NEW YORK, Feb 2 (LSN) – Orange County Superior Court judge Robert Monarch has ruled that two-year-old Jaycee Buzzanca is “nobody’s child.” Monarch ruled that Jaycee is without a mother or father because doctors used both donor sperm and eggs, then transferred the embryo into the womb of a surrogate mother recruited by a San Francisco couple, John and Luanne Buzzanca, who paid her a fee of almost $10,000 US. Prior to the birth of the child, born in April 1995, Mr. Buzzanca had filed for divorce. His wife sought child-maintenance payments but Mr. Buzzanca argued successfully in court that the baby could not be his in any legal sense. An appeal judge backed Mr. Buzzanca but also ruled that Mrs. Buzzanca “was not entitled to be called the legal mother of Jaycee at this time”. The judge said the child had no biological tie to the couple or the surrogate, Pamela Snell, defined under Californian law as her “gestational” mother. In American law, sperm and egg donors cannot be regarded as natural parents. Lawyers are now working to allow the child to remain with Mrs. Buzzanca, who has temporary custody and is seeking to establish that Jaycee is her daughter.
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THE PERILS OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION
NEW YORK, Feb 2 (LSN) – Orange County Superior Court judge Robert Monarch has ruled that two-year-old Jaycee Buzzanca is “nobody’s child.” Monarch ruled that Jaycee is without a mother or father because doctors used both donor sperm and eggs, then transferred the embryo into the womb of a surrogate mother recruited by a San Francisco couple, John and Luanne Buzzanca, who paid her a fee of almost $10,000 US. Prior to the birth of the child, born in April 1995, Mr. Buzzanca had filed for divorce. His wife sought child-maintenance payments but Mr. Buzzanca argued successfully in court that […]
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