Is the Egg Donor Given Too Much Attention and Status in the Disclosure Discussion?

These are the questions raised during a recent dinner with a friend and colleague, and fellow Mom Via Egg Donation. What part or role does or should the donor play in our family life?


Is there really a person who should be part of the family tree or is this the person to whom we are infinitely grateful for providing the help we needed (a tissue donation) in our being able to get conceive and carry a child?


If Egg Donors are signing off to not have a legal claim to the child, not interested in identity release or an open (known) donation, then why do we make more meaning of it when it comes to our own families?  Or is it our community of mental health professionals making more meaning of the donor?

I've met many parents and IP's via Donor Conception. They represent a wide range of people, with as many variations and opinions as there are on any topic involving babies and children... Birth, conception, child care, nutrition, immunization, education, to name a few.


People in general are very opinionated and for some reason more vocal about these issues than they are about equally charged topics such as politics and sex (our current media and entertainment culture notwithstanding). We seem particularly interested, once we are however involved in Donor Conception, in imparting our belief systems onto other, equally qualified individuals, who are making choices and caring for their families. We all want to think we know what's best for our, or all, children.


In every family, Donor Conceived or not, they will surely tell us at some point whether we were right or wrong, and everything and anything in between.

Sara Axel
516-967-7430
Saxel95@aol.com

Landmark case developing in Australia : Millionaire sperm donor in Australia fights for custody of child, ProudParenting.com

Landmark case developing in Australia :
Millionaire sperm donor in Australia fights for custody of child,
ProudParenting.comhttp://www.proudparenting.com/node/16750
Sara Axel
516-967-7430
Saxel95@aol.com

WHY YOUR EGG DONATION AGREEMENT SHOULD ALSO ADDRESS EXCESS EMBRYOS

Embryo Donation is the primary practice of The Law Office Of Amy Demma, Esq.


Read more information on navigating this excellent choice in family-building options here on Amy's blog.

http://eggdonationtoday.com.s4183.gridserver.com/?p=292

From Patricia Mendell: FAMILY BUILDING NETWORK SUPPORT GROUP MEETING

FAMILY BUILDING NETWORK
SUPPORT GROUP MEETING
Wednesday November 16, 2011
7-8:30

The Monthly Support Group, lead by Patricia Mendell, LCSW, is dedicated to helping families formed through egg/sperm/embryo donation and surrogacy, create healthy and lasting connections.

Everyone has a unique Story about their family. For parents planning to disclose, telling the Family Story can seem overwhelming.

We Will Discuss:

 The importance of language in the disclosure story
 Latest research on children and families
 Age appropriate books for donor offspring children
 How to answer questions from your child and others
 How to begin "The Talk"
 How children's' questions change over time
 What to tell siblings
Third Wednesday in every month
Starting Wednesday November 16, 2011

7:00-8:30 pm

$25 per person

902 Broadway (between 20th-21st Sts. next to
920 Broadway), 13th Floor, NYC 10010

Patricia Mendell, LCSW, 212-819-1778
Call to reserve a space
http://www.patriciamendell.com/

From the heart - NorthJersey.com

When we were first diagnosed- adoption, donor egg or child free- we went to a meeting of the Adoptive Parents Committee. We did not pursue adoption but I was indelibly impressed by this one night event and organization, community really, what the families and ip's of third part reproduction need to have.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/132977728_From_the_heart.html?mobile=1&c=y

Radio Boston:The Thorny Issues Of The Fertility Industry,the subject of a new reality TV show set to air on the Style channel next week, “Style Exposed: Sperm Donor.”

The subject of a new reality TV show set to air on the Style channel next week, "Style Exposed: Sperm Donor", discussed on Radio Boston.


Should donors be allowed anonymity? Should there be a limit to how much money donors receive, or the number of times they donate? And, in the Internet age, how much should donor children be allowed to know about their true genetic backgrounds?


