Mark Diebel is Pastor at Christ Episcopal Church in Greenville, New York.
In sum: children of divorce have something important to say to churches. This report challenges some accepted practices and beliefs that have shaped how faith communities have thought about and responded to divorce. I want to focus on two particular practices that shape families and that should also challenge the responses of faith communities: donor conception and adoption. This report is unique in raising donor conception practice to the attention of religious bodies in general, especially in a context of offspring experiences. The Episcopal Church has virtually ignored the subject.
First, I want to point out two ways parent/child relationships are described in the report, one bodily and the other, relationally, through interactions. Julie Rubio develops a body theology. Marriage represents a spiritual bond between parents who become one flesh – with the child as the issue. The report states, “Even more so than in sexual intimacy, in which spouses become one flesh for a short time and then part (even as their feelings of unity may endure), when a child is conceived the child is a one-flesh union of his or her parents that cannot break in two.” The child may experience his or her relationship to both parents on a unitary – bodily – level.
Chris Kiesling discusses attachments between a child and a parent. Attachment is conceived through a series of “interactions” between a parent, usually a mother, and the child, that strengthen the forming of a “bond” – which in turn holds a large meaning (larger than the sum of its parts) for the child, becoming a “representational meaning.” These two views, both arising from historical realities, emphasize different aspects of a child’s more or less conscious sense of relationship to his or her parent(s). Rubio’s is based in conception; Kiesling’s is based on historical interactions, where conception and birth are not discussed. These realities of conception and historical interactions are essential to keep in mind as we turn to donor conception and adoption practices and the role they play in shaping a family.
A next step for work in the spirit of the report would be to ask questions of adoptees and donor conceived – as for children of divorce. Donor conception is a practice in the United States existing since the nineteenth century. It has evolved into a very visible practice in the U.S. I estimate there may be between six and twenty thousand donor conceived adults between the ages of 18 and 45 in the Episcopal Church. With gay and lesbian families growing in the Episcopal Church, there will likely be an increasing number of children who are donor conceived.
Adoption practice, which is ancient, took a curious turn after the first third of the twentieth century. The relinquishment of a child, the history of his or her life prior to adoption and a child’s race quickly became socially irrelevant. Children, in general, were denied the right to question the past in order to process their relinquishment and losses. Likewise, donor conceived children’s losses were denied reality. Work such as Rubio’s and Kiesling’s challenge these views with respect to historical reality. Historical realities like conception and early interactions need to be connected to adoptees and donor conceived persons, each in different ways.
Finally, I want to rework a couple of the recommendations in order to make clear how they might apply to adoptee and donor conceived persons.
The recommendation for Pastors, Youth Ministers and Youth Sponsors, item 5) Adoption and Donor Conception shapes the life story of a person and so should be addressed when writing a confession of faith or discussing a person’s life story. Comment: Pastors and youth leaders in general do not think of the reality that either adoption or donor conception are for the children. The same sort of research found in this report could be helpful in the cases of adoption and donor conception.
The recommendation for Children of Divorce, item 2) The Church cares about you and your family. However, know that the church will not allow your adoption or donor conception define who you are. The church will strive to be a place where you can be defined by faith and not by what happens to you in life. Comment: In the past the church did this by ignoring the real history of particular adoptions and donor conceptions. In the future, the church should do this by consciously affirming historical realities of conception and other historical interactions, and then helping children work in faith towards a more comprehensive identity.
Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? is a unique contribution to bringing the life of children to the fore in discussing faith formation and the role of the church.
Categories: General
Let me add about myself: one, I am a transracial adoptee (meaning that I was adopted by parents of another race than myself) and two, I am a doctoral student at Barry University working on donor conception practices in the United States, pastoral and theological implications.
Also, a friend left this comment on Facebook, “Interesting recommendation in “item 2″. I’d be interested in knowing more about why and how the church would like to be a place where a person is defined by faith rather than lived experience.”
I replied, “My point is that lived experience and knowledge of history…as well as all the social meanings of history…have been denied and that faith (in contrast) works in and with reality so that one can move forward with acceptance and creative response towards an unseen future.”
When I wrote above, “In the past the church did this by ignoring the real history of particular adoptions and donor conceptions.” The church was was ignoring the historical actualities which both donor conceived and adopted experienced (more or less consciously), as well as the social context which created and defined the practices, the rules and roles which were practiced. With adoption, the real practices which procured children were often cloaked by churches themselves so that what was done “for the benefit” of the mothers and their children would not be broadly discussed. The state became complicit in sealing the original birth certificate of adoptees and issuing revised birth certificates with the names of adoptive parents.
Donor conception practices were developed in private clinics and were infused by clinical information handling and disclosure, tantamount to keeping secrets that involved to larger or smaller degrees all parties.
In donor conception practice today, the availability of donor gametes (or sometimes ready-made embryos) is seen to depend on anonymity of the “donor”. Thus, practices of secrecy persist for utilitarian reasons.
“Work such as Rubio’s and Kiesling’s challenge these views with respect to historical reality. Historical realities like conception and early interactions need to be connected to adoptees and donor conceived persons, each in different ways.”
