{"id":594,"date":"2010-07-10T13:56:16","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T13:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.againstchildtrafficking.org\/new\/?p=594"},"modified":"2010-08-13T13:58:31","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T13:58:31","slug":"lifes-essence-bought-and-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/lifes-essence-bought-and-sold\/","title":{"rendered":"LIFE’S ESSENCE, BOUGHT AND SOLD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Margaret Somerville<\/p>\n

Two stories concerning the donation of gametes \u2013 sperm and ova \u2013 appeared recently in the media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

One related that a \u201cvirtual\u201d sperm and egg bank is being established that will only accept offers to donate from \u201cbeautiful\u201d people. Internet polling will determine who is beautiful enough to do so. The goal \u2013 informed by the principle that \u201ceveryone deserves a beautiful child\u201d \u2013 is to enable \u201cugly\u201d people to have beautiful children.<\/p>\n

The other story was that New Zealand will possibly allow \u201cdouble donation\u201d; that is, would-be parents would be able to use both donated ova and sperm to create embryos (a practice that is not legally prohibited, although still fairly uncommon, in Canada). As Diane Allen of the Infertility Network argues, this \u201ccannot be construed as any form of infertility \u2018treatment,\u2019 but, rather, the deliberate manufacture of babies to meet consumer demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do we, as a society, owe to the resulting children, especially when we are complicit in their coming into being, by approving and funding the technologies used to create them? They are the people most profoundly and directly affected. They will live their lives as \u201cdonor-conceived adults,\u201d \u201cgenetic orphans,\u201d as many of them call themselves.<\/p>\n

Donor conception may be a completely avoidable human tragedy in the making, one for which we might be holding a truth and reconciliation commission at some future date, when offspring ask, as some are already doing, \u201cHow could you have done this to us? How could you have allowed this to happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Is donor conception the 21st-century version of the wrongs we now recognize we did to some children in the 20th century? Are we repeating in a new context and in new ways the terrible errors and grave injustices that occurred with Australia\u2019s \u201cstolen generation\u201d of aboriginal children, the United Kingdom\u2019s \u201chome children\u201d sent to Canada and other British Commonwealth countries, and the \u201cscoop\u201d of native children from reserves into Canadian residential schools and white adoptive homes, all of which deliberately separated children from their biological families.<\/p>\n

In all these instances, our intentions, as is true in donor conception, were to \u201cdo good.\u201d In donor conception, however, we primarily intend to \u201cdo good\u201d to the adults who want a child, rather than to the child, as was the motive \u2013 although a grossly mistaken belief \u2013 in the other historical wrongs I have mentioned.<\/p>\n

As an old human-rights axiom warns, an unalloyed intention to \u201cdo good\u201d has its dangers: \u201cNowhere are human rights more threatened than when we act purporting to do only good.\u201d Our desire to do good can blind us to the risks and harms that are involved. Is that true of gamete donation?<\/p>\n

An argument that is used to support donor conception is that the child would not exist otherwise and, therefore, should not complain. One young donor-conceived woman, confronted with this argument, responded, \u201cIf I were the result of rape, I would still be glad to be alive, but that doesn\u2019t mean I or any one else should approve of rape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adoption is our longest-standing experience of dealing with a situation where children have been intentionally disconnected from their biological parents.<\/p>\n

In the past, adoption records were permanently sealed. We now recognize that as being harmful to the adopted person and potentially so to the birth family, and unethical. Yet donor-conceived Canadians do not know who at least one of their biological parents is, because donors here are allowed to remain anonymous, which is no longer the case in a growing list of countries (including Britain, Australia and New Zealand among many others). That also is unethical and, if we continue with gamete donation, it must be changed.<\/p>\n

Adoptive parents were once advised by \u201cprofessionals\u201d \u2013 as the parents of donor-conceived children have been and still often are \u2013 not to tell their children of their origins; they were told that secrecy was best. This, too, should be changed, not least because people excluded from a secret that relates to them in some major way, often sense that they are being excluded. Their not knowing what the secret is creates a situation of doubt, which can be very difficult for them to cope with psychologically. Moreover, such secrets can damage \u2013 sometimes even destroy \u2013 family relationships once they come to light, as most inevitably do, often in traumatic situations (for example, divorce or death).<\/p>\n

Adoptive parents were also told that children were a blank slate, that they would be just fine and would not experience loss because of their adoptive family loving them, really \u201cwanting them,\u201d \u201cgoing through so much to get them\u201d and so on. For many adopted children, even those who deeply love their adoptive parents, this has not proved to be true, as is also the case for some donor-conceived children. Now, prospective adoptive parents are counselled during the home-study process to expect and accept this sense of loss as normal.<\/p>\n

Birth parents were told \u2013 as gamete donors are today \u2013 that it was in their own best interests to \u201cput it behind them and get on with their lives,\u201d that their relinquished children would be just fine, that they were doing a \u201cwonderful, selfless\u201d thing in helping people become parents who couldn\u2019t otherwise do so. But this \u201cmoving on\u201d was not always possible for the birth parents, as is also true for some gamete donors.<\/p>\n

I suggest that the first step in dealing, ethically, with the issues I have identified and with other related issues, is to place the future child, and the child\u2019s human rights and our obligations as a society to him or her, at the centre of the decision-making as to what should be required, allowed or prohibited \u2013 that is, what we must, may or must not do, respectively \u2013 in the use of assisted human reproduction technologies, including gamete donation.<\/p>\n

The child cannot tell us what they would consent to, but other people conceived in these ways can. We must listen to them in order to apply the ethical doctrine of \u201canticipated consent,\u201d that is, if we cannot reasonably assume that someone affected by our decision, who is not present, would consent, if present, it is not ethical to proceed.<\/p>\n

The \u201cprecautionary principle,\u201d currently most commonly used in environmental ethics, might also help: We should exercise wise ethical restraint \u2013 prudence \u2013 until we are reasonably certain that it is safe and ethical to act. And that safety goes beyond assessing only physical harm to the future child and includes existential harm to him or her, and risk and harm to our societal values and ethics.<\/p>\n

What impact would wanting only beautiful children have on our concept of unconditional parental love? Hitherto, we have believed we love our children simply because they are our children. Does the selection and purchase of gametes to conceive a child make the child into an object or thing, rather than a person? How will the child feel knowing that their genetic parent sold \u2013 and that their social parent bought \u2013 what is (as one donor-conceived woman put it) \u201cthe essence of [their] life for $25 to a total stranger, and then walked away without a second look back? What kind of a man sells himself and his child so cheaply and so easily?\u201d Is there something gravely ethically wrong with the commercialization of the miracle of the passing on of human life? Canadians decided there was, and that leads to yet another recent, donor-conception news story.<\/p>\n

In 2005, Parliament enacted the Assisted Human Reproduction Act that made it a criminal offence to buy or sell gametes or embryos. Assisted Human Reproduction Canada \u2013 the agency that was established to oversee the implementation of this statute \u2013 has just been challenged with allegations it is failing to fulfill its obligations, by not seeking prosecution of those who take part in the continuing sale of sperm and ova in Canada.<\/p>\n

Margaret Somerville is founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com Margaret Somerville Two stories concerning the donation of gametes \u2013 sperm and ova \u2013 appeared recently in the media. One related that a \u201cvirtual\u201d sperm and egg bank is being established that will only accept offers to donate from \u201cbeautiful\u201d people. Internet polling will determine who is beautiful enough to do so. The… Weiter »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,13,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}