Guests:


Debora L. Spar, president, Barnard College; author, "The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception"


Liz Coolidge, coordinator, Alternative Insemination Program and LGBT Family and Parenting Services, Fenway Health

http://radioboston.wbur.org/2011/09/21/the-thorny-issues-of-the-fertility-industry

In Canada:Surrogate not legally a baby’s mother, judge rules

Note the language in the article. Neither the Donor or GC are considered a Parent.


"...granting John and Bill's request, supported by Mary (gestational carrier via donor ovum and one father's sperm), to remove Mary's name from Sarah's birth certificate, Madame Justice Jacelyn Ann Ryan-Froslie of the province's Court of Queen's Bench, noted that the law defines a "mother" as the woman who delivered a child, and presumes she is also a parent, which is no longer always true.


Being a parent is an important legal designation, she wrote, and it does not apply to Mary, who surrendered all parental rights to John and Bill after Sarah's birth."


Full article here:

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/13/surrogate-not-legally-a-babys-mother-judge-rules&s=Opinion

N.J. Supreme Court starts session with an egg donor/surrogacy case.

http://nj.com/advnj/db_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=amhHwqm3&full=true#display

Provocative New Documentary “Sperm Donor” Premieres Sept. 27 On Style - Ratings | TVbytheNumbers

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/09/07/provocative-new-documentary-%E2%80%9Csperm-donor-premieres-sept-27-on-style/102864/

From Wendy Kramer: Today's NY Times/Tomorrow the Today Show

One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring
New York Times. Sept 5/11
http://tinyurl.com/NYT-2011-09-05
 


The Today Show will have me live from home (er....I mean DSR World Headquarters) tomorrow morning (Wednesday). 
They are also filming Ryan tonight in Pasadena for the piece.


Wendy Kramer
www.donorsiblingregistry.com
303-258-0902


"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other wings." - Hodding Carter

Teresa Erickson, with the MidIsland Racing Pigeon Racing Society

Life after the fertility business...


Racing pigeon recovering after losing way during race.


"The theory is a pigeon's homing instinct depends on the Earth's magnetic field," said Teresa Erickson, with the MidIsland Racing Pigeon Society. .

http://www.canada.com/

From Sharon LaMothe @ The Third Party August 14,2011

Of course this is a must-read! How could I possibly forget?
Thanks Sharon.

http://surrogacy101.blogspot.com/

Where Do (Some) Babies Come From? In Washington, a New Law Bans Anonymous Sperm and Egg Donors TIME Healthland - TIME Healthland - TIME.com

http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/22/where-do-some-babies-come-from-in-washington-a-new-law-bans-anonymous-sperm-and-egg-donors/

Morning Feeding: New Law In Washington Bans Anonymous Sperm and Egg Donors | Mommyish

There are still loopholes.
http://mommyish.com/stuff/morning-feeding-new-law-in-washington-bans-anonymous-sperm-and-egg-donors/

A Baby With Three Mothers - NYTimes.com

A journalist writes a novel about and shares her views in an interview on third party reproduction. She is also the journalist who wrote the Magazine article 3 yrs ago, Her Body, My Baby.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/a-baby-with-three-mothers/

RESOLVE of the Bay State

RESOLVE of New England's Annual Fertility Treatment, Donor Choices, and Adoption Conference, November 5, 2011
If you are new to infertility or in the midst of treatment, the amount of information and the range of feelings and options you must sort through can be overwhelming. This annual conference provides the information you need in a compassionate context, with people who know what it's like to want a baby more than anything. The conference will help you feel supported and become informed about the best possible choices for building your much-wanted family. Click here to read about the conference.

http://www.resolveofthebaystate.org/conference.html


Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

An Open (and reasonable) Letter to the ASRM from a Donor Conceived Adult

I appreciate the honesty with which Ms Kane has written about her experience as a donor conceived adult and that she isn't attacking parents (or calling us ''violent criminals'' on a par with forced prostitution, forced pregnancy and baby selling, for having conceived our kids this way, as in a letter that I recently received). 

With permission, letter from Susan Kane, author of the letter.

