Born with Two Mothers

Short abstract

Channel 4, 21 April at 9 pm

Rating: ★★★★

This remarkable drama told the fictional story of two couples who had tried for years without success to conceive through in vitro fertilisation. When one woman became pregnant it was discovered that the embryo that had been implanted had in fact been conceived with the other couple's gametes. A further complication was that the birth mother and her husband were white, while the genetic parents were black.

The story began at the point where both couples were trying to conceive, took us through the pregnancy and the discovery that the wrong embryo had been implanted, and concluded with a family court hearing to determine whether the boy, then 10 months old, would continue to be raised by his birth mother or would be taken to live with his genetic parents.

The couples were played by actors, but the doctors, lawyers, social workers, and the judge were all real life professionals acting as they would if this were a real case. Much of the script was improvised—in particular the judge's ruling, which was based on the law, and the “facts” of the case.

A consequence of modern assisted conception is that situations in which a child can be born under these circumstances can indeed arise—and the film did draw on some real life cases. Our culture simply has no ready answer to the question of who such a child “really” belongs to. Although the case at the centre of the drama was unusual, the central issue went to the heart of much more general debates about assisted reproduction. A powerful reason why people who want a child pursue assisted conception rather than adoption or fostering is the desire to have a genetically related child. Yet the assumption that what really counts is genetic relatedness is challenged by the equally important notion that what really counts is gestation and birth. A third version of what really counts is that of the law: it is the current and future best interests of the child that really matter in assigning parenthood. In a sense the law is not concerned with discovering who the real parents are but in determining who they are going to be.

Figure 1.

Devastated: Lennie James and Sophie Okonedo as the genetic parents

Credit: CHANNEL 4

If there was an implied villain in the story, it was the machinery of the law, which required immensely invasive inquiries into the family circumstances and mental health of the two couples and which made its determinations of fact through adversarial court hearings. We were put in the position of having to decide whether someone could want to be a mother or father too much. Could people want a child purely for the sake of the child, or is this desire always tangled up with their own needs?

In the court hearing the barrister for one couple tried to undermine the claims of the other couple by arguing that the mother wanted a child at least in part to overcome some problems in her own childhood. He was helped in this by the testimony of the psychiatrist appointed by the court. Although this made my blood boil, it was hard to see what other process could have determined the best interests of the child and ensure his safety and welfare. Courts cannot simply assume the goodwill of litigants: this goodwill has to be demonstrated. And at the outcome of the process in the drama something had been legally resolved, but all parties left more damaged than they had come in. One further point of interest is that in the fictional court hearing, as in real life, much more attention was paid to the women's status as fit or unfit for motherhood than to the men's status as candidate fathers.

The improvised element of the script lent the drama a realism that raised it far above the usual run of “issue” dramas. Nevertheless, the power of the film rested very largely on the extraordinary performances of Sophie Okenedo and Lesley Sharp as the two would-be mothers. Their ability to convey the pain, fear, and anger inherent in the situation was such that I felt at various points I could hardly bear to watch on, yet equally I felt impelled to do so in the hope that some resolution could be found for them and their son.

The film dealt with many of the issues in the case sensitively and without prejudice. In particular the issue of race was handled with tact and care. There was no lazy stereotyping, and no hints as to whom one was really supposed to like or root for. The film makers simply posed an issue and showed the devastation it wrought in five people's lives.

This was television drama at its best, because it treated the viewer as intelligent and thoughtful, resisted the cheap shot, and offered no fake solutions.