Marilynn responds: 

I know which False Dilemma you’re using for this debate experiment – its False dilemma / False Choice (Hobson’s Choice) . The fallacy of the excluded middle, false dichotomy, false correlative, “either/or” fallacy and bifurcation involving a situation in which two alternative points of view are held to be the only options, when in reality there exists one or more other options which have not been considered. Hobson’s choice is “take it or leave it” take what is offered or get nothing.

So the Hobson’s choice you offer here is that abandonment by their biological fathers is essential to their existence. Had their biological fathers been required to support them the way people are made to support their children, those men never would have agreed to reproduce with our subject’s mothers and causing them never to be born lament their plight of genetic bewilderment. The false dilemma is that it seems we must allow some people to abandon their young in secret or millions of people will never have the chance to exist. Their fate rests on our shoulders unless we don’t think those people deserve to exist. Oh its so tricky!

The excluded middle of this false choice would be to focus our laws on how we treat individuals that are actually born. When those individuals are newly born someone has to be responsible for taking care of them or they’ll die. If a newborn is found in an alley starved and dead from exposure we would treat that neglect as a crime against the deceased infant. Who should the law hold accountable for that death? Who owed it to that child to try to keep him or her alive? Is the government the automatic parent of every person born who then picks and chooses parents based on the child’s best interests? That’s a pretty big burden for our government to take on. There would be an uproar if the government just randomly assigned people to care for infants they had nothing to do with creating. And while there are plenty of people who want to raise children they did not themselves create, there is not enough of them to handle the load if every newborn were unwanted. What would we do about the unwanted ones? Who should take care of them? What do they deserve? Who owes them the duty of providing physical and financial support if not the people who reproduced to create them then who? Another question is if people who have that responsibility should be able to sell their way out off the record before anyone knows its them that created the child.
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The alternative to underwriting the abandonment of millions of future people would be to offer them the dignity of equal treatment upon their arrival. We could, treat all human beings as people who, as minor offspring, are entitled to the financial and physical support of the people who reproduced to create them, who, in turn will be responsible for the physical and financial support of their own minor offspring. We could as an alternative to off the record promises to abandon require on the record consent to relinquish just like people do when they give up children for adoption. That solution would not stop people from generously donating their offspring to people who want to raise them, they just could not do it all yellow bellied and cowardly like.

If being held responsible for the results of their reproductive behavior will make some people choose not to reproduce and give up their offspring, then so be it. There are millions of reasons why a person may decide not to reproduce at any given moment and we certainly don’t mourn the non-death of all the individuals that never existed because of it.
We cannot be so foolish as to believe that expecting individuals to behave responsibly toward their offspring will cost billions of people their lives because it will prevent them from ever being conceived. I’m sorry its just the biggest load of hooey anyone ever heard. Everything would be just dandy if all men were held to the same standard of care with regard to the support of their young.

Single women giving birth to half spring [donor-conceived offspring] really illustrate where it is that donor offspring have fewer rights because there is nobody fronting and making it look like they’ve lost nothing. Half spring are entitled to the support of their mother who qualifies as a person so she owes the kid her support. But donor offspring don’t have the same rights as full blooded people, remember they are half donor half person. Donors don’t owe their offspring anything – so it really shows what’s lost when single women do it. These rights are still lost when the woman is not single, it just seems like not such a big deal because they get supported by someone else so its almost the same. Of course its not because it means the person has to assume the false identity of being that person’s child.
No its not in the best interest of any person to be treated as less than human and less deserving of rights afforded to all other people. Its horribly distasteful to suggest their lives are dependent upon having been abandoned by one of the people that created them. Of course that’s not true and what an awful thing to imply. If I could personally go and pluck those words out of the air before they reached the ears of every person that’s ever been humiliated by being told that I would in a heartbeat.

Post title: “Would you rather not exist?”

