The Donor vs. The Child
Posted via Canadian Content
I've been following in the nation's news for the last couple of days the topic about an individual who came to be from a donor sperm her mother received a few years back. Apparently over the last number of years, both the mother and the daughter have been trying to fight to gain knowledge of the donor's identity. Their argument is that it's important for her to know her heritage but more importantly, to know of any possible medical conditions that might have been passed down via genetics...... at least that's the most recent argument in order to win in her lawsuit to gain access to the donor's, AKA: her biological father's identity.
She wishes to make sperm donation more in-line with adoption, in that when the child in question turns 19 years of age, they are permitted to seek out the identity of their biological parent(s).
Currently in BC, they have made it so women seeking sperm donation can opt for a donor who agreed to being identified, but was not in place when her mother sought out donation.
Basically her argument is, and I quote:
“If you don’t want to be identified, don’t be a donor,” Ms. Pratten said. “It’s that simple.” ~ From an online report on the case posted just yesterday.
And last night on the news they had her on TV claiming something along the lines that she never agreed to being born from a donor sperm and nobody ever asked her about her wishes.
^ Well I have some news for you..... nobody has any say on whether or not they're born, let alone how you were born. Nobody has a say when they're given up for adoption, nobody has a say when they're aborted and when it comes to someone deciding to have a child, last I checked, that's up to the future parent(s) to decide...... not the child that doesn't even exist yet.
Secondly, in the report I grabbed the above quote from also noted this:
Quote:
I would really like to know how they're going to explain how it's a double-standard, because as far as I see it, both are completely different.
Adoption usually is derived from two people having sexual intercourse and not wanting, not ready or just not capable of raising a child.... this could be due to a one-night stand, a botched relationship, bad birth control practices, sexual assault, or whatever..... but it is almost always related to sexual intercourse that most likely involved consent on both parties (unless there were more then two parties involved I suppose)
In regards to sperm donation, it is the male who decides to donate sperm to god knows who for god knows what reasons.... it is generally the female who decides she wants a sperm donor. Maybe she's single, maybe her significant other is infertile..... whatever the reasons may be, those reasons are usually hers alone and those reasons are directly why sperm donation exists in the first place.
These men who go to the donor have signed a contract of privacy and to ensure there will be no strings attached later on..... if they wanted strings attached or if they wanted their potential offspring to come back looking for them years down the road, chances are they'd get into a relationship rather the donate their sperm.
The whole argument that the current system deprives the children of sperm donation their basic human rights is a vague and empty argument.
What rights?
To know who their real parents are? I didn't know that had a detrimental affect on someone being able to live their lives like anybody else or that it put them at a disadvantage compared to the next person.
What about the rights of the donor?
Let's think about this hypothetically....... let's say I went to the donor once and donated sperm. How do they use that sperm? Does it all go to just one person or multiple people?
If my sperm from that one visit goes to multiple people...... then if what they want becomes reality, I could end up with multiple people knocking on my door and saying "Hey, how's it going dad?"
It could just be one person..... or it could be 12, or 20...... who knows? Looking up the information now, there are processes, depending on where you live, that can use one sperm sample (donation) to produce more then one pregnancy.
Am I going to be spending the rest of my life in court trying to fight payments and support for all these children?
If there is going to be someone to blame or shift responsibility onto, doesn't it make the most logical sense to put the onus on the Mother who opted for a sperm donor in the first place?
Oh that would be too simple and besides, why punish your mother who's been there all your life when it's far more easier to punish some nameless guy you never met, who was never a part of your life and you can blame everything on who "Donated" the sperm your mother used to create you in the first place so that you could grow up and complain about it after the fact?
I don't agree that the identity of a sperm donor should be revealed.
Not only do I think it's not needed, but more importantly, think of all the sperm donors coming back and suing the sperm banks for breaking their contracts?
And if donors are going to be identified and possibly face having countless people knocking on their doors claiming to be their child and possibly seeking legal action for support or whatever excuses one can think of...... I'd bet you can expect the % of donors out there drop to almost nill.
Keep in mind that sperm banks exist simply because there is a demand...... that demand isn't from the men, it's from the women who want to get pregnant for whatever reason. Compromise that service and increase the risks to the donors and you can expect that service to dry up (no pun intended) and all these women will have nowhere to turn besides doing things the old fashion way..... which obviously doesn't work for everybody and in the end, obtaining a sperm donation will become a very very rare opportunity for many.
