March 17, 2021 at 11:25 AM
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At-home DNA testing kits, like 23andMe and AncestryDNA.com, have uncovered an unnerving number of doctors who, unknown to their patients, substituted their
own sperm for the promised donor sperm or spouse’s sperm. Many of the doctors who have been caught are deceased or retired. Some have been close enough to retirement that they immediately retired once their inappropriate conduct was discovered. But there’s one guy who refuses to accept the gravity of his actions: Dr. Kim McMorries of Nacogdoches, Texas.
McMorries has, shockingly, continued to practice medicine in obstetrics, gynecology, and infertility, no less since the news broke several years ago about his insemination activities with a number of his patients. One of the resulting offspring, Eve Wiley, tells the made-for-TV-movie story of discovering that she was donor-conceived as a teenager. Her mother helped her contact the sperm bank from which Wiley’s parents chose Donor
March 11, 2021 at 9:02 AM
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This past week, three men broke the internet by publicly telling their story as the first polyamorous throuple (like a couple, but with three people) to all be legally named as parents of the same children. A California court named Ian Jenkins and both of his male partners as legal parents of their two children. Jenkins has a book out on their experience Three Dads and a Baby: Adventures in Modern Parenting.
Is this new?
Yes and no. California has permitted more than two parent families by statute since 2013. However, a particularly unique characteristic of the Jenkins’ ruling, aside from his polyamorous relationship (versus other forms of three-parent families that have been recognized) is that the dads received their rulings pre-birth of the children. Pursuant to California surrogacy law, and as is customary in many states, a court rules on the parentage of a child carried by a surrogate during the pregnancy. Jenkins described how the
March 3, 2021 at 3:30 PM
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Forget pandemics. Instead, it’s time to worry about worldwide plummeting sperm counts. The end result could mean the end of humankind. But, in the meantime, will the rapid decline in male fertility mean a rise in sperm-related legal work? Are my priorities backward?
I recently learned of the severe drop (over 50%!) in sperm count worldwide from podcast guest Jonathan Waldman, author of
Swimming Aimlessly: One Man’s Journey Through Infertility And What We Can All Learn From It. Reiterating the seriousness of the issue, last week, USA Today came out with an article focused on a study showing a greater than 59% decline in sperm count from 1960 to 2015. Although the author gives a nod to the naysayers, it seems pretty clear that this is happening. Aside from our dystopian
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Sofia Vergara. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
The actress Sofia Vergara played the role of the strong and confident Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the hit TV show Modern Family. But she’s also strong and confident in real life, enduring years of litigation involving her ex-fiancé with whom she formed embryos. Vergara’s is actually a cautionary tale to be very, very careful of whom you go through IVF with. It’s been seven years since her break up with Nick Loeb, the [checks the internet] … Crunch Condiment Company founder. Happily, she moved on from Loeb, and married actor Joe Manganiello in 2015. But somehow, Vergara is still fighting Loeb’s attempts to conceive children with their two cryopreserved embryos.
February 16, 2021 at 12:51 PM
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You may have heard of the new New York Child Parent Security Act (CPSA). No? Well let me tell you about it. It passed last session, as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget, and officially became effective as of yesterday, February 15, 2021. Happy Presidents’ Day, everyone!
Although Cuomo certainly has become known for other, less successful, moments in the past 12 months, the CPSA, by contrast, is a major success. Aside from Gloria Steinem’s strange arguments that the CPSA is a mistake, and that the government should control women’s choices over their bodies and pregnancy, what do New York attorneys need to know about the new law?