Well it’s a lot more sweeping if you ignore the context which talks about biology “sometimes” shaping destiny and then offers a handful of specific examples to demonstrate the limited claim.
Well this is what I am talking about. Despite the advances that you yourself have alluded to, now you seem to be siding with people who still think there should be be predetermined hard limits on how much access kids have to their parents. I think your equivocation demonstrates the real conflict of rights that these arrangements set up. Who wins if the mums/dads want anonymity and the child wants more?
Yes it is. The examples clearly demonstrate that some people’s future lives (i.e. destinies) have been seriously mucked around by our attempts to unglue the basic instinctual bond between parent and child.
Not arguing with that. But it is another example of the very predictable sort of problem that arises when we cut against the grain and imagine that children can be separated from their biological parents without some sort of trauma.
Absolutely. But my first point remains. When we setup up systems where children are deliberately kept from (or in the dark about) their biological heritage we are likely to cause them pain.
Well gracchus seems pretty undecided on the level of access. Also, if you looked at the case gracchus mentions, you’ll see that some groups definitely do want cast iron anonymity. And, as I said earlier, preserving this anonymity has been (and still is in some places) a basic principle for the sperm donation industry. This is hardly a straw man issue.
Maybe I wasn’t clear here. The “biological reality” is simply the fact that biological parents remain parents (in a real sense, not every sense) even when they are not in contact with a child.
Well clearly it is important for those young men and women who have had to fight so hard to get laws changed in the hope of getting in contact with their biological fathers.
Thanks everyone for your vigorous responses!
I probably won’t get a chance to make another response before the discussion closes so I’ll let you have the last word.
Cheers.
I think that you are confusing “destiny” with “happenstance.” The word “destiny” would seem to imply that people’s future lives were inevitably mucked about with, and the examples that you cite do not show this outcome as inevitable.
I think that we are getting into semantics about what it means to be a parent, here. Sharing genes is indeed a biological connection. The question is, “What, if any, is the significance of this connection?”
I really wish that we had focused on this issue more. There is real meat in the discussion about the right to understand where one came from, one’s heritage and such. (And this is a matter that is personally relevant for me.) I feel like we have gotten bogged down in semantic questions about the meaning of “destiny” and “biological” when we could have really dug deep into the emotional aspects of growing up without knowing your roots*, though, as I have said, I do not think that this is quite the defining existential question for adopted children (and certainly not enough of a reason to oppose adoption or sperm donation).
*I know that I have Jewish roots (on my biological father’s side, based on documents submitted at the time of my adoption), and this is personally significant for me although I do not consider myself Jewish (or religious at all for that matter). There is much that could be discussed about what, if anything, roots mean (though I am hesitant to assign too much value to roots). I am sorry that this conversation got sidetracked away from that.
You’ve been dancing around “destiny”, but time to call you on it because it’s a strong word. How does biology (or, if you prefer, genetics) of necessity impose destiny on any human? Exact examples of “destiny” (i.e. the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person in the future), please. None of the articles you cited, by the way, discuss destiny.
No, I said that donor anonymity still has a place if important non-identifying medical history and genetic information about the bio-parent is provided to the child and their actual family. I’m also fine with a framework that allows removal of anonymity with no legal or financial consequences at the request of the child and the consent of the donor – the opposite of “hard limits”. I do think that anonmyity should be the default within a proper framework (i.e. one that does not exist in the black market or with informal arrangements like some discussed in your articles).
Who “wins”? Donor fertility treatment isn’t a contest, it’s a compromise arrangement. The donor (a mum or dad strictly in the biological/genetic sense) gets some financial compensation and perhaps the abstract satisfaction of knowing he’s helping a couple that wants a child. The couple (the actual mum and dad in terms of child rearing) gets the child it wants. The child gets a life with a family that really wants them and, under the advances since the 1990s and (I hope) further refinement, critical medical history and genetic information about the bio-dad.
Another concept you need to define further. I assume you mean biological parent here. Where is that “basic instinctual bond” when the child has never even met the sperm donor and in many cases may not ever know about his existence?
That’s a mischaracteristion. It’s not indecision, but openness to a donor system that provides options for others on a case-by-case basis of mutual consent. Anonymity should be the starting point, in large part because (as some of your articles allude to) without anonymity you see a marked decline in donations.
Only in the real sense of genetics, and you have yet to explain how genetics are “destiny”. As for actual parenting and child-rearing, a grown adult human does a lot more of that than a single spermatozoa.
Bullshit. I was raised by my biological parents and yet somehow I’m not still Queen of The Universe so either somebody fucked up or this “destiny” thing is something you pulled out your ass to back up your belief in traditional nuclear families.
Please do not disclose the nature of the birthmark. A simple yes will do. The royal committee will be in touch. We are eager to correct some confusion concerning a birth that occurred a number of years ago.
