Birds Do It. Bees Do It. So Why Not Single Women and Lesbians?

Infertile couples have come to take assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for granted. An increasing number of single women and lesbian couples also desire to have children and turn to ART, especially donor insemination, to fulfill this desire. While most married couples find that access to ART is limited primarily by the ability to pay, for single women and lesbian couples, the story may be much different. In the United States, they may find that doctors and infertility clinics view their desires as immoral and refuse to accept them as patients, although other doctors and clinics readily accept them. In most other countries, however, it is against the law for single women and lesbian couples to make use of ART, including donor insemination.
In this paper I will argue that marital status and sexual orientation should not serve as a barrier to accessing the world of reproductive medicine. I will base this conclusion on two arguments. First, that justice requires that we treat like cases alike. Just as we would not accept or reject patients for cardiac rehabilitation programs based on factors such as a history of poor eating habits, so too we should not look at nonmedical factors such as marital status when deciding whether to treat infertility. For the second justification for the conclusion of equal access to ART, I will examine the concept of the family. I will argue that it is morally acceptable for single women and lesbian couples to have children and to head families.     

Birds do it. Bees do it. So why not single women and lesbians?

Infertile couples have come to take assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for granted. An increasing number of single women and lesbian couples also desire to have children and turn to ART, especially donor insemination, to fulfill this desire. While most married couples find that access to ART is limited primarily by the ability to pay, for single women and lesbian couples, the story may be much different. In the United States, they may find that doctors and infertility clinics view their desires as immoral and refuse to accept them as patients, although other doctors and clinics readily accept them. In most other countries, however, it is against the law for single women and lesbian couples to make use of ART, including donor insemination.
In this paper I will argue that marital status and sexual orientation should not serve as a barrier to accessing the world of reproductive medicine. I will base this conclusion on two arguments. First, that justice requires that we treat like cases alike. Just as we would not accept or reject patients for cardiac rehabilitation programs based on factors such as a history of poor eating habits, so too we should not look at nonmedical factors such as marital status when deciding whether to treat infertility. For the second justification for the conclusion of equal access to ART, I will examine the concept of the family. I will argue that it is morally acceptable for single women and lesbian couples to have children and to head families.     

Le don de sperme en Israël, son secret et son anonymat

Secrecy of donation and donor anonymity are extremely tight in Israel. For infertile couples, this appears to be the preferred mode of operation apparently facilitating long-term adaptation to parenthood. In orthodox Jewish communities, donor insemination is at best tolerated, if and only if the donor is of non-Jewish ancestry, so as to prevent a future incestuous or consanguineous marriage. Since the introduction of intracytoplasmic sperm injection, the proportion of infertile couples who require sperm donation keeps dropping, currently comprising a mere 20–25% of the recipient population. The rest of the recipients consists of single women, many of whom would like the child to know his or her biological father when he or she has grown up. The longterm success of donor insemination requires doctors’ awareness of the recipients’ sensitivities. Additionally, just as the importation of “non-Jewish sperm” is authorized, it would be advisable to allow recruitment of donors under two distinct modes: “anonymous” and “visible,” thereby accommodating the diverse preferences that various recipients seem to have.     

The value and meaning attached to genetic relatedness among Australian sperm donors

While in the context of western societies sperm is attributed with a wide range of meanings, in the context of assisted reproduction it has increasingly been treated as an alienable commodity. Yet despite attempts by medical professionals to encourage a disconnect between donors and their sperm, the latter continues in many instances to operate as a synecdoche for the former. This can be seen, for example, both in donor-conceived children's desire to know their donor and in donors' investments in the use of their sperm. This paper explores the latter example by providing a discourse analysis of the narratives of 30 Australian sperm donors, with a focus on how they accounted for the value and meaning of their sperm. Three broad themes are discussed: sperm as a marker of genetic legacy, responsibility for sperm as genetic material, and sperm as a “gift” to others. The implications of these understandings of sperm among donors are discussed in relation to outcomes for all parties involved in donor conception, and suggestions are made for recognizing the investments that donors may have in their sperm.     

