Word: mother
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bessie Berger rules the roost through a combination of intimidation and expertly applied guilt. "Someday you'll remember how you sucked away a mother's life!" she cries at her frustrated and repressed son, Ralph, still at home at 22 and still stuck working in rich Uncle Morty's garment warehouse. Ralph's father, Myron, is an ineffectual nebbish; his sister Hennie a nasty, frustrated romantic; and his grandfather, old Jake, an unreconstructed Bolshie from the days of the Wobblies...
...judge, who is hearing the suit without a jury, will have little to guide him as he makes his decision. There have been at least four other instances in which a surrogate mother has decided to keep the child. The cases either were settled out of court or produced no guiding precedent. In the past few years, at least 21 states have groped toward legislation on surrogacy, without success. Laws defining and regulating the practice must somehow be distinguished from statutes in all 50 states against baby selling. Further, in the 29 states that have laws covering artificial insemination...
...paradoxes abound throughout the subject of surrogacy, a notion that speaks to the parental instinct and offends it in the same stroke. So that a father can enjoy a blood relation to his child, the surrogate mother is persuaded to treat the same bond as negotiable. For all the complexities, however, surrogacy is one of the simplest and most venerable of the new conception options. Even the Bible offers a parallel (in the Book of Genesis, naturally). When his wife proved unable to conceive, Abraham impregnated her handmaiden Hagar, who bore Ishmael. There were hard feelings in the aftermath...
...standard contract currently used in many such arrangements does not provide the surrogate mother with many rights, but puts a good number of restraints on her. She agrees to abstain from smoking, alcohol and drugs as well as sexual intercourse during the period around insemination. Most agreements forbid her to abort without consent of the father, though some require it if amniocentesis reveals fetal abnormalities. And while the mothers are screened, though not always with sufficient diligence, the contracting couples often are not. What are the ethical dilemmas of a surrogate mother who delivers her child into a home...
...September a committee formed by the American Fertility Society of Birmingham issued a 100-page volume of ethical guidelines relating to the host of new reproductive technologies. Because of the risks to the mother, the committee pronounced itself "not favorably disposed to the use of surrogate mothers for nonmedical reasons." But the members declined to issue an across-the-board condemnation. And they deplored the absence of reliable data from which to draw conclusions. Mary Beth Whitehead is a high school dropout who married at 16. Is that typical of surrogate mothers? Are they more likely % to be exploited...