws are decades out of date. Specific protections for families and those who help them include:

  • Clarifying and protecting parental rights when a sperm donor, egg donor, or embryo donor assists with conception. About time! Seidelman explained that while the surrogacy aspects of the bill are getting most of the attention, she is especially excited about the positive impact of the donor-related provisions. The bill provides that those who turn to a donor can be assured that they are the legal parents of their child, and that a donor can’t claim parental rights to the child. And, on the other side, that donors can rest easy that their good deed of helping another family no longer opens them to the risk of later being sued for child support for the child. This protection could encourage more couples to donate remaining embryos to others to form their families, rather than destroying them or donating them to research.
  • Legalizing compensated gestational surrogacy. At the moment, New York is among a small minority of U.S. states which dictate that a woman is not permitted to receive compensation if she chooses to act as a gestational surrogate for another. In fact, it’s criminal.

AboveTheLaw.com, by Ellen Trachman, April 10, 2019

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Making Babies in the Year 2045 – Genetic Data

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Huge pools of Genetic data collected over the past generation allow you to pick many of your child’s genetic traits. Are you comfortable with that?

genetic defect

The year is 2045. The genomes of four billion humans have been sequenced, creating a huge pool of genetic information accessible to researchers. This process had been well underway in 2019, but accelerated rapidly once many countries realized that understanding human biology was the ultimate big data problem and a key to reducing health care costs and enhancing national competitiveness. Widely sharing deeply personal health information had alarmed privacy advocates. But supporters of sharing genetic data argued convincingly that the benefits to society outweighed the privacy concerns of individuals. The debate may have once seemed abstract. But now you are in a fertility clinic and the issues are fast becoming real.

The cascade of numbers overwhelms you as the doctor splashes the spreadsheet across the digital walls of her office.

“I hope you can see the wonder and possibility in these figures,” she says, trying to put you at ease.

As you sit in the spa-like clinic, it’s hard to imagine it was just last week when your assistant placed the miniature device on your arm that painlessly suctioned out a small amount of blood and started you on this journey. The spark of life that used to begin in bedrooms and the back seats of cars was now migrating out of the human body and into the lab.

“Take your time,” the doctor continues. “You need to first select the early- stage embryo optimal for you. The numbers across the top list the 300 options for you that we’ve prescreened from the initial 10,000. The column down the left lists all the disorders and traits influenced by genetics that we have some ability to predict. The numbers populating the chart are our best predictions for how the genetic component of each trait would be realized if we selected based on that trait alone. We’re looking for high composite scores emphasizing the qualities most important to you.”

You scan the lists on the walls wondering if a human being can really be reduced to numbers. “Can you really predict all of these traits?” you ask.

“These are all probabilities, not certainties,” the doctor says. “Not all traits are equally genetic. And genetics is a trade-off, so we can’t choose to optimize every trait. Thirty years ago we could mostly just identify disorders determined by a single genetic mutation, but in 2018 we started using what we call ‘polygenic scoring’ to make better predictions about diseases and traits influenced by hundreds or thousands of genes. 

“Our biology is still about as complex as it’s been for millions of years but the technology we’re using to understand it is getting exponentially more sophisticated,” she continues. “There may be magic in humans, but we aren’t made of magic. Our DNA is a type of source code we’re learning how to read and write.”

The idea of humans as hackable data sets may be increasingly common but still unsettles you. The numbers on the wall seem to confirm the doctor’s words. “And this 60 means that embryo would be good at math?” you ask, pointing to one of the options on the list.

NYTimes.com, by Jamie Metzl, April 10, 2019

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AI COULD SCAN IVF EMBRYOS TO HELP MAKE BABIES MORE QUICKLY

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Embryo AI

IF A WOMAN (or non-female-identifying person with a uterus and visions of starting a family) is struggling to conceive and decides to improve their reproductive odds at an IVF clinic, they’ll likely interact with a doctor, a nurse, and a receptionist, not an AI specialist. They will probably never meet the army of trained embryologists working behind closed lab doors to collect eggs, fertilize them, and develop the embryos bound for implantation.

One of embryologists’ more time-consuming jobs is grading embryos—looking at their morphological features under a microscope and assigning a quality score. Round, even numbers of cells are good. Fractured and fragmented cells, bad. They’ll use that information to decide which embryos to implant first.

It’s more gut than science and not particularly accurate. Newer methods, like pulling off a cell to extract its DNA and test for abnormalities, called preimplantation genetic screening, provide more information. But that tacks on additional costs to an already expensive IVF cycle and requires freezing the embryos until the test results come back. Manual embryo grading may be a crude tool, but it’s noninvasive and easy for most fertility clinics to carry out. Now, scientists say, an algorithm has learned to do all that time-intensive embryo ogling even better than a human.

In new research published today in NPJ Digital Medicine, scientists at Cornell University trained an off-the-shelf Google deep learning algorithm to identify IVF embryos as either good, fair, or poor, based on the likelihood each would successfully implant. This type of AI—the same neural network that identifies faces, animals, and objects in pictures uploaded to Google’s online services—has proven adept in medical settings. It has learned to diagnose diabetic blindness and identify the genetic mutations fueling cancerous tumor growth. IVF clinics could be where it’s headed next.

