All In The Family

A 55 year old woman gave birth to her three grandchildren, the Washington Post reports today. The woman had offered to be a surrogate for her grandchildren when her own daughter had tried unsuccessfully for several years to become pregnant through in vitro fertilization. Ethicists' opinions on the surrogacy arrangement were varied. For more info, read on: [link] -- Linda Glenn

Living Wills Have "Failed"

Here in the Miami Herarld is an account of a recent paper in the Hastings Center Report, which describes the failure of living wills- paper documents that list medical choices if you become terminal and incapacitated. A more helpful thing to do- although by far not foolproof- is designate a trusted surrogate to make your end-of-life choices. "Another choice that holds less legal weight but perhaps more influence: thoughtful conversations in advance with your regular doctors." -Dominic Sisti

Four Parents, Sort of

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has found one of those "lots of people in the mix" IVF cases, in this case fairly garden variety 90s courtroom drama about who gets or is responsible for les enfant. Pennsylvania, though, has had some pretty interesting cases in which the typical "I agree not to ask for the child to whom I am contributing DNA or a womb" agreements are nullified. In addition, Pennsylvania had an extraordinary case in the 1990s involving a man who killed an infant whom he had made with the assistance of a surrogacy shop in Indiana. The man in that case had not been in any way screened to determine whether he might, as he evidently would have, posed a risk to a child. That case sparked a fight in middle Pennsylvania over whether surrogacy should be made illegal. It makes for an interesting set of problems that culminate in the new Erie case.