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A Long Island man was stunned to find out that his 4-year-old twins weren’t an accidental pregnancy at all — his desperate girlfriend secretly stashed away his sperm and used it for an in-vitro procedure, he charges in a lawsuit. Elmont resident Joseph Pressil, 36, wasn’t planning on having children with Anetria Burnett, with whom he was in a relationship for six months in 2007, he said. So she took matters into her own hands, he told The Post, in order to remain in his Texas house and make a legal bid for half of his possessions. -snip- The real...

In the Carpenter home, every meal begins with a prayer. Robin and his wife, Emily, are devout Christians. But they part ways with many other Christians over a measure that would expand the legal definition of human life. Their son, Luke, now 4 years old, was born through in vitro fertilization. The anti-abortion amendment being voted on this week in the state could restrict in vitro procedures, and the Carpenters are worried that if they wait too long to add to their family, they may end up breaking the law. "I don't really want or need anybody else getting involved...

Rev. John A. Leies November 1, 2011 (HLIAmerica.org) - We are grateful to the medical researchers and medical practitioners who find new remedies and drugs to ease our pains and restore and enhance our health. Yet with every new development in medical science comes the responsibility of using it wisely and according to God’s will. Many people do not acknowledge this. One example was the subject matter of a New York Times article last month, titled: “One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring.” The article narrated a woman’s search for her own child’s siblings, all of whom are the offspring of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado has announced the birth of a new son, making him the only openly gay member of Congress to be a parent. While few details of the birth were made available, the Democratic congressman's press office did release the announcement that Polis and his partner, Marlon Reis, sent to friends and family.

A lawyer who donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children. More than 15 of those have already attempted to contact 33-year-old Ben Seisler. The donor confessed to his fiancée as part of a new reality show, Sperm Donor, that aired on the Style Network on Tuesday. Seisler donated sperm for three years while attending law school at George Mason, Virginia. He earned around $150 per donation.

Note: Jewels Green is a former abortion clinic worker who also had an abortion herself. She recently spoke out about her experiences as an abortion clinic worker for the first time. September 20, 2011 (LiveAction.org) - After supporting abortion my entire life and working in an abortion clinic for years, my Ah-HA moment seemed to come from an unlikely place. I did not have a profound, sudden shift in my worldview. After years of ignoring the little voice inside me questioning the death around me—the nightmares and the regret—the truth snuck up on me. I was involved in an online...

As Jenny lay on the obstetrician's examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound technician had turned off the overhead screen. She didn't want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment – and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy foetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted...

Many years ago, I was assigned to cover a story about a certain sperm donor, a newly graduated doctor in Kansas who had donated on such a frequent and regular basis that he was suspected of being the biological father to 500 children. You read that right, 500 children! My research led me to learn that professors and medical mentors had often urged their male med school residents to donate sperm as a way to: a) Put a little money in their pockets and b) Help propagate future generations of intelligent children. The belief was that if the sperm came...

The same people who say I shouldn't impose my morality on them, are imposing immorality on me and my children to the point that I literally have a hard time even leaving my home anymore to do something as simple as visit the park. And this is freedom? I am a Catholic stay-at-home mother of seven, and I live in the state of Massachusetts where "gay marriage" has been legal for seven years and it's just one aspect of the larger secular agenda. Because we have so many little children, it takes a phenomenal effort to go anywhere. We have...

Everyone is discussing this piece, by Ruth Padawer, that ran in the New York Times, and, since it is infuriating, I figured I would too. Ms. Padawer has written a hard-hitting piece. I think it presents all views as fairly as can be expected and it does not mince words. Full disclosure, it took me three attempts to read it through.....the writer...[reveals] what has been, and continues to be, a somewhat hidden aspect of both abortion practice and artificial fertility treatments... The article discusses women who have had fertility treatment(s) and who found themselves carrying twins (in one case triplets)...

August 17, 2011 (HLIAmerica.org) - The directions on my flower seed packet say, “Sow seeds directly into the soil. When plants are two inches tall, thin to six inches apart.” Sowing more than you need and culling the excess once seeds have germinated is a great approach to gardening. But it is a horrific way to approach pregnancy and childbirth. Yet that is exactly what happens in more and more pregnancies achieved by in vitro fertilization (IVF). The New York Times ran an article recently chronicling the growing trend for women to “reduce” their multiple gestation pregnancies to a single...

