“Meet the Twiblings,” a cover story for a recent New York Times‘ magazine, is the story of one woman’s quest to have children. Short version: she and her husband use his sperm and an egg donor to create two embryos. Both embryos are implanted on the same day in two different women who carry them to term. They are born five days apart. Melanie Thernstrom does a better job addressing the ethical issues and questions surrounding her decisions than most pieces I’ve read about surrogacy, although at the end of the day, I’m not convinced. As Ellen Painter Dollar writes on her blog, Choices that Matter, somehow the fact of happy, healthy babies negates the possibility of criticism, or even question, of the choices involved. These are complicated issues, At the end of the day, my concerns for the collective cultural ethos of being able to manufacture the life we desire–including the children we desire–overwhelms my empathy for women who struggle with infertility and want to use egg donation and surrogacy to produce those children. 

Finally, an article about an Iowa family who recently adopted a boy with Down syndrome from the Ukraine. It’s a simple story, and a good reminder that at the same time that many women are choosing to terminate their pregnancies with babies with Trisomy 21, other are choosing to welcome these children into their homes and lives. 

More to come next week–thoughts on a new screening test for Down syndrome, Chinese mothers, neuroscience replacing theology, and the new global elite…