Twins marrying: I don’t think so.

[jrittenhouse]

First up is this story that’s been making the rounds:

1. Couple has IVF to get pregnant
2. Couple have twins as a result (boy and girl)
3. Twins are adopted out to separate households, knowing nothing about each other’s existance
4. Twins meet as adults, fall in love and marry with no knowledge of their siblinghood
5. Twins find out they’re really twins
6. Twins get a divorce at UK court.
7. Judge at trial allegedly tells British politician who is known for strong stands on issues about IVF, birth control and abortion about the case.
8. Politician passes on story to press with no further information or attribution than the hearsay from an unnamed judge to push his bill in Parliament to force IDing donors of sperm and egg.

Yes, I know that the story of the Merediths sounds way out there, so I probably have no room to say what I think; it’s highly probable that somebody made it up:

1. People do not do IVFs on a whim. It’s damned expensive, and a lot of trouble to do and very demanding. You have to WANT those kids bad and have the resources to try it.
2. If you wanted the kids that bad, you would never adopt them out, and I can’t imagine that the parents would allow it unless they were dead. And I have problems believing that family or friends would not step forwards to keep the kids together. Or that the agency would split them up. This is the UK, not China.
3. Silly me, when I heard that this was something that came up in a debate in the House of Lords, I checked the online version of HANSARD for the actual text of the material. Found it, for December 10th, 2007. It’s at the bottom of this post. The news stories that have the twins as a result of IVF are all wrong; Lord Alton very specifically says they were NOT the result of IVF. Someone doesn’t read very well. Big black eye to the story.
4. Twins meet as adults, possible. Fall in love, maybe. Marry, h’r'm. They never notice how odd it is that they’re born on the same day, both adopted from the same agency, and any similarities in looks, etc? And the secret is blown *after* they marry (meaning that the adoptive parents didn’t pass around the baby stories, etc and figure something was way odd and stop everything way early?)
5. Only Lord Acton knows the story, and he claimes he got it from the judge in the case. With something this juicy, I can’t imagine that someone else would find out at spill the beans (people at the law office, family, friends, you name it). This is a secret that would be way hard to keep.
6. The DAILY MIRROR added this bit: The couple, who did not have children, met as adults and went on to have a happy marriage until DNA tests revealed they are related. The DNA test was not mentioned in Lord Alton’s stuff. Did THE MIRROR make it up?
7. The other big Brit tabloid, THE SUN, throws in another twist they said they got directly from Lord Alton: “I don’t know if the judge was hearing the case himself or if it was simply one he was familiar with.” But in HANSARD, he specifically said that the judge had directly dealt with the case. Either THE SUN made that up or Alton lied in open debate on the floor of the House of Lords.
8. Another report in THE STAR: In an amazing twist of fate, the pair met as adults and fell in love. They were said to have felt an instant attraction after meeting in a nightclub. They held a traditional white wedding. Where did the newspaper get these details? Not from Alton, the only source.
9. NEWS OF THE WORLD interviewed the head of the High Court’s Family Division (the people who had the alleged case):But Sir Mark Potter (right), president of the High Court Family Division for the last two years, said: “This is the first I have heard of it.  I know of neither any judge who presided over such a case nor of the case itself.”

Personally, I’m inclined to think that this story is bogus. Either Alton made up the story from a non-existent Judge, or the Judge was making it up.  It’s not impossible that this happend - nothing is - but that the great pile of improbabilities that are involved in this are all dependent on one source.  And Alton’s interview with the tabloid, if accurate, states a different set of facts (the Judge’s direct involvment in the case) than he stated in the House of Lords.

Oh, it’s a story that would have gotten all over the news and backed up a political point that Alton was making - but given that the British tabloids are all screaming and offering hotlines and soon rewards for information (I’d bet) plus digging at the High Court’s offices - something will turn up eventually.  If there’s something to turn up.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: I see that the noble and learned Lord is trying to find a way through this, but I wonder whether that would be a wise way to proceed. The noble Baroness, in a thoughtful speech, was trying to point to another way by suggesting that something should appear on the birth certificate as a code of some kind that could be interpreted later. Inevitably, as others have pointed out, people would know what that code represented, so one might as well be straightforward about it. The noble Earl’s solution of having the words, “donor conceived” on the longer form of the birth certificate, with the parents then in a position to have a discussion with the child at the moment of their choice, represents for me the most crystal clear way of dealing with this. I certainly agree with what my noble friend Lady Warnock said earlier about the importance of truth being observed. As the noble Earl said, fake identities are not something that we should be promoting. Earlier in our proceedings I mentioned a new book by Lisa Mundy called, Everything Conceivable. She points to the American experience. Inevitably a website has been created in the United States for children who have been donor-conceived to try to find out their true identities. An example of children searching for their unknown genetic parents involves a group of half siblings who have a donor in common. Some donors have more than 30 offspring. When the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, made his point earlier about the possibility of relationships being entered into unknowingly, this was not far-fetched, and we must take that into account as we decide on the information that we will make available to children who have been donor conceived.

I was recently in conversation with a High Court judge who was telling me of a case he had dealt with. This did not involve in vitro fertilisation; it involved the normal birth of twins who were separated at birth and adopted by separate parents. They were never told that they were twins. They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with
the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation. I suspect that it will be a matter of litigation in the future if we do not make information of this kind available to children who have been donor conceived. The noble Earl said that the right to know was a human right. I agree, and it is the most straightforward way of dealing with an extraordinarily complex question. (italics are mine)