A MAN who donated sperm to a lesbian couple will have his name stripped from their child's birth certificate after a successful legal bid by the birth mother's ex-partner. The woman took the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and biological father, to court in May to have his name replaced with her name in the document. The female child was born in 2001 and the women split in 2006, although they continued to share parental responsibility. The man also played a role in the child's life. New South Wales District Court Judge Stephen Walmsley today ruled in her...

Artificial insemination costs vary widely across Sweden, forcing some same-sex couples to pay significantly more than heterosexual couples who save thousands of kronor by bringing their own sperm. “We think that it is discriminatory that there are different prices for insemination,” Ulrika Westerlund of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (Riksförbundet för homosexuellas, bisexuellas och transpersoners rättigheter - RFSL) said to the Aftonbladet daily. RFSL would like to see a development of uniform regulations which apply across the country. “But that would be complicated and would require the state to go in and regulate. However, we...

August 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Unlike aborting a child conceived naturally, ending the life of an unborn child conceived by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) feels like “just another choice� in an already “consumerish� process, one IVF mom confessed in an article for the New York Times. “If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it,� the mom, “Jenny,� told author Ruth Padawer. “But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor,...

As if the new York Times couldn’t sink any further down the hole of warped and twisted pro-abortion activism, the Gray Lady is out with yet another “news� piece that moves the newspaper further beyond the pale.Ruth Pawder is out today with a new story titled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,� that focuses on “selective reduction� – the euphemistic phrase given to name the destruction of one or more unborn children in a multiple pregnancy situation where a mother has more than one baby resulting from an IVF pregnancy involving the implantation of multiple human embryos.The Times never makes it past the...

Editor’s Note: In this commentary Msgr Barreiro responds to the statements of Dr. Janet Smith quoted in the August 2nd LifeSiteNews report “Top Catholic ethicists duel over frozen embryo adoption�. Msgr. Barreiro presents his understanding of the correct Catholic moral teaching on this issue. Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula, J.D., S.T.D., HLI Interim President FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, August 3, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At a recent debate http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/top-catholic-ethicists-duel-over-frozen-embryo-adoption at Christendom College Prof. Dr. Janet Smith upheld the view that the adoption of embryos could be morally appropriate, in particular if it is undertaken outside the context of in-vitro fertilization. To be realistic,...

LONDON, U.K., July 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Over one and a half million embryonic children have been killed in Britain through IVF procedures since 1991, according to new data from the country’s Department of Health. The figures, revealed by Britain’s Health Minister Lord Howe in response to a request from Lord Alton, show that over 30 embryos are created for every live birth through IVF. Doctors have created more than 3.1 million human embryos since Britain passed its Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 1991, resulting in only 94,090 successful births. Of the remainder, 1,455,832 embryos have been discarded, 101,605...

BERLIN, Germany, July 11, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A controversial form of “pre-implantation” embryonic testing for genetic disorders was approved by German parliament last Thursday. Members of Parliament voted 326-260 in favor of the bill, with eight MPs abstaining. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) extracts up to two cells from a human embryo obtained through in vitro fertilization for testing for severe genetic disorders that could result in stillbirth or miscarriage. Such testing is a highly sensitive subject in Germany, where the memory of the atrocities committed in the name of eugenics under the Nazis remains fresh in the national consciousness. The...

Moms give birth to sons or daughters - pretty straightforward stuff. But when one English toddler grows up and starts a family, her child will be her own half-sibling. At least that's the plan. The toddler, two-year-old Mackenzie Stephens, was born without ovaries, so her 25-year-old mother, Penny Jarvis, intends to freeze her own eggs so that Mackenzie can use them someday to start her own family, the Daily Mail reported. Jarvis, of Sheffield, England, told the paper she was devastated when she learned that Mackenzie would be infertile - the result of Turner Syndrome, a female-only genetic disorder that...

When I do presentations on in vitro fertilization, audience members sometimes ask whether test tube babies experience psychological problems as they grow up. Although they clearly face elevated health risks for a number of diseases and physical disorders, the psychological effects on these children have not been thoroughly studied. Nevertheless, children born from other, closely related technologies, like anonymous sperm donation, are starting to be tracked, and researchers are finding that these children face significant difficulties in dealing with their feelings and emotions as they grow older. They oftentimes struggle with their own sense of dignity and identity, with their...

h, boy! Do I have a story to tell you!! But first...two disclaimers: I totally have Krystal's permission to share this story with you. This post will likely anger you. Either you will be enraged by my point of view (sorry 'bout that!) or you will join me in my own outrage. Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues! :-) If we've been together for a while, you already know all about my journey through the desert of infertility. You know what? No one really takes you very seriously when you look back on that struggle while, at the...

