Who Is The Mother – Who Has The Right To Decide
In the recently decided New Jersey surrogacy case, the judge made a ruling that inherently found that the woman carrying the child was the parent irrespective of not having any genetic link.
In years past, in the psychological world and particularly within the realm of adoption the question of nature vs. nurture reigned supreme. That quandary related to what the determining factors were in the psychological development of a person. The debate has endured and despite many studies the answer is far from clear.
In the realm of egg donation and surrogacy a new variation of the nature vs. nurture debate has emerged. However, the question now is not what the determining factor will be in the psychological development of the child, but rather, who is the real “mother”.
Recently, there was an article in the Jerusalem Post where Rabbi’s grappled with issues relating to Jewish egg donors and non-Jewish egg donors. The quandary they face is that to the extent Israeli law does not allow egg donation except for the use of extra embryos that are part of a couple’s IVF process, the domestic Israeli availability of Jewish egg donors is practically nil.
Apparently, this forced many Israeli’s to go abroad and avail themselves of non-Jewish egg donors.
Now for the problem – in Orthodox Jewish law, the religion of the child follows the religion of the “mother” and in the case of egg donation, the general consensus of Orthodox Rabbi’s seems to be – that when faced with egg donation the religion of the child will follow the religion of the egg donor as opposed to the woman that carried the baby. Simply stated, their religious belief is that the egg donor is the mother of the child.
From a scientific point of view, the child will be a combination of the genetics of the sperm donor and egg donor.
When often questioned as to the influence that a surrogate has on the child the best explanation I can give is that the surrogate is like a hotel for the embryo. When you check into a hotel, obviously the environment of the hotel will have something to do with your experience. However, in terms of health, so long as there is no disease in the air or similar situations, and your nutritional needs are met, you will in all likelihood leave the hotel in the same basic health as when you arrived.
To believe that the makeup of a child will be determined by the surrogate makes about as much sense to me as someone checking into a Hilton hotel with the expectation that they will emerge looking like Paris Hilton.
The contrast between the court in New Jersey, on the one hand, and the analysis of the Rabbi’s regarding the apparent need for Jewish egg donors to maintain the continuity of the religious line without needing to resort to conversion, on the other hand, is fascinating.
While it seems clear that the makeup of the child will be determined by the egg donor as opposed to the surrogate I think that the “Who is the Mother” controversy will endure the same as “Nature vs. Nurture” — for many years to come without resolution.
Irrespective of the lack of an answer to this question, in our experience we have found that many intended parents of the Jewish faith feel a strong need to use a Jewish egg donor. We are so happy that many egg donors of the Jewish faith are willing to help their co-religionists.
Similarly, Chinese or other Asian intended parents feel a bond with their particular country of origin and often times, Intended Parents of Chinese extraction insist on locating Chinese egg donors – an emotion we understand and are similarly happy to be able to accommodate.
However there is a dramatic difference between the individual needs of an Intended Parent or Intended Parents and the decision of a court that rules who the mother is and has such far reaching ramifications.
