Sperm donor fights order to support 2 children
Friday, May 20, 2005
By Barbara White Stack, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is weighing a case with the potential to strike fear in the hearts of sperm donors who thought they were getting $50 for their genetic material and nothing more -- certainly no responsibility for babies created with it.
The justices heard arguments this week in a case that forces them to weigh the right of children to financial aid from two parents against the right of men to provide sperm for in-vitro fertilization without the donors being held responsible for any offspring.
"There is a lot of fear surrounding this court case because if the court extends this beyond support, to rights and obligations, then I think it will create a serious chilling effect," said Lawrence Kalikow, a Bucks County lawyer who is an expert in surrogacy, sperm and egg donation cases.
The genesis of the case is a decade-old deal between ex-lovers, Joel L. McKiernan, now of Mt. Lebanon, and Ivonne V. Ferguson, now of New York. He agreed to provide sperm for babies she wanted and she agreed to absolve him of responsibility for their progeny.
Through in-vitro fertilization, she bore twins and raised them alone for five years. Then she sued McKiernan for child support in Dauphin County.
The Common Pleas Court judge there acknowledged that the couple had a binding verbal contract that released McKiernan from the normal responsibilities of fathers. But he decided the contract was invalid because the two had wrongly bargained away rights of the twins, particularly their right to child support from two parents.
Then the court ordered McKiernan to pay $1,500 in support a month. He appealed. Last July Superior Court said the lower court judge was right. That's what got McKiernan before the Supreme Court this week.
There Justice Ronald D. Castille asked Elizabeth A. Hoffman, the Harrisburg lawyer representing Ferguson, whether the court's invalidating the verbal contract between Ferguson and McKiernan would make it difficult for infertile couples to obtain sperm donors.
Hoffman's argument was that anonymous donors to sperm banks wouldn't be affected because their contracts are with the banks, not with the potential mothers.
And she stressed that only cases involving single mothers are relevant because in Pennsylvania children born to married women are assumed to be those of the husband. In those cases, then, the children have two parents to provide support.
At this point, sperm donation centers don't seem to be in panic. One of the largest in the country, Cryobank of California, mentions the Pennsylvania decision on its Web site but assures its donors they're unaffected. California has a law protecting donors from support actions. Pennsylvania does not.
A supervisor at Cryobiology Inc. of Columbus, which has a sperm collection center in Pittsburgh, was unaware of the case as was the executive director of the Reproductive Science Institute with three offices outside Philadelphia.
Both Donna Ridder of Cryobiology and June Amarant of Reproductive Science said they thought their contracts would protect donors.
The lawyer representing McKiernan wasn't so sure. Attorney John W. Purcell Jr., of Harrisburg, said that if a judge decided that a contract between mother and father was invalid because it denied children their rights, it could nullify a contract between a man and a sperm center denying children rights.
And such anonymous donors are traceable. Banks ordered by courts to find and identify donors have the means to do it.
Donors should have some concern, said Erie lawyer Joe Martone, who is handling a case that is the reverse -- an egg donor seeking custody rights to triplets she didn't bear and has never supported.
The vast majority of cases in which children are conceived from donated eggs or sperm work out happily ever after, Martone said.
But if the Supreme Court upholds the lower courts' decisions in this case, Martone said, it's possible that single parents who conceived with donated genetic material will demand the names of the donors and seek support.
He and attorney Kalikow agreed the problem would be resolved if Pennsylvania passes legislation -- as at least a dozen other states have -- regulating sperm and egg donation.
Although this is a Pennsylvania case, it could have repercussions elsewhere, Purcell said. If a bank in California ships sperm to the doctor of a single woman in Pittsburgh, it is conceivable that the Pennsylvania-born child would be covered by the Pennsylvania decision, he said. Or, he said, it's possible a child would be covered if the mother moved to Pennsylvania to deliver.
If the court rules that McKiernan must continue to pay, he said, that could chill donation everywhere.
And that, Kalikow said, would hurt infertile couples. "If donors don't want to donate, then intended parents have that option foreclosed."
Both he and Percell said there is an example in Pennsylvania law that would enable the Supreme Court to release sperm donors of obligations to be the second parent to children born to single mothers.
In cases of abused or neglected children, it is fairly common now for courts to terminate the rights of both parents then permit one person, usually an unmarried or widowed foster parent, to adopt. That action leaves the child without two parents to support him.