Worthless and Nutritive Nuptial Gifts: Mating Duration,Sperm Stored and Potential Female Decisions in Spiders

In nuptial gift-giving species females sometimes select their potential mates based on the presence and size of the gift. But in some species, such as the Neotropical polyandrous spider Paratrechalea ornate male gifts vary in quality, from nutritive to worthless, and this male strategy can be in conflict with female nutritional benefits. In this species, males without gifts experience a reduction in mating success and duration, while males that offer worthless or genuine nutritive gifts mate with similar frequencies and durations. The female apparently controls the duration of copulation. Thus, there is scope for females to favour males offering gifts and further if these are nutritious, via post-copulatory processes. We first tested whether females differentially store sperm from males that offer the highest nutritional benefits by experimentally presenting females with males that offer either nutritive or worthless gifts (uninterrupted matings). Second, we carried out another set of experiments to examine whether females can select sperm based only on gift presence. This time we interrupted matings after the first pedipalp insertion, thus matching number of insertions and mating duration for males that: offered and did not offer gift. Our results showed that the amount of sperm stored is positive related to mating duration in all groups, except in matings with worthless gifts. Gift presence itself did not affect the sperm stored by females, while they store similar number of sperm in matings with males offering either nutritive or worthless gifts. We discuss whether females prefer males with gifts regardless, if content, because it represents an attractive and/or reliable signal. Or alternatively, they prefer nutritive nuptial gifts, as they are an important source of food supply and/or signal of male donor ability.     

L’entretien psychologique systématique pour les couples optant pour l’IAD: huit ans d’expérience clinique dans une législation prévoyant la levée de l’anonymat du donneur

A law on medically assisted procreation was implemented in Switzerland in 2001. This law is subordinate to the well-being of the child and stipulates that only married couples can benefit from donor insemination (DI). Furthermore, a child who was conceived with donor sperm may obtain access to information including the identity of the donor on reaching adulthood, at age 18. The law also specifies that psychological assistance must be offered before, during, and after treatment. For the past 12 years, the Unit of Reproductive Medicine and the Center of Medically Assisted Procreation in Lausanne employ a concept of psychological assistance adjusted to each couple’s needs, called “ressource counselling”. In preparation for DI, specific questions are examined, such as “Should the child be informed about the donor insemination, should others be informed, if so, how and when?” These questions may also be discussed in a group setting specific for couples concerned with DI. Our experience shows that systematic counselling helps couples in finding their own path through the delicate subjects of secrecy, attachment, and the rights of a child to be informed of his/her genetic links.     

Judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases

If a person requires an organ or tissue donation to survive, many philosophers argue that whatever moral responsibility a biological relative may have to donate to the person in need will be grounded at least partially, if not entirely, in biological relations the potential donor bears to the recipient. We contend that such views ignore the role that a potential donor's unique ability to help the person in need plays in underwriting such judgments. If, for example, a sperm donor is judged to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue to a child conceived with his sperm, we think this will not be due to the fact that the donor stands in a close biological relationship to the recipient. Rather, we think such judgments will largely be grounded in the presumed unique ability of the sperm donor to help the child due to the compatibility of his tissues and organs with those of the recipient. In this paper, we report the results of two studies designed to investigate the comparative roles that biological relatedness and unique ability play in generating judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases. We found that biologically related individuals are deemed to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue only when they are one of a small number of people who have the capacity to help.     

Multiple mating,sperm competition and meiotic drive

Most discussions of ‘sperm competition’ have ignored the potential for competition among the different sperm genotypes present in the ejaculate of a single male. Rivalry within ejaculates may limit cooperation among the members of an ejaculate when they compete with sperm produced by other males. A gene that gains an advantage in competition within an ejaculate (a segregation distorter) may increase in frequency even if it is associated with significant costs to organismal fitness. Therefore, selection will favor genes expressed in males that suppress competition within ejaculates. This may explain why sperm function is largely controlled by the diploid genotype of the male progenitor, rather than by the genotypes of individual haploid sperm. Females who mate with multiple males reduce the relative advantage of a segregation distorter whenever the distorter impairs the competitive effectiveness of the ejaculates in which it occurs. If the distorter is associated with costs to organismal fitness, selection will favor female mating behavior that reduces the distorter's equilibrium frequency. Competition within ejaculates may thus be one reason why females choose to mate with multiple males.     

Mitotic remodeling of the replicon and chromosome structure

Animal cloning by nuclear-transfer experiments frequently fails due to the inability of transplanted nuclei to support normal embryonic development. We show here that the formation of mitotic chromosomes in the egg context is crucial for adapting differentiated nuclei for early development. Differentiated erythrocyte nuclei replicate inefficiently in Xenopus eggs but do so as rapidly as sperm nuclei if a prior single mitosis is permitted. This mitotic remodeling involves a topoisomerase II-dependent shortening of chromatin loop domains and an increased recruitment of replication initiation factors onto chromatin, leading to a short interorigin spacing characteristic of early developmental stages. It also occurs within each early embryonic cell cycle and dominantly regulates initiation of DNA replication for the subsequent S phase. These results indicate that mitotic conditioning is crucial to reset the chromatin structure of differentiated adult donor cells for embryonic DNA replication and suggest that it is an important step in nuclear cloning.     