I could not agree more that what we have in this report is, at most, a seed, with so many implications. Yes, yes, this work begs so many questions for those who were adopted or donor conceived. I would love to be part of that group around the table. Mark, you are already a leader in this. Readers who have not yet seen it, be sure to check out Mark Diebel’s “Human Nature and Truthfulness in Adoption and Donor Conception Practice.”
Mark,
You say,
“In donor conception practice today, the availability of donor gametes…..is seen to depend on the anonymity of the donor”
Seen by who? Donors are not required to be anonymous, and intended parents can request and work with a known donor.
@Ralph,
Gaia Berstein, for example, responding to Naomi Cahn argues that donor anonymity will increase access, equalize access to gametes. See the Boston University Law Review, v. 90, p. 1190f.
See also Time Magazine, Frozen Assets, April 5, 2012. The popularity of American gametes on the international market is based (so says the article) on anonymity.
England legislated away anonymity, except for fresh sperm. But the mode of conception is not something that needs to be disclosed to the children…it may or may not.
It is true that donors are not at all required to be anonymous and that there are stories where the donor is known by everyone involved including the child. My point is that anonymity was historically presumed as the practice evolved, especially in the early twentieth century, through the early twenty-first century when it began to be questioned. Today, anonymity is still prized by many and is being advanced as the way forward for the practice.
Of course, the practice of donor conception may change for some circles and remain the same for others. Nations are already showing preferences for certain practices.
Mark writes:
“The church was was ignoring the historical actualities which both donor conceived and adopted experienced (more or less consciously), as well as the social context which created and defined the practices, the rules and roles which were practiced.”
No church that I know of has even addressed “donor” conception other than the Unitarian Universalists (that I know of) and even they only address the practice in relation to the legal parents not from the perspective of offspring.
One of the biggest hurdles to “donor” conception involves the language. There truly is no such thing as a “donor” in relation to the child. Everyone comes from 1 mother and 1 father (genetic). No church that I know of has the vocabulary to even address how this new language (and social context which defines the practice) effects the offspring (particularly the ability to express a loss – disenfranchised grief), their sense of identity and their personal sense family as well as the larger social and spiritual context of family.
It is easy to understand the losses felt by children of divorce or abandonment (even adoption) – the language is not muddled (although I know it was, historically, with adoption but it does not seem to be as much today – with the exception of “traditional surrogate”) – it is not at all easy for people conceived from these more complex social arrangements to express loss because of language, the intent, the social acceptance, industry and law that defines it.
Mark writes:
“…done “for the benefit” of the mothers and their children”
How do you define “mother” in context of adoption. Or rather, how do the churches define “mother” in context of adoption?
There truly is no such thing as a “donor” in relation to the child. Everyone comes from 1 mother and 1 father (genetic). No church that I know of has the vocabulary to even address how this new language (and social context which defines the practice) effects MARRIAGE.
I do not belong to a church but my “donor” conceived experience has been an amazing journey, which has brought me closer to the Catholic Church and the Catholic social philosophy. As a part of my exploration, I contacted a Catholic priest and shared my story and concerns. His words were wonderfully affirming. He said to me: “You are very right in saying that those who practice this type of reproduction are not taking into account the reality of what they are really doing. A person always wants to know their father, to know their origin. This is more than just biology. We are talking about eternal realities.”
We are all equally God’s children regardless.
So unlike your experience with the Episcopal Church, my experience with the Catholic Church has been incredibly reaffirming. The loss and reality was acknowledged. Nothing was denied.
The closest I can come to describing what this meant to me is, I felt like I was home and found family. I can never become a Catholic but I do love what it stands for.
I want to support Karen’s statement that there is no such thing as a donor in this context. Language is the vehicle of thought and changing the meaning of words is a way to drive the audience away or slightly mad. One or the other, whichever is the quickest path to surrender and grant poetic license to those authoring their own stories, crafting their own identities and deciding what each word in the English language means to them personally so they can stonewall any conversation by saying there is no right or wrong opinion. So their audience will drop it. That is why they do it. Giving a new definition to an old word when there is a dictionary full of commonly understood words that would describe the situation to a T, it’s lying. Lying is the wrong words to describe the circumstance in question. It’s not that they are deep and more in tune with the gestalt of the situation they’re lying and if you don’t believe them then they’ll settle for you just leaving them to live out their fantasies in peace with no interference.
Humoring liars is not politically correct its chknsht, its yellow its lazy. I’m the pot calling the kettle black I know I do it as much as anyone but it is not right especially when freedom and human rights and identities of millions of people have already been compromised. I try to be careful not to use the donor term I make a real effort and Karen is there to remind me when I slip. I don’t use the term donor conceived I use the term donor offspring because it puts them on this side of birth where they are people deserving of human rights and a true identity and legally recognized genetic kinship, medical records that are useful for medical purposes, etc. But I’ll be more careful. Its very important.
