The Institute for American Values has just published a new study, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, of how donor conceived persons are doing in comparison with those who were born and raised by their biological parents and in comparison with those who were adopted. I have not read the report yet, just the Executive Summary. But I was struck by one of the exchanges that has already occurred on the site.
FamilyScholar blogger Olivia Pratten writes:
I have been speaking out publicly about my donor conception for many years. I am always very critical of the anonymity, the means to which I was brought into the world and I’m almost always disapproving of the infertility industry.Inevitably someone will say to me “but you were so wanted.”
My answer is always, “yes, and your point?”
Responding to this post is a gay man, called “T.”
I’m a gay man who has had a child, with my partner of 8 years, through surrogacy and egg donation. The egg donor and surrogate will be known to our son.
One way that I explain to people our experience with the artificial reproduction process is that it is the opposite of being ‘knocked-up’. We were very involved in the planning and conception and the growth and birth of our child. Our child’s conception and birth was considered, thought about, planned for, dreamed about, fantasized about. He was most definitely wanted. He is loved and treasured.
We did not have sex to have our child. We did not have wedded, heterosexual, within marriage, we-want-to-have-a-child-sex. We did not have wedded, passionate, spur-of-the-moment at the wrong time of the month (or the wrong time of our life) sex. We did not have wedded, spur-of-the-moment, right time of the month sex. We did not have any of these types heterosexual sex as unmarried heterosexuals.
But so many children are born to heterosexual couples via each of these eight scenarios. So many. Many more, around the world are born in wider range of unloving scenarios.
The principle investigator of the report, Elizabeth Marquardt gives T this very interesting response:
I just want to note that one way of looking at the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study is as a study of three groups: The first completely one hundred percent wanted and intended — that is, the donor offspring. The other two groups made up of a lot of unintended pregnancies — that is, the adopted and those raised by their biological parents.
Which group is faring the worst? The 100 percent wanted, planned, intended group. The donor offspring, overall, even with controls, are twice as likely to have struggled with substance abuse and delinquency, and 1.5 times as likely to have struggled with depression, compared to those raised by their biological parents (and these differences are significant). The adopted generally fall in between except with regard to depression in which case they were higher than both the donor conceived and the raised-by-biological.
No one is saying, T, that “all” of those raised by biological parents are doing great. But when you look at these populations, measured by our study, you find that, contrary to today’s conventional wisdom, being wanted isn’t enough. What the child is born into — who the child is raised by — matters.
As I say, this is a very interesting and important response. But I have yet another response. Let me rephrase T’s statement, just a little bit.
“I manufactured a human being, because I wanted to.”
It doesn’t sound nearly so appealing when you put it that way, does it? Yet, that is what we are supposed to accept as an argument: some people get to manufacture other people, simply because they want to. This moral universe has no standard of right and wrong apart from the human will.
“I want it. I’m a nice person. Therefore, I get to have it.”
This is a moral nightmare, regardless of who is doing it, regardless of how “nice” the person may be. This would be a moral nightmare, even if there weren’t a same sex couple in sight.
Kudos to the Institute for American Values, and to Elizabeth Marquardt and Karen Clark and Norvell Glenn, for having the guts to
actually ask the question of how the donor conceived persons feel about their origins. But I think their study, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, is just the beginning of a very serious discussion about what we are doing to ourselves with Artificial Reproductive Technology.