The moral complexity of sperm donation

Sperm donation is a widely accepted and increasingly common practice. In the standard case, a sperm donor sells sperm to an agency, waives his parental rights, and is absolved of parental responsibility. We tend to assume that this involves no problematic abandonment of parental responsibility. If we regard the donor as having parental responsibilities at all, we may think that his parental responsibilities are transferred to the sperm recipients. But, if a man creates a child accidentally, via contraception failure, we tend to assume that the man does indeed have parental responsibilities. Assessing these contrasting conclusions requires a theory of parental responsibility. I analyse prevalent theories of what makes someone parentally responsible and show that none of these theories can withstand scrutiny. I propose a new theory of parental responsibility, which, I argue, is more plausible than the alternatives. My theory of parental responsibility is based on our ownership and control over hazardous materials, namely, our gametes. I show that neither my theory, nor the theories I reject, can support our contrasting intuitions. I conclude that sperm donors are fathers, with parental responsibility. I argue that the alternative conclusion, that neither sperm donors nor accidental fathers are parentally responsible for their resulting offspring, is less plausible. I then consider whether parental responsibility can be transferred and argue that it is far from clear that it can. Finally, I address objections and consider some practical implications of these views.     

Chromosome abnormalities in sperm from infertile men with asthenoteratozoospermia

Research over the past few years has clearly demonstrated that infertile men have an increased frequency of chromosome abnormalities in their sperm. These studies have been further corroborated by an increased frequency of chromosome abnormalities in newborns and fetuses from pregnancies established by intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Most studies have considered men with any type of infertility. However, it is possible that some types of infertility have an increased risk of sperm chromosome abnormalities, whereas others do not. We studied 10 men with a specific type of infertility, asthenozoospermia (poor motility), by multicolor fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis to determine whether they had an increased frequency of disomy for chromosomes 13, 21, XX, YY, and XY, as well as diploidy. The patients ranged in age from 28 to 42 yr (mean 34.1 yr); they were compared with 18 normal control donors whose ages ranged from 23 to 58 yr (mean 35.6 yr). A total of 201 416 sperm were analyzed in the men with asthenozoospermia, with a minimum of 10 000 sperm analyzed per chromosome probe per donor. There was a significant increase in the frequency of disomy in men with asthenozoospermia compared with controls for chromosomes 13 and XX. Thus, this study indicates that infertile men with poorly motile sperm but normal concentration have a significantly increased frequency of sperm chromosome abnormalities.     

Sperm competition influences sperm size in mammals.

Among mammals sperm competition leads to selection for increased sperm numbers but it is not known whether it also leads to changes in sperm size. Two contrasting theoretical predictions have been made. The first hypothesis relies on the assumption that there is a trade-off between sperm numbers and sperm size and predicts that, in species confronting sperm competition, there will be a concomitant decrease in sperm size as sperm numbers increase. In contrast, the second hypothesis suggests that longer sperm may outcompete rival sperm; if longer sperm may swim faster, they will reach the ova sooner and will be selected when sperm competition prevails. We tested these hypotheses in both primates and rodents. We report that males from species in which females mate promiscuously have longer sperm than species in which females mate with one male. In addition, we also found that sperm length is positively correlated with maximum sperm velocity. Our findings thus support the view that longer sperm may be adaptive in the context of sperm competition.     

Le deuil de la fertilité dans l’insémination avec sperme de donneur (IAD)

In a sterile man, the practice of insemination with donor’s sperm paradoxically sets up a clamping of the bereavement of his fertility. The symptom of this is the setting of the conception of the child into secrecy. The psychological help required for the elaboration of the bereavement will allow lifting this secrecy, but that is not enough for this man to have access to fatherhood. By owning himself active and his child designer, he will have to confront the latent homosexuality inherent in the practice of insemination with donor’s sperm. Bringing the work of mourning to a successful issue will make the sterile man an authentic and peaceful father.     

Aneuploid spermatozoa in infertile men: teratozoospermia.