Adoption is a reaction to family separation while donor conception is a cause of it. Donor conception is contracted parental abandonment whether paid or not they agree not to take care of the offspring they create once they are born, the terms of these donor agreements outline the separation of their offspring from them and the rest of their family if and when they are ever born. Estranged parents who were gamete donors (how am I doing K?) estranged parents who were gamete donors separated their family in accordance with the terms of their agreements – their chiild might wind up adopted or step parent adopted, being the offspring of a former donor does not preclude also being an adopted person. I know because I’ve found a couple of donor offspring now who were given up for adoption. They are not mutually exclusive because adoption reacts to family separation of all sorts. We may think of it as always being a young mother relinquishing of her own free will in court and that everyone has a background investigation but that is not always the case. Some adopted people were abandoned rather than relinquished or were taken by authorities rather than relinquished. Some adopted people are orphans whose parents are dead others are half orphans. Some are step parent adopted. Some of their fathers are named on their birth records others are not. Some of them have the names of bio parents on their original birth record and others have the names of gamete donors on their original birth records and there is no record of who they really are.
It’s just important to keep in mind how many situations adoption serves And the offspring of donors are among them.
@ Karen, “How do you define “mother” in context of adoption. Or rather, how do the churches define “mother” in context of adoption?”
The context I was talking about involved instances where children were removed from (often) unwed mothers by church run institutions. There were many cases when the mothers were coerced into relinquishing the children or deceived by authorities to believe their children had died during birth. The well known example are the Magdalene Laundries
Defining “mother” in that context meant “fallen woman”, “whore”, etc. That was how the churches defined “mother.”
The Roman Catholic Church (or at least one moral theologian) has offered arguments in support of embryo “donation” – the use of the over 400,000 frozen embryos in America for family formation. Anonymity is optional. Rome is very clear about donor conception practice, it should not be done. American members of the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, are more likely to use assisted reproductive technology (donor conception), than other religious groups measured in the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study.
I understand the language problem, but do not offer a solution. Still, we are stuck with language as a medium of communication. It works okay. Donor language came to the fore in the clinical use where the focus was on the procedure and medically stripping the gamete of a mythical content. (That’s what they would say.) The word “donor” stuck and became the way the procedure was described.
The practices of donor conception and adoption need to be kept separate because they are different; and include many different practices. They raise different issues. The one thing I think they have in common is the influence or control stemming from social practices on the identity of children and the practical, social or legal, definition and limitation placed on the children. There is a socially approved disconnection from nature in both instances.
Mark as a big picture issue I’m going to ask you to back way up and look at the fact that what happens to donor offspring happens to minors who are victims of paternity fraud as well. These are people whose mother’s named their husband or sometimes an unsuspecting boyfriend as their father on their birth records when in fact their father was another person altogether. Sometimes their step parent colluded with the mother and other times the step parent was duped into it the end result is the same, the child has a falsified birth record and lost all their rights to legal recognition as a member of their genetic family. In similar fashion many children don’t have their fathers named on their birth records, not because their mother’s don’t know, but because they don’t want to tell, they’d rather raise their child without the other parent involved, it’s less hassle but again results in the child not having a complete medical record and not having legal recognition in their genetic family.
Those situations much more closely reflect the reality of donor offspring, with regard to absent record keeping than adoption does and those are the voiceless people who have no special group advocating for them. The only leg up they have over donor offspring is that their absent parent is not legally exempted from taking care of them in the UPA as parents that are labled donors.
So I look at that and I think the problem here is not what we call artificial reproductive technology, the problem is that people are not all equally obligated to the care and support of their offspring and we either allow or look the other way when mother’s undermine their child’s rights by not naming their father and possibly naming someone else instead. It robs people of their true identities and places responsibility for child rearing in the hands of whoever the mother feels like rather than in the hands of the person that caused the child to exist.
There are so many more similar big picture issues. I’ve seen so many falsified records from so many situations and now realize that we are doing a disservice to ourselves by compartmentalizing people into unnatural categories all with separate rights and rules. Donor offspring get this from their bio parents and that should be similar to what adopted people get but nowhere near as much as people whose parents feel like raising them and telling the truth on their birth records. Enough is enough. You’re all people, we are all people and nobody is more or less deserving of their rights or family information based on the regrettable actions of their parents. We need to have the same rules for every child born, no exceptions, no parental exemptions from responsibility.
I guess I want to sink every ball on the table in one shot like a los vegas pool shark. Its just way more efficient to help everyone all at once than one at a time. Or at least I thought it would be. Not making any headway.
@Mark,
Donor anonymity is still the norm in ART, and by a long shot, I presume. There is room for supporters and opponents of gamete donation to work together (if we can deal with each other) to help reduce or end donor anonymity and to advocate for disclosure.
@Karen,
“Correct” language is not absolute, but is set by usage. Until a little over 100 years ago, something “terrific” was akin to “terrible”. It comes from the same Latin root. “Gay” slowly moved from being merry or jolly, to something more salacious. The English language has and will always evolve.
ART has affected the meanings of the words “parent,” “father,” “mother,” and “child,” among others. You can fight against ART, but people will use language as it best suits *them.* Over time, the language will either evolve to accept that as standard, or it won’t.