Australian ethicist working at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics claims that humanity has a “moral obligation” to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to select the most intelligent embryos for the good of society, with the obvious implication that the less intelligent “surplus” embryos should simply be destroyed. Professor Julian Savulescu of Melbourne made the statement while commenting on an economic modeling research paper by Oxford University ethicists Andres Sandberg and Nick Bostrom, who claim that a rise in humanity’s IQ would result in a reduction in poverty, welfare dependency, crowding of jails, school dropout rates, out-of-wedlock births, and...

WASHINGTON (BP)--The fertility industry has a dirty secret -- young women are being coerced into selling their eggs despite the severe health risks and the lack of laws protecting them, according to a recently released movie from the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. "Eggsploitation" -- a documentary that tells the stories of young women donating their eggs to help infertile women, only to suffer health problems even years after the procedure -- is being screened on campuses and for organizations across the country. The movie, which was named best documentary at the 2011 California Independent Film Festival, was shown...

Almost 39 weeks ago, Kristine Casey set out on an unusual journey to help her daughter and answer a spiritual calling. Her goal was achieved late Wednesday when she gave birth to her own grandson at age 61. Casey, possibly the oldest women to give birth in Illinois, served as a surrogate for her daughter, Sara Connell, who had been trying for years to have a baby. Connell and her husband, Bill, are the biological parents of the child Casey carried, which grew from an embryo created from the Chicago couple's egg and sperm. Crying and praying, Connell and her...

If two homosexual men want to use in vitro fertilization to conceive a baby and then use genetics technology to ensure the baby is also "gay," while disposing of any "straight" embryos, would the law have any ethical problems with that? America's leading ethicist in the field of human reproduction has written a paper that argues future homosexual couples should have "the right" to do exactly that. John A. Robertson of the University of Texas Law School is the chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and an advocate of what his book "Children of...

Heidi Desrochers with her "miracle baby," Daniel, conceived with the help of NaPro technology. OTTAWA, Ontario, January 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Infertility has approached epidemic levels in Western countries.  In 2002, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that 7.3 million women suffered from infertility in the country, about 12% of the reproductive-age population.  Many of these millions are sped along to IVF doctors; robbed of the joys of natural procreation, they are often slated to endure years of heartache as they strive unsuccessfully for a child. Pierre and Heidi Desrochers of Ottawa were one of those couples.  Married in...

"Safe, legal, and rare," the moonbats bleat, reading off their bumper stickers. Yet this is where abortion leads: This couple are so desperate for a baby girl that they terminated twin boys and are fighting to choose the sex of their next child. The couple, who have three sons and still grieve for a daughter they lost soon after birth, are going to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to win the right to select sex by IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatment. … So determined are the couple to have a girl that they recently terminated twin boys conceived through...

The story of an Australian couple who aborted twin boys because they want to use IVF to ensure they have a daughter is attracting a lot of attention, especially among pro-lifers, and understandably so since the case seems to foreshadow an ethics-free future of eugenics.  But the couple, who want a girl to replace the infant daughter they recently lost, is so far still barred by Australian law from pursuing their quest for a female baby. The state of Victoria, where the unnamed couple lives, does not allow sex selection using IVF unless it is done to avoid the risk...

A COUPLE so desperate for a baby girl that they terminated twin boys are fighting to choose the sex of their next child.The couple, who have three sons and still grieve for a daughter they lost soon after birth, are going to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to win the right to select sex by IVF treatment.They say they want the opportunity to have the baby daughter they were tragically denied.An independent panel, known as the Patient Review Panel, recently rejected the couple's bid to choose the sex of their next child using IVF.They have gone to VCAT in...

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Nov 10, 2010 / 10:03 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Hector Aguer of La Plata has criticized in vitro fertilization as a technique that plays with “the lives and deaths of thousands and thousands of people.” Therefore, he continued, “we could call this a new holocaust that is part of the holocaust of abortion.”On Nov. 6, during his program, “Keys to a Better World,” Archbishop Aguer referred to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Medicine to Robert Edwards, for his efforts to conceive the first child through in vitro fertilization.“This belated recognition again raises the issue of the...

