Aside from magical and sci-fi stories, straight couples are going to need to adopt or use a surrogate mother. With this in mind, I present a hypothetical:
A straight man and a mtf transsexual are a couple, but the mtf transsexual's sperm has been saved.
The mtf transsexual's sperm is used to artificially inseminate the straight man's sister.
Therefore, the child produced is legally the nephew/niece of the straight man.
The mtf transsexual is the biological father.
The sister is the biological mother but is legally the aunt of the child.
The child is raised oblivious by the straight man (father) and the mtf transsexual (mother) with the biological mother acting as an aunt.
Does this scenario cross ethical lines? Is it incestuous? If this were included in a story, would it be overly bizarre? Is the alternative of adoption,random egg donor, and random surrogate mother more appropriate? Is there value in keeping it all within the family? Should the kid ever find out?
I am currently working on a story that grapples with this issue.
Comments
opinion
Incestuous? I wouldn't say so as there is no sexual or genetic relationship between the birth mother and birth mtf transsexual.
Ethical? I can't see any difference than a CIS couple where there was an infertile F, and her sister volunteered for artificial insemination by the M's sperm to have a baby for the couple. Yes, ethical IMO.
Advantages? More genetic similarity to the child-rearing parents.
Tell the child? The child should be told when appropriate, because in all probability at some point, the child will figure out or be told that their mother was a mtf transsexual, and could not have been the birth mother.
Bizarre, appropriate? Depends on who you ask and what their view on religion is. More appropriate than a child brought up by nannys and shipped off a boarding school for the convince of parents, IMO.
Best to look from a non-transsexuals view
What is legally/ ethically/ morally right is tied to culture. Where you are the values of the society in which you live. So...
Would it be legally/ ethically/ morally for a man to have sex with the sister? Would it be legally ethical for brother to adopt and raise the child? Would it be legally/ ethically/ morally right for the the sister to be insemitated?
If everyone is an adult and in the USA, the answer are easy. Yes, it is legal. Yes, it is genrally considered ethical. Morally, well...
The use of surrogates invoces discussion about many issues. Almost all of the issues relate to promotion of eugenics or exploitation of women and children.
Transsexual to the mix; just a minor footnote.
incest is relative
and in this case there isn't any (unless the actual couple themselves are closely related already)
The first advantage of knowing (especially in the family) the surrogate/donor is that you already know any family history of inheritable disorders
The second is that the child will resemble both sides of the family
Thirdly, a lot of medical establishments would be right picky gwenlans about the whole situation (and about surogacy in general), better to do as much of the arrangements in house as possible
..
Also, there was a kid at school with me who might have been the gay couple version of this (gay dads, looked just like one other than having the others distinctive nose)
never seemed to do him any harm ... obviously i mean other than the bullying for having gay dads in the early noughties, but that would have happened anyway with a "normal" surogacy or if he'd been adopted