@ Ralph,
Yes! It really looks like an uphill battle. I wonder if the future will bring new practices that incorporate disclosure within a larger, more holistic context, of child raising, coherent anthropology, etc. that will become the norm.
Social regulation of international practices proves that everything is local. Better ways, more coherent ways, may be what in fact will prove the challenge to develop.
Yes Ralph, meanings of words change over time, but until that point that the meaning has changed, use of language to mean what you want it to mean, but what it doesn’t mean is deceitful. That is why I am a stickler for correct language.
It’s all double talk. Either you get me to buy into the perception being crafted with the use of incorrect words or you tire me out and I go away or I agree to humor you to be polite. This is why it is so frustrating have a conversation about the topic with someone who keeps referring to people that are not parents as parents.
Hey interesting story I had contacted the Head of the AID program at a major university to try and get him to give my friend her mother’s file from 30 years ago and we spoke for almost an hour in great detail about how the program was run over the years and I said over and he did not use the word donor to describe the absent father I was looking for he used the word father, over and over again. Saying he did not know how her father would react to being contacted and etc etc . I was pressing him to chat with collegues that were on campus in those early years with him. I felt sure he was faculty and not some first year student. He used the word father – like as if with me he was not going to bs a bs-er we both knew the score it made me feel extra special actually like he dropped part of the front for me. Not enough, like he did not tell me who her Dad was but he did not make out like I was helping her look for some totally disconnected person who’d be astonished that she’d want to talk to him.
Mark writes:
“The context I was talking about involved instances where children were removed from (often) unwed mothers by church run institutions. ”
I wonder how often that happens this day and age?
Mark writes:
” American members of the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, are more likely to use assisted reproductive technology (donor conception), than other religious groups measured in the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study.”
YES! Which is one of several reasons I reached out to an Orthodox Catholic priest. To bring it to his attention hoping that he might be moved to speak more to this issue – inside his local church community and the Bishops.
Mark writes:
“The practices of donor conception and adoption need to be kept separate because they are different; and include many different practices. They raise different issues.”
YES! They are VERY different. The “pro-life” community do not seem to understand that however, because of the muddled language, perhaps…hence, perhaps, the reason why this practice is popular in the Catholic community (according to the MDND report results anyway)?
Ralph writes:
“There is room for supporters and opponents of gamete donation to work together”
It doesn’t end with just knowing a name, obviously, but at least we can share that common ground. Good to have you *on team*.
@ Mark, you said:
Mark, am I understanding this correctly: Rome has spoken that any form of ART is forbidden. I understand that. But, you said, Catholics outnumber other denominations in the use of ART? Did I get that right?
If so, then Catherine and Helen need to address what’s happening with the Catholic Church and it’s inability to form its faithful … not just in the ‘knowing’, but in the ‘doing’. What’s up with this?
@ Karen,
I don’t believe I’m following you on your use of the word, Catholic. You do realize that the word ‘Orthodox’ is usually used in relation to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Are you using ‘Orthodox Catholic’ in some fashion to mean: more traditional; and, the rest of the Catholic Bishops are ‘Catholic In Name Only’ (CINO).
Can you clarify this a bit. I’d appreciate it.
Teresa writes:
“Mark, am I understanding this correctly: Rome has spoken that any form of ART is forbidden.”
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/180199.php
http://old.usccb.org/LifeGivingLove/Reproductive-Technology-Guidelines.pdf
Teresa writes:
“Can you clarify this a bit. I’d appreciate it.”
“WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM?”
By Father Michael Azkoulhttp://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/ortho_cath.html
Teresa writes:
“Can you clarify this a bit. I’d appreciate it.”
“WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM?”
By Father Michael Azkoul
http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/ortho_cath.html
Teresa writes:
“But, you said, Catholics outnumber other denominations in the use of ART? Did I get that right?”
Have you dug into the My Daddy’s Name is Donor report (http://www.familyscholars.org/assets/Donor_FINAL.pdf? If not, you should.
Page 69
BTW, and just for the record, Mark, when you write:
“Defining “mother” in that context meant “fallen woman”, “whore”, etc. That was how the churches defined “mother.””
That really offends me. I’m sure you can site sources which say that that is how the “churches” defined “mother” but I think that is not the message or reason behind most Catholic organized adoptions. And I’m saying this not as a Catholic but as someone who respects the motivations and intent behind the religion.
Karen,
I don’t want to offend you, but many mothers were branded by church officials. Having a child out of wedlock was a deep offense, not only for the family of the women, but institutions as well. Taking offense was the social norm. The real circumstances of the women, the mothers, did not make disapproval lighter. Rape pregnancies were treated as any other. Women were neurotic or sick if they became pregnant. Ann Fessler’s “The Girls Who Went Away” tells many stories of these American (white) women from the 1950′s to 1973.
It also important to know that some of the stories about what was done are older, like the Magdalene Laundries, similar stories are coming to light today. Dan Rather made a report “Adopted or Abducted” in May 2012.
On March 21, 2013 the Australian government will officially apologize to the women whose children were placed in adoptions by government action.
