Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Opinion

Judge orders 2-year-old IVF baby to be given to biological parents despite being raised by birth mom

Published

9 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Nancy Flanders

With the rising popularity of IVF, egg donation, sperm donation, and surrogacy, Americans have been fed the marketing line that biology isn’t what makes a family. Yet in cases like Sophia’s, it becomes obvious that biology certainly matters when the adults say it matters.

According to Haaretz, an Israeli court on Sunday ordered that, following a lengthy legal battle over an IVF mix-up, a woman who gave birth to a daughter and raised her for two years must now give the girl to her biological parents.

The woman and her partner underwent IVF treatment at Assuta Medical Center in Rishon Letzion, but as she neared the end of her pregnancy, she underwent testing after it was discovered that the preborn baby had medical concerns. During that testing, it was revealed that the baby she was carrying had no biological connection to her or her partner. She had been implanted with someone else’s embryo.

report on the situation found that the error was likely due to the heavy workload staff are facing at the fertility clinic following the government’s decision to move fertility treatments to private hospital settings – a move considered a financial benefit to the Health Ministry, hospitals, and doctors, but one that put patients at risk of errors.

Now, two years later, a judge has ordered the woman to hand the child, Sophia, who has a heart condition and developmental delays, over to her biological parents.

Benefits vs. damage

Judge Oved Elias of the Rishon Letzion Family Court said the girl should be given to her biological parents on the recommendation of Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, a psychologist appointed to the case, but against an affidavit from Welfare Ministry social workers and the head of Israel’s Child Protective Service. That affidavit advised that the girl should remain with the woman who gave birth to her, and her partner who have been raising her.

Elias determined that being given to her biological parents was in the child’s best interest because they are her natural parents. “The benefits that will arise from handing the girl over to her genetic parents and her life with them overcome the damage that will be caused by disconnecting her from the parents who have been raising her. The benefits of life with the genetic parents are, among others, in her future identity, connecting her to the family’s genealogy, a shared family story, and matching psychologies and family values,” he said.

He’s not wrong. Research has shown that children who live in a home with their married, biological parents are healthier both physically and mentally.

However, the removal of the child from the only parents she has known both inside and outside of the womb is likely to cause significant trauma. Studies have shown that taking babies from their birth mothers – whether they are biologically related or not – causes immense trauma for the child and can permanently alter her adult brain function later in life. While adoption seeks to heal the trauma that results when a birth mother feels unable to raise her child and lovingly selects a family to raise her baby, artificial reproductive technologies (such as surrogacy) deliberately create a trauma, with a child knowingly created and intended to be separated from his or her birth mother.

Birth parents and biological parents speak out

“Given that there was a major error in the IVF process, and given that, with cooperation and in a planned, monitored way it can be rectified with minimum harm, I cannot accept the stance that what’s done is done,” the judge wrote.

The birth parents argued that the biological parents do not know how to care for the child and her health needs properly, and that the situation should be left as is because “the family unit embraces the baby.”

“As a mother, I don’t understand how they can tear my daughter from me after I birthed her with blood, sweat, and tears? She is the fruit of my womb and I’ve been raising her for more than two years. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll wait until justice is done at the High Court of Justice,” said Sophia’s birth mother, who feels as though she’s been reduced to the status of a surrogate.

“I am Sophia’s mother, and she is a sweet girl who only months ago underwent a third life-threatening surgery. I’m not a womb for rent, and with all my grief for the woman who gave the egg, she didn’t make the child. I was implanted with the embryo, carried her, and gave birth to her, and I will not allow my daughter to be uprooted from me. It’s inhumane. I won’t lend a hand in risking my daughter’s life.”

Sophia’s biological parents, however, said that Elias’ decision “rectified” the mistake made by the IVF clinic. That mistake was determined to be that both women were at the clinic at the same time and had been called back for an embryo transfer in the wrong order.

“She is coming home to live with the family she was supposed to be born into. Everything was done to try to protect her privacy and allow her to be raised in peace. We are overjoyed and waiting for the moment we will finally be able to hug our daughter and be hugged by her, which is something we’ve been waiting for for so long,” they said.