“All evaluation of the embryo as it’s done today is subjective,” says Nikica Zaninovic, director of the embryology lab at Weill Cornell Medicine, where the research was conducted. In 2011, the lab installed a time-lapse imaging system inside its incubators, so its technicians could watch (and record) the embryos developing in real time. This gave them something many fertility clinics in the US do not have—videos of more than 10,000 fully anonymized embryos that could each be freeze-framed and fed into a neural network. About two years ago, Zaninovic began Googling to find an AI expert to collaborate with. He found one just across campus in Olivier Elemento, director of Weill Cornell’s Englander Institute for Precision Medicine.

wired.com by Megan Molteni, April 4, 2019

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WHY I’M AN ORTHODOX RABBI WHO IS GOING TO OFFICIATE LGBTQ WEDDINGS

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Shouldn’t our Orthodox communities rush at the opportunity to keep as many Jews, including LGBTQ jews, engaged in their Judaism? Is this the Torah and this its reward?

orthodox LGBTQ

A queer friend of mine from a haredi Orthodox background had posed a query publicly on social media. She had attended a conference on LGBTQ inclusion. There she learned a practice of certain Catholic priests who described going into gay bars in full clerical garb: They would sit in the bar, and when queer Catholics approached them, the priests would affirm God’s love and their belonging place in the church.

My friend asked her community of observant Jews, acknowledging that rabbis don’t have any identifying clerical garb: When might Orthodox rabbis do the same?

As an Orthodox rabbi myself, I was intrigued. I discovered a rainbow kippah online and decided to purchase it.

It managed to garner attention the first day I wore it. A woman took a picture of me and motioned a thumbs-up. A homeless man on the subway who was begging for money approached, pointing to my kippah, and said, “Now I like that,” and bumped my fist. A man in high heels came up to me before getting off his stop and said, “Thanks for the yarmulke.” I even had made my way to the headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch that very same day for a meeting and a Hasid asked me where he could find a kippah like mine. I surmised: The kippah works.

But what is it symbolizing and is it enough?

The kippah is a symbol of my commitment to God, to Torah and the Jewish people. To me, the rainbow kippah is also a symbol that God and Judaism love you no matter your sexual orientation.

I understand that the plain reading of Leviticus considers homosexual sex a “toevah,” often translated as an abomination. I understand that Jewish law views kiddushin, the ritual ceremony of marriage, as a legal structure between a man and a woman. I know and respect this.

But I also believe that the Torah does not want human beings to live alone, and supports a covenantal relationship between parties as they build a faithful Jewish home. I know that Judaism has, for thousands of years, had a rich understanding of the diversity of gender identities. I know that the Torah affirms the God-endowed dignity of all human beings.

In the recent film “Boy Erased,” based off Garrard Conley’s memoir describing his experience in a gay conversion program, a scene between a Baptist pastor father and his adult gay son has stayed with me. Conley’s character says something along the lines of “I’ve tried to change, God knows I’ve tried. I can’t change. Now it is your turn.”

www.thejerusalempost.com, April 7, 2019 by Avram Mlotek

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Mormon Church to Allow Children of LGBT Parents to Be Baptized

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, announced a remarkable reversal to its policies on LGBT people on Thursday.

mormon lgbt day

The decision rolls back a 2015 policy that barred children living with same-sex couples from important religious practices like baby-naming ceremonies and baptisms. That policy also declared that LGBT Mormon church members in same-sex marriages were apostates and subject to excommunication.

“Effective immediately, children of parents who identify themselves as LGBT may be baptized without First presidency approval,” the Mormon church’s First Presidency said in a statement on Thursday.

“While we still consider such a marriage to be a serious transgression, it will not be treated as apostasy for purposes of Church discipline,” the statement said. “Instead, the immoral conduct in heterosexual or homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way.”

The decision, instructed by President Dallin H. Oaks, who leads the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, comes as the church prepares for its general conference this coming weekend.

NYTimes.com, by Elizabeth Dias, April 4, 2019

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One Truth About Adult Guardianship – ‘I’m Petitioning … for the Return of My Life’

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When Phyllis Funke hit bottom, the court appointed a guardian to prop her up. The remedy is like prison, she said. But “at least in prison you have rights.”

The last weeks that Phyllis Funke could legally make decisions for herself, she climbed into bed, planning to stay there for a while. It was the end of 2016 and she felt disillusioned with the election and wounded by her brother’s recent move to Texas.

She wasn’t considering suicide, she said. She just needed to go under the covers until she could figure out how to deal with the rest of her life, so totally alone.

adult guardianship

She had credit cards, a car, friends and financial advisers in Maine and New York.

When a caseworker from Adult Protective Services and a city psychiatrist entered her apartment on March 3, 2017, clipping the security chain because she did not answer the door, she was unraveling emotionally and physically, at risk of becoming homeless or worse. She had no idea what price she would pay for the intervention.

“I’ve been bullied, blackmailed and stripped of the things I need to live, including my money,” she said on a recent afternoon. “Everything has been taken away from me. I have no access to my bank accounts. I don’t have the money to pay for the medications that I’m prescribed. I don’t get mail. I can’t choose my own doctors.

In a City like New York, where people are used to looking past their neighbors, how often do you see someone and ask yourself, Is that person O.K.? Should I call someone? Maybe they’re older and not moving well. They look adrift in the produce aisle, or you pass their open apartment door and you can’t see the floor for the clutter. You’re a paramedic and they’re refusing to go to the hospital after a bloody fall. It’s your mother or your uncle, and you’re worried about the bills piling up, or the email scams or the sudden loan to a stranger.

You bandage the wound or you promise to check in tomorrow, or you turn away and get on with your life.

Or you call Adult Protective Services. After all, that person needs some sort of protection, doesn’t she?

New York Times, December 7, 2018 by John Leland

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