International adoptions have been a real concern. Children have been abducted and placed in America for adoption, but American law treats these cases as misdemeanors. Abductions that result in adoption are not legally treated as child trafficking.
Adoption practices are so tangled with notions of doing good and protecting the “orphan” that religious organisations to this day are not paying full attention to the significance of removing children from their families or how the idea of adoption itself varies from culture to culture. The Adoption and Orphan Care movement, supported by Dan Curver and Russell Moore, should be watched carefully. David Smolin offers an important discussion in the Journal of Christian Legal Thought, Spring 2012.
Mark I am someone who devotes much of my spare time to helping separated families find and contact one another and to me it matters not how they came to be separated only that their desire to come together to heal to find one another to be responsible for one another as family is very moving to me and they deserve help. Nobody should have to pay to know where their own family is. So many of the separated families involve children not being willingly given up. In vietnam the situation is different they put their children in orphanages to get them food and medical care there is no welfare they visit their children and to one day go and find your child went to america has been adopted those families do search but it is hard for them they are poor and they don’t speak the language. I don’t speak the language I scramble for help from anyone to help me communicate with people sometimes to make a reunion work. I’ll broadcast on facebook does anyone speak french help me please. The stigma of being unmarried and pregnant is what is shameful. The shame is that a family would turn their back on a pregnant daughter that is their grandchild in her belly. The unsure nature of getting a woman pregnant for a man is a big deal you don’t want to take responsibility for another man’s child. But we don’t have that problem anymore. So get married if you want, or don’t but still take care of your child. Still take care of pregnant daughters. Sex is not bad they are not bad girls for getting pregnant. They were not careful girls but don’t make them feel ashamed. That is so sad. Marriage is beautiful whenever it occurs. It’s cute when the bride is pregnant. Today you know the guy does not have a shot gun to his back he’s choosing it.
There are also MANY women who decide to place their child up for adoption (instead of aborting) because they believe that that is the right thing to do for the child’s best interest (NOT because they are shamed into it). They seek the help of religious based adoption agencies to help them find the best families to place their child with.
It is important to remember with adoptees (and donor offspring as you know) we are dealing with historical strata. As these people become conscious of the realities that formed their lives many different situations will come to light which, in a pastoral sense, require different responses. We need to be educated about the differences and not be concerned to make everything the same.
In other words, adoptees and donor offspring grow conscious and have diverse feelings and thoughts about what was done to them. They will need to process the reality individually; but what they must do individually should also be known and appreciated by society because society is responsible for what happened. There is something that only the person can know and do, but that can be known to some degree by society and responded to out of a sense of social responsibility.
@ Karen,
Karen, I am a Catholic so I know the difference between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. You didn’t answer my question, though.
My question, again, is your usage of Orthodox Bishop … are you meaning a conservative Catholic Bishop, as opposed to some of the other Bishops in the Catholic Church that are less than Orthodox?
Or, does Orthodox Bishop mean a Bishop in the Eastern Orthodox Religion; e.g., Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, etc.?
Dictionary definitions of Orthodox are many.
Thank you, Karen, for the link to My Daddy’s Name is Donor Report.
Marilynn,
Couple of questions for you: something that happened in my own family. I am very unfamiliar with this issue. You and Karen seem to be the resident experts for this; and, I appreciate your sharing with us your experience.
A family member of mine spent 10′s of thousands of dollars to adopt a set of twins from Romania. They did have to file papers with a Romanian Court, when it was in session. They were in a state run orphanage. They were sorta old, and would have had to wait quite a long time for a U.S. adoption.
I do know some countries use adoptions as a source of revenue; and, a way of helping children. Russia, I believe, has just stopped out-of-country adoptions.
Can this kind of adoption be considered ‘buying a baby’, or your term ‘commodifying’ babies?
Do countries who are desperate for money,
Ignore last sentence in my previous comment.
Mark I think you misunderstand me about sameness. My goal would be to see the law change to treat every person born with the same legal rights to depend upon their genetic parents and responsibilities to support and care for their own genetic children. I don’t think there ought to be different rules for different people depending upon things that are outside their control. So different rules for people who were adopted than for people who were not. I think that if one has full and complete access to their original birth record and it is what is used to identify them then adopted people ought to have that same unobstructed right. The fact that someone other than their parents had to raise them should not have impacted their medical records or the record of their identity they are who they are and that is that. An adoption decree would be sufficient to impart control to the adoptive parents without fussing with an adopted person’s medical records or ability to access information about their relatives. The idea of making thngs the same is for fairness sake not to rob people of processing their individual experiences themselves.
Teresa,
On Romanian adoptions and child trafficking, an excerpt from an article in the Atlantic Times (a German magazine):
“Following the end of Romania’s communist rule, foreigners adopted more than 30,000 children from the country within 10 years. Most of them were not orphans.
Romanian couples seeking to adopt, in contrast, did not stand a chance. They could not afford it. Americans, for example, paid some $30,000 in fees for one child. Multiplied by 30,000 children, that amounts to a turnover of $900 million. The former director of Romania’s adoption authority, Theodora Bertzi, in 2006 said that this number was “not exaggerated.”
