Anne Georgulas

(Anne Georgulas, above, is James Younger's mother.)

We've already made a few posts on James Younger: first post, second post, third post, fourth post. I believe this is our fifth post on the case.

Gag order

Like Steve, I'm cynical about what it means for the judge to grant the father joint medical decision-making over their son. I don't think this is necessarily a win for social conservatives.

All the more so in light of the fact that the judge simultaneously issued a gag order on the father.

It seems to me the judge wants to silence the father so he can't further publicize this story while letting the public outcry die down. It seems to me the judge is waiting for this to be forgotten and the nation to move on to the next news cycle.

As Steve said, we should remain vigilant and watch this story.

Medical malpractice

Anne Georgulas is a pediatrician.

It looks like she's been getting terrible online reviews as a pediatrician. Simply Google "Anne Georgulas MD" to see many of the reviews. To be fair, some of the reviews may have been written after this story broke. However, one can simply look at older reviews before this started. For example, I captured this image which contains two reviews from two months ago, well before the James Younger case. As the image portrays, she's evidently tried to persuade a parent about transitioning their son into a girl.

In any case, I could be wrong here, but she might be practicing outside her scope of practice and/or failing to provide standard of care as a pediatrician. For example, I would have thought discussion about gender dysphoria would fall under the purview of a child psychiatrist, not a pediatrician. Is a pediatrician able to officially diagnose gender dysphoria? Shouldn't a pediatrician refer a patient with suspected gender dysphoria to a child psychiatrist for evaluation? On basis would she as a pediatrician even suspect a child may have gender dysphoria in order to "explore" transitioning a boy into a girl?

Georgulas might have opened herself to medico-legal action. If egregious enough, she could potentially even be stripped of her medical license.

At the very least, I think this is something people should look into.

Child custody

The mother, Anne Georgulas, had IVF:

Dr. Georgulas admitted in court she is not actually the twins’ biological mother and used in-vitro fertilization via an egg donor to gestate them.

If she's not the biological mother, but the child's carrier, while the father is the biological father, does that impact child custody? Shouldn't it impact child custody?

Female fertility

According to Georgulas' own website, she graduated med school in 1991. The very earliest one would likely finish med school in the United States is 26. Often people finish later. I believe c. 30 years old is more the norm today. I don't believe this was significantly different in her generation since relevant factors like the lengths of high school, college, and med school education haven't changed much if at all.

At any rate, let's assume Georgulas graduated at age 26. I think that's a fair (conservative) assumption. If so, she was born in or near 1965. That means today she's at least 54 years old. Possibly older if she graduated medical school later as the majority do.

Her son James Younger is 7 years old. That means she would have been 47 years old when she carried him in her womb.

It's no surprise she used IVF. It's no surprise she had to use a different woman's egg. She would have been too old to have kids at age 47. Her eggs would have been too old. In fact, I wonder, had she hit menopause by age 47? Typically a woman's reproductive years are between approximately age 13 to age 46, give or take. From menarche to menopause.

A woman's eggs degrade over time. There's some debate, but women don't make new eggs either. The conventional scientific understanding is a woman is born with all her eggs she'll ever have in her life. Albeit the eggs are at an immature state, i.e., primordial follicles. Approximately 400 immature eggs (primordial follicles) develop enough to expel one mature egg (ovum) each month of a woman's reproductive years which, again, is approximately age 13 to 46, give or take. (That's approximately 33 years x 12 months = 396 eggs.) At the end of a woman's reproductive years, i.e., menopause, there are only a handful of immature eggs (primordial follicles) left in her ovaries, and these primordial follicles degenerate soon after menopause.

By the way, sperm also deteriorate over time, but the difference is men regularly produce new sperm all the way till they die (or close to it). However quantity of sperm produced does significantly decrease after a man is in old age. Likewise sperm in older men tend to be of lower quality than in their younger selves, but the depreciation in quality is not nearly as marked as eggs in younger vs. older women. Sperm last on average 74 days.

Discarding babies

At least to my knowledge, it typically takes 7 to 9 fertilized eggs to have 1 successful baby in IVF. That means the other 6 to 8 fertilized eggs are discarded or kept on ice for future use (and often discarded after a certain time period has elapsed).

Actually, Georgulas carried twins since James has a brother. Twins are also more common in IVF. At least to my knowledge, that's because physicians often implant 2 fertilized eggs at a time in the hopes 1 of the fertilized eggs will make it. I guess she got lucky and both made it.

However, it's possible at her age she had more fertilized eggs implanted but these other fertilized eggs didn't make it. For example, maybe they didn't implant onto her womb.

Most conservative Christians stand against IVF precisely because we believe life begins at conception or fertilization. I use the terms conception and fertilization more or less synonymously here, since the terms are often used interchangeably, but there are technical distinctions. Thus a fertilized egg may very well be a human baby. In fact, I'd argue it is a baby once sperm and egg unite. But IVF ends up discarding a lot of fertilized eggs, which in my view is discarding human babies.

I've read Georgulas is a professing Christian. She's wearing a cross in the image above. Does it conflict with her denominational Christian beliefs for her to totally support the sexual reassignment of her son as well as creating life and discarding life like this?

A boy and a girl

Given all this, I suspect Georgulas wanted 1 boy and 1 girl. I suspect she was disappointed to get 2 boys. After all, she wouldn't have had much of another chance at age 47. Let alone at age 54 now. I suspect that's a large part of what's motivating Georgulas to transition James into a girl. She wants a boy and a girl. One of each.

Career chaser?

I wonder if she put her career ahead of being a mother?

In fairness, it's possible she tried to have kids earlier in life when she still would've been at her peak fertility, but she couldn't have kids for reasons unrelated to her age. I'm a bit skeptical about this since the use of ARTs (assisted reproductive treatments) including IVF seems fairly common among female professionals. Especially in medicine which takes over a decade of education and training (and often much longer, e.g., surgical specialties). This typically covers one's 20s into one's 30s.