[Avodah] Surrogate Mother

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "david guttmann" _david.guttman at verizon.net_ 
(mailto:david.guttman at verizon.net) 


>>I would like to get an idea of the current Halachik thinking  about having
children via a surrogate mother? What are the issues?  

Thank you in advance for some insight.<<

David  Guttmann




>>>>>
The issues include:
 
1. If the surrogate is not Jewish, but the implanted embryo (=ovum +  sperm) 
is from a Jewish mother, is the baby Jewish or not Jewish?   Conversely, if 
the ovum came from a non-Jewish woman but was carried by a Jewish  surrogate, is 
the baby Jewish or not?
 
2. In the situation where a Jewish couple is infertile and the husband's  
sperm is used to impregnate a surrogate, and if that surrogate is a Jewish  
married woman, is the resulting baby a mamzer, or a safek mamzer, or 100%  kosher?
 
3.  If a Jewish married woman acts as a surrogate for another  couple, and 
becomes pregnant either A. with her own eggs and another man's sperm  or B. with 
another couple's eggs and sperm (embroyos), is she considered to have  
committed adultery and is she now forbidden to her husband?
 
4.  If the infertile couple are both Jewish but the wife becomes  pregnant 
using donated eggs (maybe because she had her own ovaries surgically  removed) 
and/or using donated sperm, what is the status of the resulting baby?  If her 
husband is a kohen, is the baby a kohen -- if the sperm came from another  man? 
  Or if her husband is not a kohen but the sperm donor is a  kohen, is the 
baby a kohen?   Is the baby Jewish -- if the eggs came  from a non-Jewish donor? 
 Is the baby a mamzer?  This whole paragraph  technically isn't about a 
surrogate mother but about a couple who did IVF but  not with their own sperms and 
eggs.   (BTW IMO people should not use  donated eggs and sperm, period.  It 
just raises too many halachic, social  and genetic issues.)
 
5.  If the surrogate mother got pregnant with sperms and/or eggs  from the 
Jewish couple and later changed her mind and insisted on keeping the  baby, what 
is the baby's yichus?  Let's say the surrogate mother  is not Jewish -- is 
the baby Jewish because the genetic material came from  Jews? Or let's say she 
is Jewish -- is the baby the same shevet as the  genetic father (Levi or 
Yisrael)?  Does the baby's status change according  to whether the mother who 
carried it keeps it, or gives it to the contracting  couple whose genetic material 
she carried?
 
As I said above, I think there are just way too many problems and nobody  
should use a surrogate mother.  And definitely nobody should /be/ a  surrogate 
mother.  Adoption is a better option.  
 
The question is more bedieved, if somebody was born to a surrogate mother  
and grew up and became a BT, what is his status?
 
(I think that the mother who carries and gives birth to the baby  determines 
its Jewish status, regardless of the genes, but I don't know all  the teshuvos 
on this subject, there must be plenty.)  


Speaking of surrogate mothers, in the Torah we find that a man would take  a 
second wife (like Hagar) or a pilegesh (like Bilhah and Zilpah) in order to  
produce a child who would be raised by the first, main wife, but then the  
"surrogate" mother remained part of his household, under his roof, married to  
him, and did not go off and live in another family away from her children.   (It 
seems that the mother who thought "I will raise my maid's child on  my knee, 
love him and teach him as my own" -- it didn't turn out that way.   In fact, 
Rochel thought she would raise her handmaiden's children and ironically  exactly 
the opposite happened -- Rochel died in childbirth and Bilhah actually  
raised Rochel's children.)  (Which is probably why Yakov went to live in  Bilhah's 
tent rather than Leah's tent when Rochel died -- the children of the  most 
beloved wife were in Bilhah's tent.)  (So family dynamics get really,  really 
complicated with surrogacy or anything like it -- thus adding sholom  bayis to 
the list of surrogacy issues.)




--Toby Katz
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