Sophia’s birth parents have appealed the decision to the District Court.

Sophia’s case shines a light on the potentially serious harms of IVF and sperm and egg donation. The fertility industry treats children like commodities to be created and destroyed at will with adults as the clients, making decisions that are in the adults’ best interest, not the child’s. With the rising popularity of IVF, egg donation, sperm donation, and surrogacy, Americans have been fed the marketing line that biology isn’t what makes a family. Yet in cases like Sophia’s, it becomes obvious that biology certainly matters when the adults say it matters.

“[…] #BigFertility routinely implants someone else’s biological children into an intended mother or surrogate via donor sperm, egg, or embryos,” said Katie Breckenridge of the organization Them Before Us. “When adults choose to separate a child from their biological parents at conception, we shower those adults with congratulations and often call it ‘progress.’ Only when it’s a case of an IVF mix up is it a problem that babies go home with genetic strangers. In other words, biology matters only when adults want it to matter.”

Reprinted with permission from Live Action.

Business

Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

Published on

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By J.D. Foster

“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.

What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.

No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.

Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?

Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?

The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.

Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.

The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.

You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.

That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.

The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.

Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.

If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.

If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.

Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.

Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.

Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.

JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.

Continue Reading

International

FREE MARINE LE PEN!’: Trump defends French populist against ‘lawfare’ charges

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

‘The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent,’ Donald Trump on Truth Social.

U.S. President Donald Trump defended French populist Marine Le Pen as a fellow victim of “lawfare” after the popular opposition leader was barred from the 2027 French national election due to embezzlement charges.

“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote Thursday night on Truth Social.

As of Sunday, Le Pen, head of the National Rally (RN) party, was leading polls to win the presidential election, being 11 to 17 points ahead of the party of the globalist President Emmanuel Macron.

On Monday, Le Pen was hit with a five-year ban on running for elected office and sentenced to four years of prison on charges of “misuse of EU funds,” although two years were suspended and the remaining two would be served through house arrest.

Le Pen and her co-defendants were specifically accused of illegally using European Parliament funds for party employees who “seldom (or never) dealt with affairs in Brussels or Strasbourg,” of which the court held Le Pen personally responsible for €474,000.

Her prison sentence has been paused as her lawyer appeals the ruling, but the ban on her running for office nevertheless remains in force, despite the fact that legal penalties are typically delayed during the appeals process, according to Politico.

In his Truth Social post, Trump accused French leftists of using a “minor charge” against Le Pen as a pretext to block her from office.

“Just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about – Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me,” wrote Trump.

“It is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on. FREE MARINE LE PEN!” he concluded.

“I am Marine!” wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on X Monday, in a cry of solidarity with his fellow anti-globalist.

“This is nuts,” remarked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on X. “Lawfare is wrong whomever it targets. And it is stupid to boot. France’s neofascists will only benefit from this, just as the MAGA lot did. A panicking illiberal establishment across the West is diving headlong into a totalitarian pit.”

“I am shocked by the incredible tough verdict against Marine Le Pen,” chimed in Geert Wilders, leader of a Dutch populist party that won a national election in 2023. “I support and believe in her for the full 100% and I trust she will win the appeal and become President of France.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has called the ruling a “violation of democratic norms,” and Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage denounced Le Pen’s “cancellation” as based on “a very trumped-up charge.”

“In this country we have nine county council elections on 1 May that won’t happen, and may not happen for years,” said Farage, according to the BBC. “And in France, they cancelled a candidate. A candidate that would, without doubt, have won the next French presidential election. And you know what, if looks to me like a very trumped-up charge.”

“They will not succeed in silencing the voice of the French people,” said Santiago Abascal, head of the pro-family, right-wing Vox party in Spain.

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini urged Le Pen to keep fighting, calling her verdict a “bad film” akin to political shut-outs occuring in other countries like Romania.

“We will not be intimidated, we will not stop: full speed ahead my friend,” said Salvini.

Continue Reading

Trending

X