Maybe it's because I wasn't a donor kid so I don't fully understand what it's like for them..... but why can't they just accept their reality of their life and rather then digging up someone else's legacy you were never a part of, why not just create your own legacy, your own family tree, your own family line, starting with yourself?
The only logical solution I think should be applied that should please all parties involved is that the donor's identity remains anonymous and the only information that should be available to the mother and the donor child is a detailed medical background of the donor. Provide, age, race, health issues and medical history.... all the stuff that might be important later on in their lives, so that if they can find that there's a genetic issue with the donor's heart or something like that, they can keep an eye on that and check it out with their family doctor..... or if there's a chance for male pattern baldness, etc......
There is no need to know who the donor is/was, there is no need to get involved in their lives and seriously, how does it actually affect one's life if they never end up knowing what their father looks like?
It doesn't. You're still the same healthy growing human, living your life like everybody else, with the family you've known since you were born.
Why is that so difficult to accept for some people?
All this is going to do is open up a very large mess. We're going to end up with a pile of people demanding the identities of those who donated the sperm to create them, we're then going to have a pile of people hunting down the donors, we're probably going to end up with a pile of these people being rejected by the donors who don't want anything to do with them, followed by more lawsuits or additional meddling in their lives, which then will be followed by a pile of donors suing sperm banks and anybody else they can think of under the sun for breaking their signed contracts of protecting their identities.
All because a few people can't handle the fact that their mothers went to a sperm bank and it was their mother's responsibility and their mother's own free will and choice to go ahead with the procedure, already knowing the donor of the sperm they used was to remain anonymous. They can't accept that they're alive and well, living their own lives and were raised by parents who loved them enough to go through such a process to have them in the first place.
All because they want to know the identity and the face of the donor they came from ... even if they found out the identity and the face of the donor they came from, what is that going to change in their lives?
Nothing.
Original Article: http://www.canadiancontent.net/commtr/the-donor-vs-child_1013.html
Posted via Canadian Content
I've been following in the nation's news for the last couple of days the topic about an individual who came to be from a donor sperm her mother received a few years back. Apparently over the last number of years, both the mother and the daughter have been trying to fight to gain knowledge of the donor's identity. Their argument is that it's important for her to know her heritage but more importantly, to know of any possible medical conditions that might have been passed down via genetics...... at least that's the most recent argument in order to win in her lawsuit to gain access to the donor's, AKA: her biological father's identity.
She wishes to make sperm donation more in-line with adoption, in that when the child in question turns 19 years of age, they are permitted to seek out the identity of their biological parent(s).
Currently in BC, they have made it so women seeking sperm donation can opt for a donor who agreed to being identified, but was not in place when her mother sought out donation.
Basically her argument is, and I quote:
“If you don’t want to be identified, don’t be a donor,” Ms. Pratten said. “It’s that simple.” ~ From an online report on the case posted just yesterday.
And last night on the news they had her on TV claiming something along the lines that she never agreed to being born from a donor sperm and nobody ever asked her about her wishes.
^ Well I have some news for you..... nobody has any say on whether or not they're born, let alone how you were born. Nobody has a say when they're given up for adoption, nobody has a say when they're aborted and when it comes to someone deciding to have a child, last I checked, that's up to the future parent(s) to decide...... not the child that doesn't even exist yet.
Secondly, in the report I grabbed the above quote from also noted this:
Quote:
"Her lawyers argue the different rules surrounding adopted children and donor offspring is a double-standard that violates equality rights under the Charter."
I would really like to know how they're going to explain how it's a double-standard, because as far as I see it, both are completely different.
Adoption usually is derived from two people having sexual intercourse and not wanting, not ready or just not capable of raising a child.... this could be due to a one-night stand, a botched relationship, bad birth control practices, sexual assault, or whatever..... but it is almost always related to sexual intercourse that most likely involved consent on both parties (unless there were more then two parties involved I suppose)
In regards to sperm donation, it is the male who decides to donate sperm to god knows who for god knows what reasons.... it is generally the female who decides she wants a sperm donor. Maybe she's single, maybe her significant other is infertile..... whatever the reasons may be, those reasons are usually hers alone and those reasons are directly why sperm donation exists in the first place.
