This morning I was checking who said what through my online social networks and I saw a focal point of outcry.  According to the reactions, a new regulation (on fertility assisting treatments and fertility assisting treatment centers) suggested that mothers who get pregnant through donor sperm can be jailed up to 3 years, all in the name of protecting the “Turkish lineage”  (the Turkish term in question is “soy”).  Now, if you know anything about Turkey, widespread ideas of nationalism (which border on racism) therein, and about the Turkish ministry of health, this is hardly surprising.  After all, we are talking about a country that rejects bone marrow donations from Armenia even if there is a match for leukemia patients (I should insert a link to that piece of news here, but take my word for it for now).

My initial reaction was the Turkish version of “Oh, come on!”   What else were they going to do to protect the purity of the “Turkish blood”?  Were they going to start jailing women who had children (through sex, not insemination) from non-Turkish fathers within or outside wedlock?  Even given the absurdities of the Turkish state, this was beyond ridiculous.  So I looked further into it.  Apparently they were trying to regulate “assisted fertility” but screwed up.  Here is how and why.

If you’ve ever watched “Private Practice,” you must be somewhat familiar with all kinds of legal disasters and personal dramas involving in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments.  One that I remember involves an older woman who had her last eggs harvested and wanted to get impregnated using these eggs (and I’m assuming donor sperm).  In this story was another woman and her husband, who needed IVF to have their own children.  And the embryos got mixed during the implantation (is this the right word?).  They find out when the baby the older woman carried turned out to have a fatal sickness (and eventually had to be aborted).  Now who has the rights over the other baby?  Who is the mother?

Donation and utilization of reproductive human cells (sperm, eggs or embryo) is not something that should be taken lightly.  Unlike other donor tissues (such as hearts, livers, name pretty much any body part or organ), these cells are used to produce new human beings.  There is the issue of “when life begins” which concerns abortion rights, but that’s a whole different issue.  What’s at stake here is establishing parentage when DNAs of child and either (or both) parents do not match.  The state has to regulate parentage rights for the sake of both the child, the parents and possible siblings.  And the word “soy” in this regulation is used to mean “parentage,” I could not find any direct reference to “Turkishness”/nationality/race whatsoever.

Two articles in the Turkish Penal Law are cited in this regulation (in the context of the responsibilities of centers to inform the patients regarding their rights).  The first one is A90 on experimentation on human beings (with exceptions involving children), typical consent etc. etc.  The second one is A 231 on “family/parentage linkages of a child”.  According to this article a person who changes or conceals the parentage linkages of a child is punishable up to 3 years in jail.  Also, a person whose irresponsibility causes mistaking of a child for another in a medical institution is punishable up to a year in jail.  This article is intended to prevent different forms of drama involving children and parentage: the rights of a father to know about his child, the settlements of cases where hospitals give families each other’s children,  etc. I remember a case I had read in Turkish newspapers but I don’t remember the details, I think it involved a hospital that allegedly used third party sperm (rather than husbands’ sperm) to inseminate the eggs of IVF patients. Nothing here is about third party donors.

Back to the regulation.  First: This may not be the right formulation of the regulation, but regulation is necessary.  We are talking about medical procedures, and it is the responsibility of the state to regulate the standarts these medical facilities should conform to.  Much of the regulation is about the conditions and requirements about the medical facilities and staff.  The section that raises the eyebrows is Article 18, which is on the “prohibitions” about the fertility assisting treatments.

Now, rewind a bit to the beginning of the regulation document.  It says in Article 1 that this regulation’s objective is to regulate the treatments, the centers that are involved with treating those medically deemed appropriate among MARRIED COUPLES who cannot have children.  So this regulation disregards outright single women who may want to have children with a man she’s not married to or through a donor AND same-sex couples (because same-sex marriage is not legal in Turkey).

So, keep it in mind that the cases in question here are limited to MARRIED HETEROSEXUAL COUPLES (who get the medical go).  Back to article 18.  First it forbids any treatments except for centers and persons who get the permit.  Then it forbids any use, storage, transfer or sale of eggs/sperm/embryo belonging to the pair in treatment other than their treatment.  This makes sense, because nobody would want to be donors without their consent.

Now the tricky part: It says that the couple can be applied only their own reproductive cells.  Any use of donors, generating embryos through donors, any use of embryos from the couple’s eggs+sperm on other candidates (there goes surrogacy!!! Nobody raises an issue about this?) is forbidden.  Ok, you can’t get fertility treatment involving third parties in Turkey.  What if you want to be a fertility tourist?