This lucrative amount created an unchecked, mafia-like system of adoption agencies in Romania that put profit ahead of child welfare.”
Marilynn,
“My goal would be to see the law change to treat every person born with the same legal rights to depend upon their genetic parents and responsibilities to support and care for their own genetic children.”
I would like to agree with this idea but I can’t get my head around it. One, such a law would only apply forward. Everyone already born and grown has no recourse. Another concern is with the genetic language because it will only grow more complex as mitochondrial DNA transfer gets going. It also doesn’t address gestational surrogacy. Third, I am convinced huge numbers of people will not comply – in large part because ART and adoption are international practices. In the U.S., states rights advocates are also going to resist federal legislation. Adoptees cannot get broad coalition supporting open records. Each state is a battleground.
The reality is we and future generations are going to be stuck with a diversity of situations – for some time to come.
Teresa writes:
“My question, again, is your usage of Orthodox Bishop … are you meaning a conservative Catholic Bishop, as opposed to some of the other Bishops in the Catholic Church that are less than Orthodox?”
I wrote “Orthodox Catholic priest”. But maybe I should have written “Catholic priest from a conservative Catholic parish”? I wasn’t making any statement on Orthodoxy within the Catholic church. Sorry for the confusion.
Mark writes:
“I don’t want to offend you, but many mothers were branded by church officials”
I know you don’t Mark and I appreciate and respect what you are saying. I’m only sensitive about making generalizations regarding the church because of the actions of some people who did harm to others in the name of their church.
Teresa
About buying children. In the case of most adoptions where the parents relinquish to an agency or private orphanage, the parents are either behaving ethically (they have no other choice or don’t feel the child will get the best care with them), or neglectfully (just walked away and left the kid in a dumpster) but they are not party to child selling/trafficking. Whoever is charging exorbinent fees to handle the adoption is child selling. Parents who directly accept help during the pregnancy are child selling.
I think children should be made wards of the state first prior to any adoption and then it should be entirely free to adopt a child because the state would otherwise have to pay to take care of the child. There is no reason it should cost a couple one red cent to adopt a child. It is horribly unethical.
Yes I think paying any amount of money to anyone to adopt a child even if it is called “administrative fees” or legal fees is buying a child its all a mask. If it were just a state office where tax dollars pay the salaries of employees and that was it then it would be the most ethical way.
Marilynn,
“My goal would be to see the law change to treat every person born with the same legal rights to depend upon their genetic parents and responsibilities to support and care for their own genetic children.”
“I would like to agree with this idea but I can’t get my head around it. One, such a law would only apply forward. Everyone already born and grown has no recourse. ”
Malarkey Mark. The premise of equality would preclude treating people differently based upon some imaginary line drawn in the sand. All people born equal. It would mean nobody has any right to keep private information that pertains to people other than themselves. If I am allowed to obtain the birth marriage and death certificates of my genetic relatives and they are in turn allowed to obtain mine, then every adopted person, donor offspring and quasi marital stepped on person should have that same right: doctors would have to turn over their records and courts would have to unseal records to set things right. People would have the right at any age to demand dna test if they suspect they are not related to the people raising them and if it turns out they are unrelated they should have the right to have them disclose the identity of the person who is their parent. Sure people could still lie and stonewall but they would clearly be obstructing justice the right to have one’s own information should be protected. The right to know who all your relatives are should be protected for your health and theirs.
Not just from here forward Mark but backwards. I’d clarify that the right to privacy is limited to your own information that does not involve other people. Genetic relatives involves other people. Mitochondrial DNA? Heck yes they are related you’d absolutely not have the right to conceal that you must disclose that info. No right to privacy if your someone’s mother for crying out loud. Keeping nose picking private is one thing, hiding offspring is entirely another.
“Another concern is with the genetic language because it will only grow more complex as mitochondrial DNA transfer gets going. It also doesn’t address gestational surrogacy. ” Gestational surrogacy. You mean carrying another woman’s child? If I had my way there would be sworn statements of genetic parenthood. If a woman was carrying a baby from another woman the other woman would be named mother not her.
“Third, I am convinced huge numbers of people will not comply – in large part because ART and adoption are international practices. In the U.S., states rights advocates are also going to resist federal legislation. ”
The uniform parentage act is complied with by all states. If the state wants federal funding they’ll comply. Besides Mark, this is an equal rights issue and a 13th ammendment issue people are being enslaved don’t forget that. We’d better not have a state that thinks slavery is OK
“Adoptees cannot get broad coalition supporting open records. Each state is a battleground.”
That’s because your not attacking the problem from the right direction. Let me at it. If you frame the issue differently and STOP separating yourselves from the larger population it becomes clear, you have an equal rights problem. It becomes clear there are human rights violations.
“The reality is we and future generations are going to be stuck with a diversity of situations – for some time to come.”
There are many variations on a theme but step back and find the real problem the one thing that is really operating to undermine the fair and equal treatment of all minors. Make a law that equalizes – Think about the premise of the core principal of this country All people are created equal.
Marilynn,
Prove me wrong! Please!
