Word: parenthood
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...sense, he belonged to everyone for those three weeks, and that universal parenthood may be worth remembering. Baby Doe was the product of a beneficent social impulse. Malahoff wished him into existence, and Stiver provided the incubator, but the context and impetus for the birth were in the public realm, the generally, if warily accepted idea that if infertile people want children strongly enough, then modern science ought to offer a way. Thus arose the recent and remarkable inventions of surrogate parents and test-tube babies. No one is wholly comfortable with these mechanisms, including the principals, but when...
Choice may, in fact, be the key to the matter, the center of public uneasiness. On the face of it, or even in the heart of it, there is nothing wrong with the idea of surrogate parenthood, or with any indirect process by which a child is created because somebody wants him. The essential difference between such a procedure and an opposite one like abortion is that in the surrogate situation someone does want the child, the desire being compelling. Indeed, everyone concerned wants the child; the prospective family and the surrogate parent too, either for profit...
...promoting illicit sex, the Reagan Administration last week formally announced a long-proposed new rule. Starting Feb. 25, clinics receiving federal funds that give birth-control pills or other prescription contraceptives to an unmarried minor must notify the parents within ten working days. Hastening into court, the Planned Parenthood Federation, the American Civil Liberties Union and New York State, among others, contended that this threatened invasion of privacy violates the U.S. Constitution and a 1981 law funding such clinics. A federal judge, perhaps as early as this week, will decide whether to delay imposition of the rule while the issues...
...response, Faye Wattleton, president of Planned Parenthood, notes that 25% of teen-agers surveyed in 1980 said they would stop asking for contraceptives if their parents were informed. Only 2% said they would give up sex. The result, argues Wattleton, will be more teen-age abortions (now an estimated 203,000 annually) and more children born to unmarried teen-agers (131,000 currently). Last April, 32 members of Congress agreed; they contended in a letter that the regulation "would result in a drastic increase in the number of teen-age pregnancies." One signer was Massachusetts Republican Congresswoman Margaret Heckler. After...
...just four times a year. Depo-Provera has been used by 10 million women over the past 15 years in more than 80 nations, including some in Western Europe. It has been approved by the World Health Organization, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which has widely distributed the drug in Third World countries. Despite its popularity overseas, however, Depo-Provera is not approved as a contraceptive in the U.S. Reason: the Food and Drug Administration fears that not enough is known about the drug's long-term side effects. Last week...