These men who go to the donor have signed a contract of privacy and to ensure there will be no strings attached later on..... if they wanted strings attached or if they wanted their potential offspring to come back looking for them years down the road, chances are they'd get into a relationship rather the donate their sperm.
The whole argument that the current system deprives the children of sperm donation their basic human rights is a vague and empty argument.
What rights?
To know who their real parents are? I didn't know that had a detrimental affect on someone being able to live their lives like anybody else or that it put them at a disadvantage compared to the next person.
What about the rights of the donor?
Let's think about this hypothetically....... let's say I went to the donor once and donated sperm. How do they use that sperm? Does it all go to just one person or multiple people?
If my sperm from that one visit goes to multiple people...... then if what they want becomes reality, I could end up with multiple people knocking on my door and saying "Hey, how's it going dad?"
It could just be one person..... or it could be 12, or 20...... who knows? Looking up the information now, there are processes, depending on where you live, that can use one sperm sample (donation) to produce more then one pregnancy.
Am I going to be spending the rest of my life in court trying to fight payments and support for all these children?
If there is going to be someone to blame or shift responsibility onto, doesn't it make the most logical sense to put the onus on the Mother who opted for a sperm donor in the first place?
Oh that would be too simple and besides, why punish your mother who's been there all your life when it's far more easier to punish some nameless guy you never met, who was never a part of your life and you can blame everything on who "Donated" the sperm your mother used to create you in the first place so that you could grow up and complain about it after the fact?
I don't agree that the identity of a sperm donor should be revealed.
Not only do I think it's not needed, but more importantly, think of all the sperm donors coming back and suing the sperm banks for breaking their contracts?
And if donors are going to be identified and possibly face having countless people knocking on their doors claiming to be their child and possibly seeking legal action for support or whatever excuses one can think of...... I'd bet you can expect the % of donors out there drop to almost nill.
Keep in mind that sperm banks exist simply because there is a demand...... that demand isn't from the men, it's from the women who want to get pregnant for whatever reason. Compromise that service and increase the risks to the donors and you can expect that service to dry up (no pun intended) and all these women will have nowhere to turn besides doing things the old fashion way..... which obviously doesn't work for everybody and in the end, obtaining a sperm donation will become a very very rare opportunity for many.
Maybe it's because I wasn't a donor kid so I don't fully understand what it's like for them..... but why can't they just accept their reality of their life and rather then digging up someone else's legacy you were never a part of, why not just create your own legacy, your own family tree, your own family line, starting with yourself?
The only logical solution I think should be applied that should please all parties involved is that the donor's identity remains anonymous and the only information that should be available to the mother and the donor child is a detailed medical background of the donor. Provide, age, race, health issues and medical history.... all the stuff that might be important later on in their lives, so that if they can find that there's a genetic issue with the donor's heart or something like that, they can keep an eye on that and check it out with their family doctor..... or if there's a chance for male pattern baldness, etc......
There is no need to know who the donor is/was, there is no need to get involved in their lives and seriously, how does it actually affect one's life if they never end up knowing what their father looks like?
It doesn't. You're still the same healthy growing human, living your life like everybody else, with the family you've known since you were born.
Why is that so difficult to accept for some people?
All this is going to do is open up a very large mess. We're going to end up with a pile of people demanding the identities of those who donated the sperm to create them, we're then going to have a pile of people hunting down the donors, we're probably going to end up with a pile of these people being rejected by the donors who don't want anything to do with them, followed by more lawsuits or additional meddling in their lives, which then will be followed by a pile of donors suing sperm banks and anybody else they can think of under the sun for breaking their signed contracts of protecting their identities.
All because a few people can't handle the fact that their mothers went to a sperm bank and it was their mother's responsibility and their mother's own free will and choice to go ahead with the procedure, already knowing the donor of the sperm they used was to remain anonymous. They can't accept that they're alive and well, living their own lives and were raised by parents who loved them enough to go through such a process to have them in the first place.
All because they want to know the identity and the face of the donor they came from ... even if they found out the identity and the face of the donor they came from, what is that going to change in their lives?
Nothing.
Original Article: http://www.canadiancontent.net/commtr/the-donor-vs-child_1013.html
