Anonymous Sperm Donors and Family Secrets
is the subject of this article in BioNews. I completely disagree with this author, on every point except that we shouldn’t abuse childless women. Other than that, well, look for yourself to see if you think this person is coherent.
Faith groups (and I am a member of one) have a poor, at times appalling, record of abusing childless women. Made to suffer for and keep secret the fertility problems of their menfolk, it is a human rights issue and it is right in our midst. Colluding with secrecy is not the answer. …There is no returning to a mythical golden age in which donors donated and patients were inseminated and everyone was told to carry on as if nothing had happened. Obviously if donor insemination is viewed as adultery, then it is unlikely to be worth the emotional cost of undergoing the procedure. Alternatively, we owe it to childless women, under social pressure from their communities to keep gamete donation a secret, to engage in discussions about how to destigmatise infertility and DI.
I completely disagree with this. We should not “destigamatize DI.” We should not allow donor insemination. Period. Not to married women. Not to unmarried women. Not anonymously. Not with full disclosure. Of course, we should not allow the abuse of infertile women. (I wonder what she is actually calling ‘abuse’ here.) But the truth is that no one has a “right” to have a child. Infertility is not a human rights issue. Deliberately separating children from their biological origins IS a human rights issue.
I went through the infertility experience. Don’t try to guilt-trip me about this. I know the pain. It is awful. But that doesn’t change the other realities involved here. Bringing a third party into a marriage through gamete donation really is a harm to the marriage. Deliberatly bringing a child into the world in complete separation from one of his or her parents really is an injustice to the child. All the talk in this article is tap dancing around the main subject: we are pretending to have an individual, personal “right” to have a child, when no such right exists. Having a child is intrinsically a social act, since it involves the other parent, and the child him or herself. DI, and indeed, the Artificial Reproductive Technology industry, is turning the social act of procreation into an individual act of re-production. Children should be begotten, not made.
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It is impossible to de-stigmatize because it goes against a fundamental truth. I understand why Christian parents would feel it necessary to keep these toxic secrets but it does pose the question – What would Jesus do?
A fellow donor conceived friend of mine writes on these issues from her Christian perspective on a blog titled “My Father’s Daughter: Looking to my heavenly father while I search for my biological father”
She writes beautifully about the confusion and yes, pain, that her conception method has created for her. On one of her more recent postings, I had commented on how donor conception, Jesus, Christianity and the TRUTH all tie together:
See:
http://donorchild.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanksgiving.html
AND my comment:
Stephanie,
What a wonderful Thanksgiving gift you gave to your dad. I’m sure this is secret has been a great burden that has been lifted from his shoulders – to know that his sweet-cherished daughter loves him regardless of bio-genetic connection.
As far as I understand, Jesus was the first ‘artifically conceived’ child person in historial record. That did not make Joseph any less his dad nor did it change their love for each other. But it goes without saying that Jesus knew who his father was and had very meaningful relationship with him.
I love your perspective. Keep writing.
-Karen
The fundamental truth I was referring to:
The Vatican
Dignitas Personae
http://www.usccb.org/comm/Dignitaspersonae/Dignitas_Personae.pdf
and
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology
http://www.usccb.org/LifeGivingLove/lifegivinglovedocument.pdf
If you are religious and your faith equates DI with adultery then you shouldn’t do it nor destigmatize it because that is your faith. No one shoulder alter their beliefs for their own gain. If they wish to continue to follow the path of DI then perhaps they need to find another faith or group that doesn’t look at it that way.
However, when analyzing the process of donating reproductive material it should not be such a subjective issue as religion. It should be an academic arguement based on knowledge of human and societal factors that determine our construct of family. And as yet I have not seen any model put forward that achieves this so that all parties including and most importantly the child benefit without possibility of harm from any donated arrangement.
Too many adult offspring report of their problems as a direct result of being donor conceived for this to be ignored. Their plight is reflected in the many facets that exist within the adopted community.
I see it everyday when I talk to other donated offspring and I see it everytime I look in the mirror.
dadams: I agreee: I haven’t seen any competent academic arguments that take all the interests into account. I have to say that the religious people seem to be the only ones who are even taking the long-term view that includes the interests of the child seriously. I believe this is because we take “autonomy” for granted as teh highest goal in modern society. so non-autonomous people, such as infants, children and embryoes, don’t get counted in people’s thinking. In fact, we dont’ even know how to think about these dependent people. It is only some religions such as teh Catholic church, that have thought seriously about the proper relationship between individual autonomy and personal dependence. everybody is dependent at birth, so autonomy can’t be the one and only criterion. Most modern philosophers are simply incoherent on this point.
Keeping gamete donation a secret is not the answer. If childless women are abused and put under pressure to keep the infertility of their male partners a secret by their faith groups, I would seriously be questioning the morals which lie within these groups!
I can’t imagine how heart breaking it must be to be unable to conceive, but as a donor conceived adult I know the pain and confusion of being separated from my biological kin. In all of this the child’s needs should be paramount. And trust me the old phrase “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” does not ring true for donor conceived children. I have only known of my conception since I was 21, but have always had issues with identity and felt as though a part of me was “missing”.
I also believe that God intended man and woman to “know” each other when creating a child.
Kim, thank you so much for your comment. I’m sorry for what happened to you. Thanks for your insight.
And Amen to your last statement.