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Latest Surrogacy News
Egg donor enters battle for custody of triplets
By Barbara White Stack,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Wednesday, July 07, 2004
In a case that raises
profound questions about the meaning of parenthood, an
Ohio judge yesterday indicated he would permit a third
person -- the egg donor -- to take a step toward
claiming triplets born to a surrogate mother eight
months ago.
In a brief hearing in
Akron, Summit County Common Pleas Judge John P. Quinn
suggested he would permit genetic testing -- which would
be standard in a routine custody or support case -- that
would allow the egg donor to seek parental rights,
including custody of the triplets.
It is virtually unheard
of for egg or sperm donors to seek custody of a
resulting child.
But then, there's
precious little that's normal about this case in which
an Erie County surrogate mother, Danielle Bimber, was
granted temporary custody of triplets she bore under
contract for an Ohio man.
The man, James O.
Flynn, 62, of Cleveland, will ask an Erie County judge
Friday to give the babies to him. He provided the sperm
to fertilize the donor eggs and contracted with Bimber
for the surrogate birth.
So now, three unrelated
people, the sperm donor, the egg donor and the surrogate
mother, all claim the three babies they helped produce.
If the decisions on
parenthood by the Ohio and Pennsylvania judges conflict,
it's unclear whose ruling would prevail.
Bimber's attorney,
Joseph Martone of Erie, is expected to argue Friday
before Erie County Common Pleas Judge Shad Connelly that
she and her husband, who have three other children,
should keep the babies because Bimber is the only one of
the three seeking custody who has acted as a parent.
She gave the babies
healthy births. She took them home from the hospital
when Flynn failed to produce the legal documents
necessary to secure custody and after he visited the
babies only once shortly after they were born Nov. 19.
For the past eight months, she has fed, changed, bathed
and nurtured the babies as a mother.
Flynn, who has visited
the babies, is expected to contend that he should get
them because he contracted for their birth, paid tens of
thousands of dollars in fees and provided half the
genetic material to make each child. He says he would
raise them with his 60-year-old fiancee, Eileen Donich.
If genetic tests prove
that a woman identified in court records only as "J.R."
is the biological mother, she is expected to argue some
time later before Quinn in Ohio that her egg donation
makes her the mother, so she should get the babies.
The Erie judge
considered whether J.R. could be a parent, but dismissed
that possibility because she had made no claim in
Pennsylvania. It's unclear why she filed her claim in
Ohio because none of those seeking custody live there
and the children were not conceived there.
J.R., believed to be a
college student from Texas, was not in court yesterday
to speak for herself. But Steve Litz, director of the
Indiana agency, Surrogate Mothers Inc., that arranged
this surrogate birth, described her claim on the babies
as a scam.
He charged that she
does not want to raise the children. She is cooperating
with Flynn, he said, and will give him the babies if
she's awarded parental rights or custody.
Her claim is a fallback
for Flynn if he loses the Pennsylvania custody case,
Litz charged.
Flynn did not attend
yesterday's hearing, and his attorney, like all of the
attorneys in the case, was forbidden by Quinn from
discussing it.
Flynn and the egg donor
are represented, however, by attorneys from the same
Akron firm, Dobbins & Henshaw. They are Elizabeth
Dobbins and her father Richard E. Dobbins.
Litz, who is an
attorney, said he knows of no case in which an egg or
sperm donor won custody of a child. The vast majority
are seeing payment for services, not the obligations of
parenthood or child support. He said J.R. has been
dismissed from his program as an egg donor.
If a donor can seek
custody, it raises the question of whether a person
using a donor egg or sperm could, in turn, seek child
support.
Pennsylvania law does
not address the issues of donation or surrogacy at all,
a situation bemoaned by Connelly in his decision giving
Bimber the right to seek custody of the babies.
That legal vacuum
leaves the definition of parenthood far less clear than
the test tubes in which the babies were conceived.
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