Section 6 says that, if you want to be a “fertility tourist” you’re pretty much on your own.  It doesn’t say that you can’t go to Denmark, choose a sperm donor, get your baby and come back.  It forbids centers or their personnel to refer, direct, encourage, patients to domestic or foreign fertility centers or act as intermediaries for procedures outlawed in Section 5.  If you are about to pack your bags for a trip to Denmark, wait a second though.

Section 7 says that if it is detected that a procedure that is against sections above has been undertaken at any stage, everybody involved is reported to the office of the DA.  Everybody involved includes the staff that did the medical procedure, those who referred or were intermediaries AND the pregnant woman AND the donor.  So, if you really want that third party donor baby, hide it, don’t let them find out.  Unlike the very visible single mothers Leyla Bilginel and Guner Ozkul, don’t talk to journalists about this.  If you want to be a single mom without worrying about the law, load up on alcohol on the day you ovulate, hit the classiest bar in town and have a one night stand with a guy you won’t ever see again.  If you cannot conceive children naturally or if you are not into men, then curse those who wrote this piece of traditionalist crap.

The rest is about #s of embryos to be implanted, selective-abortions (say what? they forbid selective-abortions favoring male embryos? How progressive of them!)

Section 11 is about “sperm/egg banks”.  Sperm/egg donation and banks that facilitate these donations are illegal in Turkey at this time, and this regulation confirms that.  That’s a different issue though, reproductive cell donations are forbidden in some countries, heavily regulated in cases they are legal.  This one counts the exceptions (e.g men and women can store their reproductive cells before treatments like chemotherapy, but they have to give written consent every year confirming they still want them to be kept).

I’m getting bored, but this one is quite interesting.  If a couple has embryos they want to be frozen and stored, it is possible if they both consent (every year).  If they divorce or one of them dies, or they both consent, the embryo is destroyed.  Having the child of your dead husband is out of the window.  So if you want the fruit of your love, do it now!  I can imagine how many inheritance cases this would be critical in, but still, isn’t it a bit harsh?  Maybe not with the divorce, but with the death?

So, good news: This regulation is NOT racist/ultranationalist.  It does not have a hidden eugenistic agenda. Doesn’t matter whether the donor is Turkish or not, no donors, end of story!  However, it is  VERY BAD news in many ways.  As much as it is necessary, it is terribly outdated and outright traditionalist.  It is based on the notion that a family is made of a married man and a woman, and a child should be born into such a family.  It is not illegal for single women to bear children out of wedlock (adoption is almost impossible though), so the question is: why does it matter whether the sperm got into the woman’s body through a penis or an injection?

My guess is that this is essentially about the issue of parentage again.  If there is a penis involved, the identity of the father is known whether he is involved with the upbringing of the child or not.  But if the sperm comes from a donor, especially an anonymous one, there is not much possibility of knowing.

The issue of “anonymity” of donors is still a kink in the process even in countries where sperm banks etc. are legal.  Wikipedia mentions cases where courts found donor fathers financially responsible for children that are fruits of long forgotten donations.  Relevant articles also mention that a significant number of donor-children do want to find out their biological fathers and some courts have ordered the information to be released to the children after they are 18.  There are many discussions about legal issues involving surrogacy as well.  Making babies naturally or “artificially” involve multifaceted legal issues.  With the latter issues on privacy (of donors), right to paternity (and associated issues like inheritance and legal guardianship), children’s rights, commercialization of babies, etc. come into the picture.  If Private Practice episodes are any indication, there is possibility of intense human drama with no “just” legal solution.  So, the Turkish state washes its hands clean off of these issues by just forbidding it.  “Yassah gardesim!” is not unfamiliar to the Turks anyway, state forbids it, you can’t do it.  Women and gays, this is about your rights.  Those rejecting traditional and patriarchal understanding of “family” and “marriage,” this is your fight.  Let’s see if the uproar will continue when it becomes obvious that this is not about nationalism but conservatism…

And the sad thing is that many in Turkey would read this regulation and say: “But, of course!”  The conservatism of the regulation just reflects the conservatism in the society.  People in Turkey are not very tolerant of single mothers and same sex couples.  Some in Turkey would reject a child if it turns out that it wasn’t his sperm/her egg used in the production of the embryo (thus the child is unrelated biologically).  So, no surprises in this regulation really!

The piece in BBC on this, which is not exactly correct in its details (first sentence: artificial insemination is NOT already illegal, married couples have been doing it for a long time).

For those who can read Turkish, here is the original document.