Karen your only issue is capitalizing “Orthodox”
That generally refers to the Orthodox Christian Church or in another context to Orthodox Judaism as a denomination.
orthodox Catholic is fine and clear. The belief that “orthodox” equal “conservative” is a value judgment.
orthodox Catholic means a Catholic who accepts the teachings defined by the Catholic Church centered in Rome.
I love your fearless willingness to share your own experience. Some day I’d love to hear why becoming a Catholic is outside of possibility for you. But appreciate your views.
I just want to give a shout out to Teresa, I know her from participating in Warren Throckmorton’s blog (which is an excellent blog that I highly recommend). While I don’t agree with Teresa on everything I agree with her on a LOT, you will find her questions and observations intellectually rigorous and stimulating. Additionally she’s a truly gracious lady with compassion. Pay attention when Teresa speaks, I do.
~grasshopper
@ Karen,
Now I understand what you meant concerning your use of the word, O(o)rthodox juxtaposed with Catholic. Thanks for clearing that up.
@ Maggie,
Thank you for, also, for commenting about Karen and my discussion with the usage of the word, O(o)rthodox. And, like you, commented to Karen:
Also, Maggie, can I ask you a question or two:
Preface to questions:
I’m a pre-VII cradle Catholic woman with same sex attractions, so I’m very in-tune with what happened with the Catholic Church during the last 50 years. I am as of now having a love/hate relationship with the Church.
1. Why has the Church permitted the wide-scale use of annulments, which has in some ways furthered the ‘divorce’ culture? My own opinion is that this is similar to your view in what would happen with same sex marriage approval.
2. Even though most people on the planet know the Catholic Church’s teaching on the non-acceptability of artificial contraception, and the explanation for that position: why is it that 95%+ of fertile-age couples act with total disregard in this, and, further, continue to receive the sacraments?
For me, who mindfully considers the Church’s position on same sex marriage and agrees with it; I find it very frustrating that we, meaning us gay folks, are the scapegoat group for moral conduct. I feel sorta picked on by the Church. It’s a hot-button topic for me, because I feel it’s an act of injustice on the part of the Church.
Thanks for listening.
SexualMinoritySupporter (SMS), I’m absolutely shocked, thrilled, and filled with gratitude at your kind comment.
Thank you, SMS. Your words have meant far more to me than you can imagine.
Teresa, just be mindful that you are ripe for recruiting into NOM. They are actively looking for sexual minorities to step up and say that they support heterosexual only marriage. Robert Oscar Lopez was recruited by the Witherspoon Institute because of comments he was making to stories on the Mark Regnerus bogus “Gays Make Bad Parents” ‘research’.
Be aware that your comments are literally music to their ears and I would not be at all surprised if an attempt was made to recruit you to the cause.
Having been reading you now for a couple years, I have seen your ying and yang with your religious faith and feel badly for the turmoil in your life this has caused you, but I do respect you and your absolute right to live your life as you so choose. I wish for you that you would find a very special “side A” friend on the GayChristianNetwork as I wish so much for you to have a deep deep companion in your life, someone more than just a friend, a deep deep companion that shares your world view.
Although you find in your view that Civil Marriage for sexual minorities is inappropriate, I hope that you can understand how deeply those who live in States with Civil Marriage and who are married to a person of their same gender, how deeply important and enriching their marriages are to them. I know what a deep thinker you are and on this point I wish I could get you to change your mind. Civil Unions are not the same, if they were, we would not have a separate name for it. On this issue I hope to influence you.
As far as My Daddy’s Name is Donor, I mainly skipped all the pages and pages of explanatory text and went to the bottom of the report and read the statistics provided in the tables. While they did not find many, if you carefully read the report they do segregate out the children who were conceived with the help of a sperm donor who had two mothers. I found their responses very enlightening, especially when they answered that there should be more government support for fertility assistance.
What is not written about very often on Family Scholars are the problems associated with known donors, the horror stories of the egg donor or sperm donor barging into the young families lives demanding involvement in the child’s life. In fact one woman who comments here has lamented the fact that she was an egg donor and “her child” is now 3 years old and how she yearns to be involved in that child’s life. There are two sides to the coin when talking about non anonymous egg and sperm donation. Rarely does Family Scholars write about parents having to go to Court to prevent intrusions by egg or sperm donors trying to co-opt the legal parents. Food for thought Teresa.
Mark you know I have nothing but love in trying to prove ya wrong cause I want what’s right for you what’s fair to you and everyone else. If a law is unfair to to one, it is unfair to all, because it could just as easily have been everyone else that drew the short straw? I don’t want my freedom based on luck of the draw, I want to know freedom for all is the bedrock of this country’s laws. I want to stand on unshakable ground where its not them oppressed today and its not going to be me opressed tomorrow because there are no tables to turn, no upper hand to get. I want my kid to see we just don’t tolerate laws that seek to create and maintain a secondary class of individual with fewer rights. If all you want is to be treated the same as everyone else at some point they’ll have to say yes.
SMS
That was a lovely compliment you gave Teresa. She is gracious and does ask thoughtful questions. I have been paying attention to what she says, you are right she does have something interesting to offer.
