Is it a Reproductive Right to Have Your 15th Child at 65?
When women's desires and children's rights collide.
Reproductive freedom is a core feminist principle. So are the rights of children. What happens, though, when those principles conflict? And in an era of incredible technological progress in assisted reproduction, should there be any limits to what women can choose?
These questions (and many more) are raised in an absolutely must-read New York Times Magazine piece by friend-of-the-newsletter David Herbert (gift link here). Click over there and read the whole thing because spoilers are ahead, but the gist is that a woman named MaryBeth Lewis who lives in Rochester, NY is addicted to having children. She had an initial five in her 20s and 30s, and as her oldest children began to leave home, used IVF to have twins just before her 50th birthday. In her 50s she had another daughter, then twin boys at 55 (her 9th and 10th children), then a third set of twins at 59, and a 13th child at 63. She is clearly a dedicated mother and seems like a sweet lady, although everyone in her family recognizes she has a serious problem has been begging her for years to stop having baby after baby. MaryBeth’s husband seems, frankly, like both an enabler and an asshole. He’s a pilot, and basically a part-time dad, flying around the world while MaryBeth raised the kids — a situation they both seemed to prefer. Although, to be fair, MaryBeth did not raise the kids alone. MaryBeth’s other kids were predictably roped into raising the younger ones, with so much demanded of them that one failed out of college.
But all of this isn’t why MaryBeth’s story is a story. It’s because of her final attempt at having two more children, and the legal battles that ensued. Again, if you haven’t read the piece, go do that because the details are important, but basically MaryBeth decided she wanted two more kids but didn’t have any embryos left and couldn’t carry them herself; her husband, Bob, was also clear that he did not want any more children, and MaryBeth’s adult children were also begging her to stop reproducing. So MaryBeth forged Bob’s signature on a variety of documents, hired a surrogate, used the donor embryos from the same batch that had helped to create their youngest children, spent $160,000 of the couple’s money to pay for all of this, and impersonated Bob on a Zoom call with a judge to get a parentage order for custody of the twins the surrogate was carrying. In other words, she committed a series of frauds — upon her husband, upon the courts — to have two babies that she was not actually prepared to care for, as she was hitting retirement age.
Bob found out, reported her, and a whole shitshow ensued in which the babies were put in foster care before MaryBeth could ever meet them. This is an inflection point, and to me a real question: Should the babies have been taken away and placed with a foster family? I think, despite MaryBeth’s clear shortcomings, her obvious mental health issues, and even her criminal acts, the answer should been no — certainly at the point where Bob said he would consent to accepting parentage of the children, the children should have been placed with MaryBeth and Bob, who by all accounts were able to provide a safe home.
But the children were taken away. Skip ahead two years and MaryBeth is on the brink of getting the babies back — babies who are not genetically related to her, who she did not carry, and who she has never actually met. Those babies are also no longer babies but toddlers who call another couple “mommy” and “daddy,” parents who read them “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?,” who are planning a second birthday party for them, and are desperately trying to adopt them. These children have never met MaryBeth or Bob.
Still, it sounds like MaryBeth might win — and “winning” means ripping two little kids away from the only parents and home they’ve ever known, to join a woman who is essentially a hoarder of children, to be raised not just by a nearly 70-year-old woman but by her many teenage children who are being forced to parent a bunch of little kids they never asked for. She even plans on changing their names, as if they’re puppies simply being rehomed.
