In a new article, Kyoko Hasegawa writing for Agence France Presse looks at donor conceived persons’ concerns around the world, including in Japan:
…Mari Saimura, a professor at Tezukayama University, is among those who are calling for Japan to establish laws on the issue.
“Japan should give up the technology unless it sets up guidelines to guarantee people’s right to know their identity,” Saimura said.
There has been little progress on the issue in Japan since a decade-old government report recommended rules guaranteeing information about donor parents and notifying children of their parentage early on, she said.
For Kato, his paternal roots remain a mystery.
“I’ve never forgotten about my biological father. I always carry a list of potential donors, which is a sort of talisman to me,” he said.
Categories: Fatherhood, Reproductive Technologies, The Future of Parenthood
The article you link to does a good job of giving various perspectives from this should be banned, to I don’t want him to be my father, I just want to know my identity.
Donor conceived persons often observe that there is a continuum that persons finding out the truth progress upon, first saying that I just want medical information; then I’m not looking for a father, I just want to know; then grieving the loss of their father in their lives, etc.
Knowing identity is the compromise and the safest (most politically correct) one for us “donor conceived” to advocate but this is all a much much bigger issue than a “knowing” (openness/honesty yada yada etc.) one.
But your study found many donor-conceived people who were not opposed to donor-conception, although most felt a connection to their biological parent.
In terms of grieving for the loss of a biological parent, it strikes me that grieving the loss is difficult for adoptive parents to accept, but has become more accepted in general. For donor-conceived people, there isn’t supposed to be a loss.
But your study found many donor-conceived people who were not opposed to donor-conception, although most felt a connection to their biological parent.”
Of course. I’m testament to that. It’s taken some serious deep contemplation to come to the rationalization that “donor conception” is a wrong practice. I’ve said this pubically and I’ve been dragged through the mud and practically vilafied. I’m an adult though and I have a very educated background on the issue…I also have some emotional support that helps to counterbalance the overwhelming non-emotional support.
It’s a very hard process. It’s safe and politcally correct to simply state, I just want to know and everything else is okay.
Sorry, I hit “send” before I edited and spell checked…I think it’s understandable as is though.
Diane
If you are interested on my face book are tons of families that I reunited who would be willing to share with you the stages that Karen refers to its kind of the safest place to start by saying that all they want is information because they are sure that they are unimportant to their lost bio family and so want to appear cool and aloof the way you do when you are pursuing someone you want to date – don’t look desperate. But what is the goal of dating really but to become a family right? They are confused about feeling this desire for acceptance by people that have not put any effort into knowing them the way the people who raised them did. I think that confusion stems from wrongly being tought that a person can earn their way to parenthood. If they understood that the reason they are looking to their bio parents is because they freaking owed it to them to care and be there of everyone in the world the bio family owed them a little consideration and they are hoping and rightly so that they do matter and in my experience they generally find out that yes they do in fact matter to them. I think with adoption adopted people are able to adjust and reconcile themselves to the truth easier than donor offspring because adopted parents rarely commission the creation of the child and rarely orchestrate the abandonment by the bio parent. It’s possible for the adopted person to feel really good about their adoptive parents and be mad or feel rejected by their bio family and deal with that separately. Usually an adopted person is not in a position to blame the adoptive parent for having separated them from the bio family. To whatever degree the adoptive parent may try to keep them separate then the more confusion and resentment they can expect I mean it seems only logical you create a stockholm syndrome by sequestering the child from the bio parent. Even bio parents can do this by keeping the child away from the other bio parent – this happens with bitter divorce and with donor conception.
The loss in donor conception I bet is harder because the people raising you wanted you to be abandoned by your bio parent so badly they often paid for it. I mean how could you really trust a bio parent or a social parent that did that? You’d know they wanted you so badly they bought your little freedom and family and hid you its gross.
Diane can you explain why it is that people believe that donor offspring are not suppose to experience a loss? I never understood how anyone could think that I mean they are people that have bio parents who are absent from their life. What is the difference really. When they were born their bio parent did not want to be there and they have to go through that just like any other person whose bio parent chose not to be in their kid’s life.
I was thinking maybe its because people got sold on the idea that all they give is a cell an egg some sperm and obviously that is a load of crap i mean look at the agreements they sign where they agree to give up parental rights – if your the kid you know who the rights were to obviously its you. what do you think?
@Marilyn – “Diane can you explain why it is that people believe that donor offspring are not suppose to experience a loss?”
Mostly I think it is what they want to believe.
Adoptive parents want their children to love them and see them as their parents. They don’t want to share their children with someone else. They hope that their children will love them the best. They may even believe that if they are good enough parents, their child won’t want to meet their biological parents.
That sounds selfish, but parents are human. Maybe not everyone will feel all those things, but I think the feelings will often be there.
However, adoptive parents also love their children and want them to be happy. If they learn about what adopted children feel, they will (hopefully) try to listen to what their children want and support them if they search for their biological parents.
Most of us have never heard about the feelings of adults who were donor-conceived.
Most of us (certainly me) have probably heard of donor assisted reproduction as a cure for infertility. It’s talked about in terms of someone getting egg cells or sperm and making a baby. The donor is anonymous and sort of hidden. The technology makes it easier to forget that there is another person involved and the baby is genetically related to them.
So my best guess is that the parent of a donor-conceived child has accepted the idea that the child is theirs and the donor was just an assistant who helped them make a baby. Then they have all the same feelings as other adoptive parents that make them want to believe that their child will never feel a loss because they are the parent.
Perhaps they tell themselves that in an adoption, someone gave away a baby and that the child might feel hurt to know that. But with donor-assisted reproduction, the donor didn’t give away a baby, they gave away eggs or sperm.
Diane sure your right about all of that. You know its really ironic that people will be so snippy and adamant about the fact that all the donor did was give an egg sperm or an embryo when they know full well that the donor agreements signed are not about the egg or sperm or embryo at all the agreement is for agreeing not to raise or seek contact with their offspring once they are born the agreement is for agreeing to give up parental rights and contact with people, not with sperm and there are lawyers that specialize in iron clad contract language so the donor will never be able to take the child away from the people who paid. And also if they did not get to keep the baby they’d hardly want the egg or the sperm right? I mean they would turn a donor down who was willing to part with their sperm but not their offspring. So stupid to say all they donate is a gamete. People know better they just don’t like the truth because it means they purchased a person and are keeping them prisoner from half their family and altered their identity so they could play a roll in a farce to make the adults feelike they made a baby together because the donor offspring is not good enough as who they are they need to be something else someone else’s child. Its all so mean and they think that it helps to tell these people be confident and tell the kid how wanted the were. Sure they’ll feel so wanted because they were puchased and kept in a gold cage and treated really nice so. But just in case they wanted to leave all the info is hidden until they are 18 so they won’t know who to run to. Hopefully after 18 years not knowing their bio family it will be too late to ever form any deep bonds with those people and they won’t ever threaten to undermine the family structure that they paid to create because they paid to have the donor’s child be theirs. Like you said they don’t want to share esp with someone who did not even want to be a parent that makes no sense to them. They earned parenthood while the other guy just donated a tiny drop of dna.