I Want To Put A Baby In You: Update Time
The latest twists and turns in recent intriguing fertility litigation.
Hello, loyal readers. Please excuse my absence the last two weeks. I apologize for the hole left in your Wednesdays by the lack of I Want To Put A Baby In You. In good news, I previously had a baby put in me, but she decided to come out 7 weeks before her expected due date. And she decided to make that happen while I was traveling through rural Wyoming on the way back from Yellowstone.
Baby Girl Trachman got to enjoy her first day of life being airlifted to Denver, while I was left behind in Wyoming. Luckily, we are now reunited, and she is making slow and steady progress in the NICU. Thanks for the congratulations and warm wishes.
Since my last column, we’ve had several interesting developments in prior cases and ongoing hot topics relevant to this column. So it’s time for updates on a few of the twists and turns in recent intriguing fertility litigation.
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The Male Heir Case: The bizarre and intriguing case of the Portland mogul, desperate for a male heir, continues to battle its way through court. Jordan Schnitzer is fighting his prior girlfriend (or casual acquaintance/egg donor, depending on who you believe), Cory Sause, for sole parental rights of their genetic son. Filings have flown back and forth in the past month, mostly focusing on the contractual documents pertaining to intended parental rights to the child and the nature of Schnitzer and Sause’s relationship.
Interestingly, Schnitzer claims he only dated Sause sporadically, maybe a total of “8 to 10 times.” Sause paints a very different picture, alleging that they spent 77 days with each other in 2014 and 39 days together in 2015. Perhaps even more damning, she submitted alleged texts from Schnitzer, one she dates to a little over a month before the baby’s birth.
The text from Schnitzer reads: “Our child needs a mom and a dad. I always thought we would be together to raise him or them. Having a child is the most amazing thing a man and a woman can ever experience.” If authentic, it certainly tells a very different story than that put forward by Schnitzer. We shall continue to follow this case and see where a judge comes out on the evidence.
More Baby Gammy Drama: In April, we addressed the Australian court’s ruling in the Baby Gammy case. At the time, I noted that the judge found that the facts were more complicated than the initial charge that the intended parents were trying to ditch their surrogate-born child with Down Syndrome in Thailand.
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Instead, that they had intended to take Baby Gammy home from Thailand as well, but were unsuccessful. The judge also ruled that despite David Farnell’s status as a sex offender, the Farnells could keep Baby Pipah, Gammy’s twin sister.
But now we know that early in the case, the Farnells lied to family and friends—but more importantly, the court, under oath—that the babies were the genetic children of both of the Farnells. In fact, an anonymous egg donor had been used instead of Wendy Farnell’s eggs. An investigation as to these false statements continues, and to add a new chapter to the drama, perjury charges may be forthcoming against the Farnells.
Triplets Trouble Dismissal: We previously discussed the case of a surrogate who refused to “reduce”—through abortion—one of the triplets she was carrying for a deaf postal worker. After the triplets were born, the surrogate, Melissa Cook, sued in state and federal court for parental rights to the children.
However, last week a federal court in Los Angeles dismissed claims by Cook to invalidate certain California surrogacy provisions and to name Cook as the mother of the three children she carried as a surrogate.
C.M., the father of triplets, has been able to bring them home to Georgia and is reported to be happily raising them, and thoroughly enjoying his leave from work to bond with his babies. (Of course, any postal worker would probably enjoy a leave from work, even if it meant looking after triplets.)
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Cook still has an appeal pending in California state court, and her attorney has vowed to bring a case in Georgia as well to continue to seek parental rights for Cook.
Sex-Selected Baby: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s sex-selected baby girl, Luna, doesn’t seem to care about her controversial roots because she continues to blow up the internet with her adorableness.
Thanks again for everyone’s patience. I’m looking forward to getting the column back on a weekly schedule.
Lastly, I want to express my deepest sympathies to the families of the victims of the Orlando shooting. Although ART law has opened avenues for LGBT individuals to begin families of their own, the shooting reminds us that there is still a long way to go before we reach our goals of acceptance and equality.
Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, adoption, and estate planning. You can reach her at [email protected].