We and others have demonstrated that infertile men who are candidates for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) have an increased frequency of chromosomal abnormalities in their sperm. Reports based on prenatal diagnosis of ICSI pregnancies have confirmed the increased frequency of chromosomal abnormalities in offspring. Most studies to date have lumped various types of infertility together. However, it is quite likely that some subsets of infertility have an increased risk of sperm chromosomal abnormalities whereas others do not. We have studied nine men with severe teratozoospermia (WHO, 1992 criteria, 0-13% morphologically normal forms) by multicolour fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) analysis to determine if they have an increased frequency of disomy for chromosomes 13, 21, XX, YY, and XY, as well as diploidy. All of the men also had aesthenozoospermia (< 50% forward progression) but none of the men had oligozoospermia (<20 x 10(6) sperm/ml). The patients ranged in age from 20 to 49 years (mean 33.2 years) in comparison to 18 normal control donors who were 23 to 58 years (mean 35.6 years). The control donors had normal semen parameters and no history of infertility. A total of 180,566 sperm were scored in the teratozoospermic men with a minimum of 10,000 sperm analyzed/donor/chromosome probe. There was a significant increase in the frequency of disomy in teratozoospermic men compared to controls for chromosomes 13 (.23 vs.13%), XX (.13 vs.05%), and XY (.50 vs.30%) (P <.0001, 2-tailed Z statistic). This study indicates that men with teratozoospermia and aesthenozoospermia but with normal concentrations of sperm have a significantly increased frequency of sperm chromosomal abnormalities.     

The effect of size,age, and recent egg laying on copulatory choice of the hermaphroditic mollusc Aplysia juliana

Summary

Aplysia juliana is a cross-fertilizing, simultaneous hermaphrodite. During copulation, an individual may act as either a sperm donor or a sperm recipient, or both, when a pair copulates reciprocally. Experiments were conducted with A. juliana to determine if an animal's size, age, or recent egg-laying activity influenced its choice of copulatory role. Animals were isolated except when paired during daily, half-hour trials. In the first experiment, mature animals of different size (weight) but similar age were randomly paired. Animal size had no effect on the initial copulatory role chosen. In the second experiment, young, maturing A. juliana were paired with older animals. Young animals showed no preference in initial copulatory role either as a group or individually. Older A. juliana showed no copulatory preference as a group, but over half of the individuals demonstrated a consistent choice of one role. Some individuals acted almost exclusively as sperm donors, others as sperm recipients, suggesting that as an A. juliana ages, it is likely to develop a preference for a single copulatory role. A record of daily egg mass production was kept for all animals in the second experiment. Production of an egg mass since the last copulation did not affect the copulatory role chosen in the subsequent copulation.     

Assisted reproduction technologies and reproductive justice in the production of parenthood and origin: Uses and meanings of the co-produced gestation and the surrogacy in Brazil

This article examines the construction of parenthood, drawing on Brazilian cisgender, heterosexual, and homosexual couples' experiences in using assisted reproduction technologies (ART), particularly the surrogacy. For that purpose, we interviewed: 1) a lesbian woman who had her daughter through her partner's pregnancy, using ART with anonymous donor semen; 2) a gay man who, together with his partner, used a surrogacy service under contract via a specialised offshore agency; 3) a woman who was a surrogate, in Brazil, for her sister-in-law and brother who lived abroad and, from abroad, sent an embryo fertilised for surrogacy; 4) a woman who resorted to her sister-in-law in order to be a mother by surrogacy, with ovules from the woman herself fertilised with semen from her husband; and 5) the sister-in-law mentioned in 4), who acted as surrogate for her brother and his wife. These interviews made it possible to think about the discursive construction of the legitimacy of such parenthoods, as it is produced by access to, and manipulation and circulation of, reproductive technologies and persons. This biomedical management of bodies sets up a material and discursive circuit that, in turn, produces a complex web of personal, normative, legal, professional and market relationships, particularly with a view to construction of a parenthood anchored in a notion of biologically-constituted origin. In this respect, biological, affective and social bonds merge to produce a precise placement of who is the father and/or who is the mother, as well as who are the important others and how they are linked to the child in a broader web of parenthood.     

