Archives: My Daddy's Name is Donor

I’d like to introduce a new guest blogger, Stephanie Blessing. She will be writing on the theme of the spiritual experience of persons conceived via artificial insemination, including what the churches are (or are not) doing, and what they could be doing.

One fascinating finding of our study is how many persons conceived this way were raised in a faith tradition and identify with a faith tradition today. I blogged about those findings in the post, “Religion and Reproduction in the 21st Century.”

Stephanie’s bio and photo are available here. An excerpt of her bio:

Stephanie Blessing is a Christian, the wife of a pastor, and the mother of five children. She found out in May 2009, at the age of 32 years old, that she was conceived in 1976 by an anonymous sperm donor via artificial insemination. Like many adults who discover that they were conceived using this method, she suddenly found herself in a crisis moment. She quickly went to the internet in order to find some kind of assistance in helping her to reason through this new situation in her life from a biblical worldview. After searching for several weeks, she found that, aside from some clinical articles, no one was talking about this issue from a God-centered perspective. She has begun writing about her own story in order to share the hope that she has with others at her blog, My Father’s Daughter.

Welcome, Stephanie!

I found a commentary by Wesley J. Smith, a consultant at the Center for Bioethics and Culture (The documentary “Eggsploitation” was recently released by the Center for Bioethics and Culture) at the First Things blog titled “Confidentiality Promises to Sperm Donors and Adoptive Birth Parents Should Not Be Broken”.

I had an idea about what the CBC advocates and I assumed, when I first read the title of this article, this would be an article advocating for ending anonymity.  As I read on, I learned that is not what this article advocates but I was surprised that I didn’t get mad about it.  I see his point.  I really do but I don’t fully agree with it.

Someone once said to me that a “donor conceived” person has to “respect” their “donor’s” and parent’s feelings.  This made me mad.  It made me mad because I don’t think adult’s feelings should be given priority over their biological child’s feelings and well being.  Especially when these disconnects have been purposely built into their conception as it is with many “donor/surrogacy” arrangements.  Which I believe is unethical and the primary reason why “donor/surrogacy” anonymity promises should stop.  I don’t respect that.  I thought a better word to use was “understand”.  And I do understand.

But the reality of the situation is that the offspring of “donor/surrogate” and adoption arrangements never signed a confidentiality agreement.  They never made any promises and many want to find their bio-parents for many different personal reasons ranging from just a mild curiosity to deeply primal or spiritual or emotional or identity completion.  (Anyone who suggests that offspring are simply “curious” are not really digging very deep, trivializing it or not asking the right questions).

Information is readily available thanks to world web searches, DNA testing, social networking and ancestry sites.  With a little non-identifying information and a lot of tenacity, “donors/surrogates” and “birth parents”, who were promised anonymity, some times are found.   Sometimes the outcomes are bad and sometimes they are good or neutral.  But there lies the other reason why anonymity should not be promised.  “Birth parents” and “donors/surrogates” need to know that there really is no such thing as anonymity any more.

“Donors/surrogates” and “birth parents” all need to be counseled about the possibility of an unexpected knock on the door from their relinquished child/children (which could range anywhere from one to hundreds for “sperm donors”).  Yes, there are ways to make it harder for the offspring to find them (which I do not support especially in “donor/surrogate” arrangements) but a society with integrity certainly should not allow anonymity agreements to be one of them.

The times have changed and this is an outdated-unethical law.  It doesn’t support anyone’s best interests other than the repro-tech and adoption industry’s bottom line.

Aniston’s wrong: Stats prove Dads matter – a lot

Canada

By Susan Martinuk – Calgary Herald

Practically speaking, Aniston is right. Women no longer need a man. Apparently, almost 50,000 women a year make that choice and head to the sperm bank. Single parenting seems to be the norm in Hollywood. I have no doubt that she and a host of other successful women with a boat-load of resources could take control of their own destiny and do it on their own. They can pay up to $16,000 per IVF cycle in Canada (costs can be much higher in the U.S.) to get pregnant; they have money for nannies and cooks; they probably even have male friends to be a ‘father figure’ to the child. It seems like all the bases are covered.

But they aren’t. A growing base of research suggests that the resulting children will pay a high price for this one, ultimately selfish decision.

Just last month, I wrote about the first large-scale study to take a comprehensive look at the well-being of adults who were conceived with anonymous donor sperm. The study from the Institute for American Values showed that donor offspring are more likely to report problems with the law, mental health and substance abuse.

They also experience profound struggles with origins, and their identities and family relationships are more often characterized by confusion, tension and loss. They experience the same sense of ‘genetic bewilderment’ as those who have been adopted.

Mercatornet

The World’s Most Dangerous Idea

All families are equal

by Carolyn Moynihan

An AP story on sperm donor children this week makes this quite clear. Efforts of adult children to find their anonymous parent are being thwarted not only by individual donors but by the industry that uses them. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says it encourages parents of donor-conceived offspring to tell their children the truth about their conception but it is opposed to the banning of anonymous donations.

“The bottom line in the U.S. — we’ve always been big proponents of individual rights in regard to procreation,” said Andrea Braverman, who serves on the ASRM’s ethics committee. “We’ve always taken the approach that we get our own choices in terms of how we build and manage our families.”

Someone else from the industry puts it even more bluntly:

“It may not be a popular point of view, but when these decisions are made by donor and a parent, the child doesn’t have a say,” he said. “If the contract is for it to be anonymous, it should remain anonymous, and the child just has to deal with that.“

To translate: “Too bad, kids; it’s an adults’ world. Our desires rule. And if our first priority is our own sense of wellbeing, you will just have to muddle through as best you can. One day you too will get the chance to shop for the child of your choice.”

That is why the idea that all families are equal is the most dangerous ever: it shifts the child from its rightful place at the centre of the family to the fringes, and then to the shelf of reproductive choices. I doubt that there is a better way to destroy the human family than that.

ABC News

Tim Gullicksen, a 43-year-old real estate salesman from San Francisco, donated for a decade after signing up as a college student at Berkeley. He said he was promised only 10 families would get his sperm but now, “it’s pretty clear there are 80 or 90 kids out there.”

“These kids don’t know me from Adam,” he said.

The first child to contact him three years ago through DSR was a 9-year-old boy in Texas whose single mother had chosen sperm donation.

“He had five years of stuff for me when I met him and right after that everything started to snowball,” said Gullicksen.

“He had been pestering his mom about where his dad was since he was a toddler,” he said. “He had no father figure and he actually kept a box under his bed where he kept all his school projects and wrote ‘Daddy’ on the box.”

Are You My Daddy?

Maybe as we teach ethics we need to continue to bring in these societal trends that technology- not just web or texting technology, but medical technology brings in. I think the films give us an outlet for our collective anxiety about this issue as well as a forum to talk and explore.