Poland’s bishops are apparently divided on the appropriate disciplinary treatment for Catholic lawmakers who support a bill that would provide government support for in vitro fertilization. Earlier this week the Polish bishops’ conference denounced the proposed legislation, saying that in vitro fertilization is “the younger sister of eugenics” and pointing out that many human embryos die for every one baby successfully implanted in a womb. Archbishop Henryk Hoser, the chairman of the Polish bishops’ committee on bioethics, added that legislators who support the proposal “will automatically find themselves outside of the Church.” When reporters interpreted the statement by Archbishop Hoser...

BONN, Germany, October 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Scientists announcing their success at achieving a new genetic defect-screening technique have at the same time admitted that many of the two-thirds of IVF embryos that fail to survive do so because of genetic abnormalities.Luca Gianaroli, chairman of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), and Cristina Magli, an embryologist from Bologna, Italy, announced their success in a study of a genetic testing procedure called "comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) by microarray," after two women gave birth to healthy children following screening of the embryos using the technique.However, Gianaroli said in a statement...

Births in Italy and Germany from eggs tested by CGHTwo women taking part in the world's first controlled study of a comprehensive genetic screening test before IVF have given birth to healthy babies. The babies, twin girls born in Germany in June and a singleton boy born in Italy in September, are the first deliveries in a pilot study of comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH) by microarray, a new method of screening oocytes for IVF for a full range of chromosomal disorders. Dr Cristina Magli, embryologist at the SISMER Centre in Bologna, one of the two centres taking part in the...

Robert Edwards of Britain won the 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for developing in-vitro fertilization, a controversial breakthrough that ignited sharp criticism from religious leaders but helped millions of infertile couples in the last three decades have children. Edwards, an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, started working on IVF as early as the 1950s. He developed the technique - in which egg cells are removed from a woman, fertilized outside her body and then implanted into the womb - together with British gynecologist surgeon Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988. On July 25, 1978, Louise...

How I Met Your Mother" star Neil Patrick Harris is going to be a father. On Saturday (August 14), the dad-to-be tweeted the news that he and his longtime partner David Burtka are expecting twins. "So, get this: David and I are expecting twins this fall," Harris wrote on his Twitter page. "We're super excited/nervous/thrilled. Hoping the press can respect our privacy..." E! Online reports that the twins are due in October via a surrogate. Harris is facing fatherhood this fall but he also recently delivered another significant project. The actor and occasional awards show host directed a production of...

The USA has abdicated good ethics by allowing IVF to go virtually unregulated. The consequences are profound and growing. Rather than being a medical treatment for otherwise infertile married couples, IVF has become a lifestyle enhancer permitting parents to shop for the child they want like a breed of dog, rent wombs, eugenically select out unwanted children, expose young women to the pronounced, if rare, dangers to life, limb, and fertility by selling or donating their eggs, and is insinuating the crass values of naked consumerism into family life in which the unwanted are tossed away like so much...

Hundreds of British couples could have children that are biologically theirs living with other parents around Europe or across the world without knowing, it has emerged. A Spanish clinic runs an 'embryo adoption scheme' where spare embryos are donated to other women if the couple who created them do not know what they want to do with them or do not respond to correspondence from the clinic. Furthermore, anonymity rules in Spain means the resulting children cannot trace their biological parents or vice versa. [...] The spokesman for the clinic said a total of more than 460 babies have been...

Devon knows her father is a thin man with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair -- but she may never know his name. A 20-year-old New York University student, Devon was conceived with sperm from the Milton S. Hershey Clinic at Penn State University through artificial insemination. After graduating from high school, she found a piece of paper in her parents' room with general information on her donor but nothing she could use to identify him. Devon, who asked that her last name not be used, said she isn't searching for her father with any urgency, but in her late...

Children conceived with IVF appear to have an elevated risk of cancer according to a large population-based study conducted in Sweden.  Fifty-three cases of cancer were found among the 26,692 IVF-conceived children studied – a number that is significantly higher than the 38 that would be expected given the rate of cancer in the Swedish population.  This translates into a 42% increased risk of cancer.IVF-conceived children were also 87% more likely than the general population to have received a diagnosis of cancer by the age of three.Researchers speculated that the increased risk might be mediated through other factors associated with IVF...

Children conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF) appear to have a moderately elevated risk of cancer -- although the absolute risk remains low -- according to a large population-based study from Sweden.

