DETROIT 7 5¢ 24 TEVET 5754/JANUARY 7 , 1994 Inside Fertility Issues BUSINESS More than a few halachic and moral questions are raised by recent medical revelations. Workaholics ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSISTANT EDITOR These mature women won't slow down. n P.D. Eastman's chil- dren's story Are You My Mother?, a small bird falls from his nest in the first days of life. Never having seen his mother, he approaches a cow, a dog and a kitten, hoping one will identify as the Page 26 MUSIC Organically Grown Judy Goldstein's passions come together. Page 40 Auto '94 A look at what's hot in the automotive world. Center FOCUS You Don't Say! It's enticing. It's naughty. It's gossip. Page 73 Contents on page 3 lost parent. Last week, this kind of question — generally found only in imaginary tales — crossed paths with modern technol- ogy when a 59-year-old London resident, using an egg donated by another worn- an, gave birth to twins. (The egg was fertilized by the birth mother's hus- band). Several days later, a 61-year-old Italian woman, Rossana Dalla Corte, announced that she is pregnant — also thanks to eggs from a younger donor — and is likely to become the oldest wom- an ever to give birth. In recent years, halachic (Jewish law) experts have had to address every sticky medical issue from euthanasia to sex- change operations. Generally, they reach a consensus. Yet this latest issue — using the eggs of one woman to help impregnate an- other — would leave anyone looking for a definitive answer in a quandary. "There's a great deal of discussion Across the country, and in Detroit, Jews are latching on to the 1960s ideal of egalitarian, communal, religious experience through Havurah. Story page 42 about this," said Bais Chabad of West Bloomfield's Rabbi Elimelech Silberberg, an officer of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis. "But there's no normative view- point." There are numer- ous halachic ques- tions the procedure raises, primary among them being the identity of the mother. The obvious question in the case of the 59-year-old Londoner and Mrs. Dalla Corte, Rabbi Silberberg noted, is "who is the mother?" Pinpointing the mother's identity is an issue because both Orthodox and Conservative Jews hold that, other than through conversion, a Jew is anyone born of a Jewish mother. What, then, if the baby is conceived using the eggs of a gen- tile, but is carried and delivered by a Jewish woman? Furthermore, Halachah holds that the biological tie between a child and a parent stands no matter who raises that child. Thus, an adopted son or daughter must observe the commandment to "hon- or your mother and father" for the bio- logical parents, not just the adoptive ones. But it isn't only Halachah that recog- nizes the inescapable tie between a bio- logical parent and child. Dr. Arthur Caplan is director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota and a national authority on medical ethics. Dr. Caplan says that any definition of parenthood must include who supplies the sperm and who supplies the egg, and that this kind of dual biological motherhood could pose tremendous problems in the future. With an older woman carrying a child produced by the egg of another, "you're basically using the woman as a surrogate FERTILITY page 8