I have a question for you though SMS. You seem to think its horrible that a person would care about and want to be involved in the lives of their offspring. Why is that? I’m trying to wrap my head around why you believe the offspring of donors deserve fewer rights with regard to contact and support from both bio parents than every other child. What makes donor offspring less deserving of both bio parents care and support? Is it the involvement of the partner of one bio parent? Why can’t they all just cooperate? Why can’t the partner just be a step parent? How does the child benefit from loosing contact with one of their bio parents and that person’s family that the child is related to as well? Why is it that you support the idea of swapping out the dad for the partner instead of simply adding her to the mother and father the child already has as a step mother? Im in favor of same sex marriage if you recall. I’m just against marital presumption for anyone gay or straight because marriage is not what makes people parents, having offspring makes a person a parent. Having other people’s offspring does not make you a parent it might make you an adopted parent or a foster parent, a step parent or a quasi-parent type person but you can’t be the parent of a child that is someone else’s offspring.
SexualMinoritySupporter writes, “What is not written about very often on Family Scholars are the problems associated with known donors, the horror stories of the egg donor or sperm donor barging into the young families lives demanding involvement in the child’s life.”
This is an important point which is used to advance anonymity. Similar things are said about adoption. In fact, one reason that adoption records were sealed and the birth certificate amended in the mid-twentieth century was to prevent the “birth” mother from trying to make contact with the child – to secure a strong relationship with the adopters.
The reverse has also been said. Pathological children search for parents who have moved on, who were promised confidentiality; or in the case of DC practice, a parent who wanted only to be a “donor”. Some argue that anonymity should be preserved because the expectation of the parent has been just that: the child would never know.
The more you look at actual stories you find exceptions and details that contradict one or the other story line. Many “donors” are perfectly happy to remain in the shadows; others work out a good relationship with the family and their children. Some “donors” discover that they have information they want to disclose to their offspring – a health concern or something else, but anonymity prevents contact or sharing information. Some realize once they are older and have children of their own the import of what they did as young adults when they sold their gametes. They realize they have literally other children out there.
The dynamic nature of reality cannot be handled with rigid notions of confidentiality or anonymity.
Many adoptees are resigned to the reality that they will never know the identity of their parents, others must accept very limited information – or very limited relationship. Many donor conceived offspring will never be told; some will always wonder about their true stories. Some feel betrayed that the truth was kept from them.
The first reported story of donor conception in the United States was made in 1909 – about a donor conception in 1884. The grown child returned to the clinic and met a doctor who shook his hand. The offspring was never told about the circumstances of the conception but the doctor he met was his father.
Anecdotes can help shed light on the real situations created by both adoption and donor conception practices and are therefore good to know about. The principle I want to look at concerns personal and social knowledge.
Should society limit a person’s ability to gain self-knowledge?
A person has a basic right to acquire self-knowledge. It is wrong when someone cannot try to learn whatever they want because society has already determined that identifying information will not be preserved or disclosed – and that certain defining truths (such as adoption or donor conception) may be withheld.
The notion of right genuinely applies to self-knowledge. A person has a basic right to know where they come from and who they descend from – who participated in their conception and how they came about.
Maggie,
Thank you for the clarification.
RE: “I can never be a Catholic“…I actually can become a Catholic but I have many social hurdles in the way of that. But that’s for a private discussion and not something I am fearlessly able to share.
Teresa writes:
“why is it that 95%+ of fertile-age couples act with total disregard in this, and, further, continue to receive the sacraments?”
Excellent, excellent question.
Re: the reason why most Catholic women use birth control: because they don’t believe it is morally wrong to limit the number of children one has. They don’t believe there is a moral difference in using “artifical” medical means for birth control and using “artificial” medical means of body care (ex.: amoxicillin for an ear infection, knee replacement for joint issues, fillings for cavities, etc.). Most relevant of all is the visible challenge to the priesthood from other Christian denominations and other religions—most USian Catholics don’t believe a celibate all-male priesthood can speak with any moral authority on marriage and children (not being privy to the challenges of marriage and parenting themselves, let alone the challenges of raising ten or fifteen children in an urban environment).
I misread Teresa’s comment as artificial reproduction (IVF and “donor” gametes) not “artificial” contraception.
There is a world of difference between the two.
@SMS wrote,
There are two kinds of “known” here — 1) where the donor and the parents know each other personally, and 2) where the donor is known in the sense that the information is available for the children when either they reach some pre-determined age, or before, if parents choose to share the information with them earlier.
In the gay community, I’ve read news articles about 1) above going very wrong. These are often stories of gay men who were friends/sperm donors for lesbian couples, only to have the close relationship between the three of them erode markedly as the child grew up, creating an enormous and tragic problem for everyone. That’s a kind of “known” I’d never recommend.
Ralph writes:
“In the gay community”
It’s not a “gay community” problem, it’s universal…when an outside party is used to create life and family. SMS is correct, these arrangements are prone (have a natural inclination or tendency) to create difficulties. It’s good to know a name but it’s a much bigger problem than that.