HOW A FATHER BECAME A BROTHER TO HIS OWN SON
who longs to be a parent become one.
“I was born to the lie that gay people couldn’t have children,” he says, “and I am grateful every day that we live in a time when both social mores and medical advances have made it possible for me to have children.”
A procedure that allows the conception of much-loved children must be a good thing. Surely it is only humane to use any means possible to help men and women, gay and straight, conceive? Yes – and yet… The Cassons’ case has ignited huge controversy: the procedure may have taken place in the sterile surroundings of an IVF lab, but the participants’ consanguinity raises the spectre of one of the few remaining taboos – incest.
Twitter reaction to the story ranged from “nothing wrong with this” to “gross”, “disgusting” and “selfish”.
Robert Flello, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, spoke of his “many concerns and worries” about the case.
Jill Kirby, social policy analyst, finds it “very disturbing that any mother would consider it healthy or appropriate to give birth to her son’s child. What is even more worrying is that the High Court has granted the son an adoption order, partly based on the ‘closeness’ of the relationship between the family members involved.”
Mrs Casson countered these attacks by pointing out that Miles, the baby she conceived using Kyle’s sperm, “is not biologically tied to me, other than he’s my grandson. I love being a parent and for Kyle to experience that. I would do this for him.” She and Kyle have said that friends have been overwhelmingly supportive.
Surrogacy cases have increased dramatically over the past few years – in 2012, 167 babies were registered in Britain as born to a surrogate parent.
This marks a huge increase from 2007, when only 47 parental orders were filed to register a baby born through surrogacy, according to figures from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. The upward trend is continuing: in the first month of last year alone, 24 babies were registered to British parents after a surrogacy. Celebrities from Elton John to Nicole Kidman have turned to surrogacy to have their children, and, in the process, turned the intervention into an acceptable lifestyle choice.
And Mary Portas, the retail consultant whose Secret Shopper programme is broadcast on Channel 4, made headlines recently when Melanie Rickey, her wife, conceived a son from Mary’s brother’s sperm. Lawyer Natalie Gamble, whose firm was involved in the Cassons’ case, explains that surrogacy using close family members has become commonplace.
“We have seen many instances where sisters, brothers-in-law, cousins, help one another out in this fashion,” she says.
“It is difficult to speak of precise numbers, but UK law, which does not permit advertising for a surrogate or for a surrogate to offer her services, is pushing couples to look among family members for surrogacy.”
Many childless couples seek help abroad: India, Georgia, Russia, Thailand, the Ukraine and a few states in America allow women to be paid to carry another’s child through IVF and embryo transfer.
But international surrogacy raises ethical questions of its own, as shown by the recent case of Gammy, a baby with Down’s syndrome born to a Thai surrogate and allegedly left behind by the intended Australian parents.
For Gamble, the only issue raised by the Cassons’ case is a legal one. “UK law does not allow singles, like the son [Kyle] in this case, to apply for a parental order, or birth certificate; so the young man had to apply for an adoption order instead,” she says.
She is campaigning to change the law, which she says condemns children to forfeit “a UK birth certificate which reflects their true parentage, and instead must either become adopted children, or live in limbo without resolved legal status”.
But the Cassons raise more than legal concerns; they raise profound ethical questions too. In a world where anyone can conceive, the family will become a notion so confused that children will struggle to understand the crucial relationships most of us can take for granted. Kinship will become a loose term embracing well-paid strangers and wellmeaning relatives.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was founded in 1991 as a safeguard against such muddles. Its remit is to ensure that reproductive procedures are ethical and in the best interests of the child. But critics have repeatedly questioned its ability to oversee what goes on in the 77 clinics licensed for fertility treatment in the UK.
The chairman of the authority, Sally Cheshire, is a former accountant who previously headed the Audit and Governance Committee and Licence Committees. The 13 members of her board include lawyers, medical professionals and women who have “relevant personal experience in infertility and unsuccessful treatment”. The make-up of the board prompted one lawyer to conclude that “the HFEA focuses on facilitating successful infertility treatments rather than monitoring it”.
Beyond the HFEA offices, IVF labs and the tabloid headlines, surrogacy unsettles our notion of family ties – motherhood in particular. Commercial surrogacy raises the prospect of a rent-awomb industry spreading across the globe, involving young women who seek short-term motherhood for financial gain. Real, lifelong