Sperm competition games between related males

Three sperm competition games against relatives are examined. In the first, a male has no information at the time of mating as to whether or not his ejaculate will face sperm competition from a related or unrelated male. Sperm expenditure increases with overall sperm competition risk q and declines with the probability rho that the competitor shares the same allele for sperm expenditure. In the second game, males have almost perfect information: they 'know' whether there will be sperm competition and, if so, whether this involves a related or unrelated male. Sperm expenditure is reduced by a factor rho when competing with a relative. In the third game, males 'know' when they compete with relatives, but have no information for other matings whether they will face sperm competition from unrelated males. A male without information expends less on his ejaculate than a male competing with a close relative if the overall risk of sperm competition is low, but more if the overall risk is high. The average relative ejaculate expenditure is the same in all three games so that, if this determines testis size, data is required only on the overall sperm competition risk, the probability of competing with a relative and the average rho in order to perform comparative analyses.     

Engineering resonance energy transfer for advanced immunoassays: the case of celiac disease

Celiac disease (CD) is an immune-mediated disorder affecting genetically predisposed subjects. It is caused by the ingestion of wheat gluten and related prolamins. A final diagnosis for this disease can be obtained by examination of jejunal biopsies. Nevertheless, different analytical approaches have been established to detect the presence of anti-tissue transglutaminase antibodies that represent a serological hallmark of the disease. In this work, we explored a new method for the diagnosis of CD based on the detection of serum anti-transglutaminase antibodies by resonance energy transfer (RET) between donor molecules and acceptor molecules. In particular, we labeled the liver transglutaminase (tTG) enzyme from guinea pig and the rabbit anti-tTG antibodies with a couple of fluorescence probes that are able to make RET if they are located within with Förster distance. We labeled tTG with the fluorescence probe DyLight 594 as donor and the anti-tTG antibodies with the fluorescence probe DyLight 649 as acceptor. However, due to the large size of the formed complex (tTG/anti-tTG), and consequently to the low efficiency energy transfer process between the donor–acceptor molecules, we explored a new experimental approach that allows us to extend the utilizable range of RET between donor:acceptor pairs by using one single molecule as donor and multiple molecules as energy acceptors, instead of using a single acceptor molecule as usually occurs in RET experiments. The obtained results clearly show that the use of one donor and multiacceptor strategy enables for a simple and rapid detection of serum anti-transglutaminase antibodies. In addition, our results point out that it is possible to consider this approach as a new method for a wide variety of analytical assays.     

Les services médicaux d'aide à la reproduction peuvent-ils justifier leur discrimination envers les couples homosexuels?

Although lesbian women have a variety of ways to become mothers, an increasing number of lesbian couples attend fertility centres asking for donor insemination. The practice of inseminating lesbian couples remains a controversial topic within the reproductive medicine world. A review of the literature did not reveal harmful effects of lesbian motherhood on child development. Furthermore, this treatment is highly effective with an expected cumulative pregnancy rate of 60% after three intra-uterine inseminations with superovulation using clomifene citrate. The only objection to medically assisted procreation in these couples is therefore purely ethical. The extensive experience of the AZ-VUB Centre for Reproductive Medicine that played a pioneer role in this field, is illustrated in this article.     

Fertilization in Callochiton castaneus (Mollusca)

A fine-structural study of fertilization in Callochiton castaneus has revealed that the mechanism of sperm penetration into the egg is intermediate between the primitive condition found in members of the order Lepidopleurida and the more derived condition found in the Chitonida. C. castaneus sperm have the long needlelike nuclear filament and reduced acrosome that characterizes all Chitonida, but they have retained several plesiomorphic features such as an unspecialized mid-piece and a lack of flagellar reinforcement. As in some Lepidopleurida but unlike any Chitonida, the egg hull in this species comprises a thick, smooth jelly coat permeated by pores that permit sperm rapid access to the vitelline layer. The jelly coat is delicate and quickly dissolves when a sperm concentrate is used, suggesting that excess acrosomal enzymes may be responsible. Once the sperm have penetrated the vitelline layer, the long nuclear filament bridges the gap to cups in the egg membrane. However, once the fertilization membrane is raised, the perivitelline space exceeds the length of the nuclear filament, preventing other sperm from penetrating the egg. A fertilization cone forms around the nuclear filament of the penetrating sperm, but it does not appear to engulf the body of the sperm. Rather, the nuclear chromatin is injected into the egg as a long thread. The remaining sperm organelles are apparently abandoned on the egg surface. If this is the case, it would be a significant departure from fertilization in other molluscs and many other metazoans, in which sperm organelles, such as centrioles and mitochondria, enter the egg. New sperm and egg characters, as well as significant differences in fertilization, indicate that Callochitonidae are basal to all other members of the order Chitonida and may warrant separation as the sister taxon to the suborders Chitonina and Acanthochitonina.