HARTFORD, Connecticut, June 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a disastrous chain of events, a set of “wanted” embryos quickly became “unwanted” after an artificially impregnated women was informed by her fertility clinic that they had accidentally implanted the embryos of another woman by the same name.The woman’s solution was to take the morning-after pill (which, ironically, pro-abortion forces insist is simply a form of contraception and cannot cause an abortion) and abort the nascent life within her.The Associated Press reports that the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services at the University of Connecticut Health Center has agreed to pay a $ 3,000 fine...

Caroline was fathered by a sperm donor - so why does she bitterly resent the stranger who gave her life? 24th June 2010 The act will have been brief, impersonal and utterly bereft of emotion - but 25 years on, the moment that Caroline Halstead was conceived is causing her lasting heartache. For she was fathered by an anonymous sperm donor and, like a growing number conceived in this way, she has struggled to come to terms with the fact that she is the product of a scientific process rather than a loving union. 'I was conceived in a petri...

This is heartbreaking in just about every way possible. Rajo Devi Lohan of India and her husband wanted children for years but were unable to conceive. But so intense was their desire for children that they procured loans to afford IVF treatments while in their 60’s. The couple celebrated the birth of their child last year while Lohan was 70 years old. Now, due to complications stemming from the pregnancy, Lohan is reportedly dying and currently too weak to care for her baby, saying her body never recovered from bearing the child. This is awful and my prayers go out...

Just when you think that every imaginable dimension of the great tragedy of abortion has come to light, along comes a report that will stop you dead in your tracks. One of the most respected British newspapers has just revealed that approximately 80 abortion are performed in the UK each year, terminating pregnancies that came about by IVF treatments.   That’s right - on average, 80 British women each year abort their babies after having conceived them through the ordeal of IVF treatments. The British government, along with the British public, seems to be outraged at this discovery, made possible...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Study shows problems for adults conceived by sperm donation Alana Sveta and Olivia Pratten. New York City, N.Y., Jun 12, 2010 / 07:56 am (CNA).- A recent report by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future indicates that adult offspring of sperm donation struggle with questions of identity as a result of not knowing their biological father. Fr. Thomas Berg, who specializes in bioethics, told CNA that the practice of sperm donation has “grossly underestimated” the human need to connect with one's biological parents. The report, “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm...

, and against all the odds, she was to be a mother. Clutching her husband's hand, they appeared to everyone in my colleague's practice to be as overjoyed as any other would-be parents. In the lottery that is IVF - for, however hard the doctors work, it works in only 50 per cent of cases - they truly were extremely lucky. In cases like hers, the doctors who treated her feel as much joy as the woman in question. So it's not hard to imagine the devastation my colleague felt when he found out by chance a few months later,...

LONDON, June 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Figures released under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act show that an average of 80 children conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other artificial means of artificial procreation, are being aborted each year in England and Wales. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the government body that regulates artificial reproduction practices, has revealed that some of those aborted were conceived by IVF treatments funded by the country’s tax-funded medical system, the National Health Service (NHS). Former conservative MP Ann Widdecombe said that the figures showed children are being treated like “designer goods.” “If...

LONDON, May 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Researchers are bragging that within the next ten years, in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology will have advanced so far that it will perform "better than nature" and sex will no longer be necessary for human reproduction."We are not quite at that stage yet, but it's where we're heading,' said Dr. John Yovich, co-author of the study, “Embryo culture: can we perform better than Nature?” as quoted in the U.K. Daily Mail. The study was published in the April 2010 issue of the journal Reproductive BioMedicine. “Natural human reproduction is at best a fairly inefficient process,"...

As the toddlers say, I don't want to share. ___ A few years ago, my daughter and I were browsing through the card kiosk, trying to select a Mother's Day card. "Mom you're the best!" read one. "#1 mom" raved another. "Queen mother!" pronounced yet another. I got to choose because she couldn't yet read, and I chose none of the above. Let's go home and make homemade cards, OK? On cream-colored card stock, those bards at Hallmark have put their finger on the problem I have with Mother's Day: For me, it can't be about bests and greatests and...

Baby battery ... a mitochondrion UK scientists have created "designer embryos" containing DNA from a man and TWO women. The breakthrough gives hope of healthy children to couples with genetic disorders in their families. It also offers the prospect of eradicating fatal genetic diseases. But the procedure - dubbed three person IVF - sparked controversy last night. Researchers at Newcastle University set out to prevent damaged DNA in mitochondria - the "batteries" that power cells - from being passed on to offspring. Controversial ... kids would have DNA from three peopleRex Features They removed nuclei from the sperm and egg...