The Ohio Supreme Court has handed down an important ruling on the right (or lack thereof) of surrogate mothers. Danielle Bimber was accused of breaking her surrogacy contract with James Flynn and his partner Eileen Donich, when she decided to keep the triplets conceived with Flynn’s sperm and Donich’s implanted egg.
Flynn is a Cleveland State University math professor James Flynn who joined with Donich to have the child. Notably, Bimber was a pure surrogate — not contributing her own egg but merely bringing the baby to term. They triplets were born in 2003.
In a close 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Donich who argued that she was the legal parent and Ohio law does not allow the contractual waiver of such rights. The Court found that the law was silent on the question and that the contract would control. It put considerable weight on the fact that it was not Bimber’s egg. Bimber, who is found Texas, was given $2,500 for the “services.”
Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, writing for the court majority, noted “No public policy is violated when a gestational-surrogacy contract is entered into, even when one of the provisions requires the gestational surrogate to not assert parental rights regarding children she bears that are of another woman’s artificially inseminated egg.”
The question may now be one of damages under tort and contract law. Bimber, 33, now living in Corry, Pa., raised the children for their first 2 1/2 years until a Pennsylvania appellate court ordered her to surrender them in April 2006. Remarkably, Flynn was paying support despite her refusal to turn over the children.
Flynn is demanding wover $48,000 he paid in child support plus, according to Bimber, $300,000 in legal fees and other expenses
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Well this woman is a “nut” if this is about contracts and ownership. But if you read the amicus briefs filed in the Baby M case in New Jersey in 1987-88 or thereabouts, you will see a fascinating brief on the 13th amendment, citing a case where a biological father (of a child born to one of his slaves) was able to purchase, for money, a child of his own body. This does not even get into the issue of whose egg provided the protoplasm that became these babies. Nor does it take into account the fact that the three individual baby humans had a life interest (three life interests) in their own maternal continuity, etc.
Now that it is open and clear that humans are chattel to be contracted for and contracted away, why don’t we PUHLEEEEZ stop lying about the “best interests of the children” and admit that we are all on the auction block from birth onward, regardless of our cellular composition.
This lady is a nut to think she can keep kids that are not hers!
and Danielle Bimber is from Corry, PA…the egg donor is from Texas
The egg was donated, it was not from Donich, get the story straight
Gee, I can’t imagine how someone might get attached to children in her womb and become concerned when the people coming to take them can’t even be bothered to visit in the hospital because they are “busy.” I would have taken them home too.
I’m at a loss to see how Ms. Bimber’s defense claims ever got to trial. She had a contract to perform a certain service, she had no eggs of her own involved and she apparently, rather arbitrarily, decided to simply keep the children. Criminal charges of kidnapping would seem an appropriate charge rather than requiring the parents to endure and pay for a tort case.