Who Is The Mother?

[charles brough]

Jane's female fetus has aborted and it is decided she can never become pregnant again. She and her husband want their child anyway and have the money to do it. Specialists remove egg cells from the fetus, fertilize them by the husband and impregnate a surrogate mother with the fertilized eggs. It grows full term and a healthy baby is born.

 

Who is the mother?

 

 

charles, HOME PAGE

[Tormod]

If the eggs come from Jane then she is the biological mother.

 

Charles, you should place the link to your home page in your signature. Check out this page:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/profile.php?do=editsignature

 

(must be logged in to see that page)

[Fatstep]

The surrogate is the gestational mother; the fetus is the genetic mother.

 

Currently, with advances in reproductive technologies, the function of biological motherhood can be split between the genetic mother (who provides the ovum) and the gestational mother (who carries the pregnancy)[...]

 

Mother - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Tormod]

Oh, I misread the original post.

[charles brough]

If the eggs come from Jane then she is the biological mother.

 

Charles, you should place the link to your home page in your signature. Check out this page:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/profile.php?do=editsignature

 

(must be logged in to see that page)

 

GOTCHA! As I said, the eggs came from the FETUS. That means that Jane was the GRANDMOTHER. ;)

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look right into it.

 

charles, HOME PAGE

[charles brough]

The surrogate is the gestational mother; the fetus is the genetic mother.

 

 

 

Mother - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

CONGRATULATIONS!

[TheBigDog]

Jane's female fetus has aborted and it is decided she can never become pregnant again. She and her husband want their child anyway and have the money to do it. Specialists remove egg cells from the fetus, fertilize them by the husband and impregnate a surrogate mother with the fertilized eggs. It grows full term and a healthy baby is born.

 

Who is the mother?

 

 

charles, HOME PAGE

Uh...

 

Is the fetus' father the father of the fetus' baby? Or did they find another father? I know that is not what you are asking, but it might be hard to find dates for an aborted fetus, much less a man willing to make a commitment. The other alternative is of course incest, or at least inbreeding, which leads to its own issues.

 

Disregarding who the father of the fetus' children is, the biological parent would be the fetus, even though it would never be born to see its own offspring.

 

The parent is whoever takes responsibility for raising the child. Birth is a legal matter of custody. I am not sure if the grandparents would have the legal authority to use the eggs from the fetus. It is indeed a complex scenario.

 

Bill

[CraigD]

GOTCHA! As I said, the eggs came from the FETUS. That means that Jane was the GRANDMOTHER.

Oh, you’re a tricky one!

 

As TBD alludes to, the father’s relationship to the healthy baby is more complex. He’s both the baby’s father and grandfather – a not uncommon relationship in a currently fairly small fraction of human society, and the norm among many non-human animals.

 

Nobody in the thread’s yet mentioned mitochondrial ancestry. Although most IVF fertilization involving a surrogate pregnancy and birth mother involves the implantation of an intact fertilized ovum from the genetic mother, so the child’s nuclear and mitochondrial mother are the same, the strange procedure charles describes sounds as if it could involve nuclear transfer, in which the surrogate mother’s egg’s nucleus is replace with the nucleus of one of the nuclear parent (Jane’s aborted fetus). In this case, the baby literally has one father and two genetic mothers – a consequential condition, as mitochondrial genes can dramatically effect trait ranging from health to physical size to athletic and (likely) mental ability.

 

If that’s not strange enough, NT could permit the child’s nuclear “mother” (the aborted fetus) to be male.

[charles brough]

Yes, the field is complicated! Apparently, it is still only for the rich and the upper middle class because of the cost, but if it ever becomes cheaper and people have to deal with the grown-meaningless terms "mother" and "father," it makes you wonder what it would tend to do to the already-deteriorating monogamous structure of this whole civilization!

 

charles, HOME PAGE

[LJP07]

Jane's female fetus has aborted and it is decided she can never become pregnant again. She and her husband want their child anyway and have the money to do it. Specialists remove egg cells from the fetus, fertilize them by the husband and impregnate a surrogate mother with the fertilized eggs. It grows full term and a healthy baby is born.

 

Who is the mother?

 

 

charles, HOME PAGE

 

I don't really see a complication here myself?? The actual Biological Mother whether it be Mother or direct Grandmother if the eggs came from the Fetus of one person, then they are obviously the real mother?? The direct mother will still have the same fetal cells and these do not change in the surrogate mother thus the mother will always be the same, I don't get the idea here myself, and don't see the complication.

[charles brough]

Of course, the point is that Jane is not the mother but the grandmother of the baby. So, in that sense, the baby has no mother at all!

[CraigD]

Of course, the point is that Jane is not the mother but the grandmother of the baby. So, in that sense, the baby has no mother at all!

Or, we could say the baby was orphaned from her mother prior to her conception.

 

I’m still trying to work out how you would get viable ova from an aborted fetus. If it was late term, I suppose you’d have to somehow subject the extracted, immature ova to an “artificial puberty” treatment. If early, there’d be no recognizable ova to extract.

 

Perhaps it would be easier to clone the aborted fetus, gestate, deliver, and raise the woman to maturity.

 

The weirdness of these speculations sheds light on why so many nations have banned human cloning – the ethical and legal questions are as daunting as the technical ones. Looking back on the first post,

Jane's female fetus has aborted and it is decided she can never become pregnant again.

I suspect we’re leading ourselves on an implausible chase – how plausible is it that Jane, despite being rendered unable to become pregnant, would go to the considerable trouble and perversity of extracting and rendering viable ova from her aborted fetus, when she almost certainly has plenty of viable ova of her own? Examined realistically, her case doesn’t seem unusual for present-day IVF candidate.

[charles brough]

I don't really see a complication here myself?? The actual Biological Mother whether it be Mother or direct Grandmother if the eggs came from the Fetus of one person, then they are obviously the real mother?? The direct mother will still have the same fetal cells and these do not change in the surrogate mother thus the mother will always be the same, I don't get the idea here myself, and don't see the complication.

 

Well, perhaps not having a mother might be considered a complication. If your grandmother is your mother, that might be a complication to some people!

[InfiniteNow]

Well, perhaps not having a mother might be considered a complication. If your grandmother is your mother, that might be a complication to some people!

 

Not if you're a Mormon. ;)

[charles brough]

Not if you're a Mormon. ;)

 

Tell me about it! What next is it that those crazy Mormons believe. I have been told they believe "God" is only the god of THIS planet and that other planets belong to other gods.

 

Anyway, are you really a smartsexyape? I like smart sexy apes.