There are questions and statements I’m angry about and feel the need to answer in advance. Because I’ve been made my whole life to feel guilty for not feeling perfect gratitude for having such perfect parents I keep attacking myself and then needing to defend myself from myself. But these attacks are out there as well, I didn’t invent them. So I’ll start with my personal favorite: “Would you rather not exist?”

Because, apparently, not feeling just wonderful about one’s conception and parentage means you’d rather not exist.

It doesn’t make sense. I could be the product of rape, a drunken one-night-stand, incest, a silly teenage relationship that ended before I was born, you name it – and still not wish my existence away. And not be expected to love the circumstances of my conception.

But this question does reveal something else to me – I do feel and always, it seems to me, have felt, an ambivalence towards my very existence. I have felt worthless and depressed and unworthy of love and life and at times suicidal. A failure. Never good enough. Incapable of pleasing.

I am now convinced this has something to do with my parents’ ambivalence towards my existence.

I was proof of my father’s fertility in public, a source of his shame in secret.

I was my mother’s dream come true, and a source of her guilt in front of her husband for getting her genetic child when he didn’t get his, which is why she probably allowed him to appropriate me and sabotage my relationship with her from the very start, when he persuaded her she couldn’t nurse me, although she wanted to.

I was someone who constantly had to be lied to and about.

A part of who I was was unacceptable to them. And I just didn’t know which part, as I had tried so very hard to completely please them. And still there was this sadness and anger and hatred in my “father”‘s eyes. And this guilt and fear and retreat in my mother’s.

I had help in affording mine and am now on my way to finding my biological father. I’m forever grateful. Perhaps this is a cause one of you would like to participate in in a small way.

This is her fundraising website: http://gofundme.com/katatrinakay

She has $150 pledged and only needs $350 more.

To all donor concieved children Im sorry. I needed the money and I thought I was making your parents happy… Please dont hunt me down and break my real family, for they dont know. My real children would not forgive me. My wife, who is my life, would leave me.

Another reader, a donor-conceived person- wrote in to respond:

I am so sorry for the position you now find yourself in. But you are all of your offspring’s father no matter how they were conceived… It would be better to be honest with your family now before one of your children, who you did not agree to raise, find you through dna testing. It’s too late.

I would additionally say to all former donors… Ready or not, here we come.

It’s important to explore people’s motivations for using donors and becoming donors if we’re going to offer alternatives and advocate in any capacity for the rights of the children created.

The stay of surrogates at surrogate homes offers distinct advantages as follows:
a)-Our Co-ordinators & Social workers can have a direct control over the surrogates
b)-Surrogate tests, medicines, food, nutrition & hygiene can be strictly monitored
c)-Any unforeseen complications can be immediately attended to
d)-A positive environment can be created for the surrogates through devotional music, extra curricular activities, entertainment tools, & by engaging them in developing vocational skills
e)-Strict monitoring can be done to ensure that the surrogates avoid physical contact through crucial periods of pregnancy
f)-It can be ensured that the surrogates stay away from prohibited activities like smoking, consuming alcohol, eating tobacco, etc
g)-Complete physical & mental rest can be ensured , especially after ET
h)-The surrogates can be provided a family environment by allowing them to be with their husbands & kids regularly
i)-Proper security for the surrogates can be ensured
j)-Human rights of the surrogates can be ensured
k)-Basic needs for a comfortable living can be provided- hot & cold water, coolers & heaters, television & radio, refrigerator & cooking gas, etc.

“As soon as men have figured out how to have babies without women, it will be the end of women kind, it will be the coming gynocide.” -Andrea Dworkin.

Surrogacy is a great place to start in the devaluing of women.

Our second story is by a transgender donor-conceived person- it is a beautiful letter written to hir father, asking him in a number of ways one simple question, who are you?

 

I grew up with an identity problem which affected my relationships and self esteem, not to mention the undescribable “longing” and constant ache to know the piece of me that was missing…

…I was unable to get pregnant, because my eggs were too old. We consulted with a fertility doctor who advised us to use an egg donor.