Alana S, who blogs at the Family Scholars blog offers this testimony about some of the ambiguities, complications and stresses of being a conceived through anonymous sperm donation:
I decided to tell my mom about my blogging. I decided to explain to her how extensively I plan on combating commercial conception. “I want to prepare you. People will be asking me about you and our relationship and I want to be respectful of your privacy, but I also need to communicate the human story behind all of this so people understand the gravity of emotions involved.” She became upset. She wanted to know what I’d be saying about her. I described as calmly as I could the specific character traits I found in her that qualify her as a typical donor kid mom, and why they’re problematic. What came next was a wave of anger and threats with little to no understanding. “So you’re saying you wish you’d never been born?” she cried. “Well, not exactly. I’m saying this was a hugely unjust method of bringing me into the world and I don’t think either one of us got the family we really needed.” I told her I need to get personal and share my story because the fertility industry is selling egg and sperm as fake cures for baby cravings and there are some daunting correlative repercussions that aren’t being talked about. Parents are getting suckered. Kids are getting spiritually hijacked.
This complex of emotions is what we are expecting children to accept when we casually accept donor conception. By what right do we do this to children?
Alana is correct to oppose the commercialization of conception.
Some of our opponents predict that we will be sorry 30 years from now, that we resisted same sex marriage, as if the same sex marriage were a foregone conclusion and an unmixed blessing.
I predict that if those people get their way, 30 years from now, they will be embarrassed by what they have unleashed, when conception is fully commercialized, and everyone has a “right” to a child. As if children were commodities that other people have entitlements to, rather than human beings with rights of their own.