"Certainly, donor families are under some stress already and I don't want anyone to feel "harassed" but I assume that you know your audience.  If you think people will find it interesting and worthwhile, good with me. "

An Open Letter to the ASRM from a Donor Conceived Adult

An open letter to the ASRM from Susan Kane, a donor conceived person, in response to Todd Essig’s commentary (Balancing the Rights of Donor Offspring With Those of Donors: But What About Parents? Forbes. June 30/11,  http://tinyurl.com/Essig-2011-06-30) which was a response to the commentary that Naomi Cahn and Wendy Kramer of the DSR placed in BioNews last week (The Birth of Donor Offspring Rights in the USA?,  http://tinyurl.com/6ce5kny).=================================================

As a donor-conceived adult, I appreciate Todd Essig’s observation that “law is a blunt instrument” for managing the gap between technology and social norms governing its use.  (Forbes, see above link)

And yet, law is exactly where we turn when people and industries fail to regulate themselves.  And, despite Essig’s feeling that gamete donation — with us for over 100 years — is “new”, we have decades of evidence that the current norms and regulations governing gamete donation in the United States are failing everyone.

Following are three quotes from donor conceived adults from this week’s article published in Human Reproduction entitled: “Offspring searching for their sperm donors: how family type shapes the process”

“It makes me angry that I am denied the basic right of knowing who my father was and what ethnicity I am.”

“I am curious as to what my biological father is like, do I have any siblings, what were his parents like.”

“The man who raised me is still my dad, but I’m pissed off . . . I’m missing half of my genetic medical history.”

It’s curious to me that masturbating into a cup or donating eggs seems to Essig an entirely different thing than the more commonly known way of conceiving a baby but not raising it, namely, adoption.

Which part is so confusing?  Is it the cup?  The presence of doctors? The fact that this is an intentional act on all sides?  Does the payment make it confusing?  Is it all that pretty, shiny, technology?

Let me ask you for a favor.  Stop looking at the cup.  It doesn’t have the answers we need.  Look me in the eye instead.  As it turns out, I’m just like every other human.  So, pull our your Psych 101 text and keep it handy while we chat.  It applies to me too.

As anyone in the mental health field should know, decades and decades of adoption research has taught us that secrecy in families causes damage. It has taught us that learning that your parents are not your parents late in life wreaks havoc on your basic sense of trust.  Most of all, adoption has taught us that genes matter.

They don’t matter more than love.  I never said they did.  But I challenge you to find an adoption professional in North America today who would tell you that genetics is irrelevant in family creation.  Genes matter — today more than ever.

Genes matter to donor families.  These families have specifically pursued infertility treatment rather than adoption.  The fertility industry *exists* because genes matter.  Allowing people to pass on their genetic material is what fertility treatment *does*.  It amazes me that genes can matter to the families and doctors you serve and yet both you and Allison Rosen can’t believe that they also matter to *me*.

Who exactly gets to decide whether donor anonymity — being cut off from part of your genetic heritage — matters?  Is it the parents of donor children?  Is it the donors, kind people that they are?  Doctors? Forbes’ columnists?  Mental health professionals?

The answer, Mr. Essig, is that we do.  We get to decide whether it matters to us.  And the answer is:  it does.

I’m sorry that your professional group chose not to learn anything from adoption research, but I’m here to tell you that the kids are all grown up.  We’re not children under our parents’ care — we are teenagers, we are college students, we are the grown parents of our own children. We’ve thought about this system that you so carefully constructed and we’ve decided that it sucks.  I’m sorry.

I know that you’re worried about the families and donors you counsel.  I appreciate your concern.  But I want you — the expert — to look ahead on their behalf, to help them think about the teenager, the college student, the parent.  Your job is to advocate *not* for the family sitting before you, but for the family they are about to become — the one that includes a donor child, to whom genes matter.

And if the ASRM had done this, there would be no need for a law in Washington State — because donor anonymity would no longer exist.  But you failed to advocate for us.  You chose convenience over conscience. You chose the present tense over the lessons of history.  And so we have stepped in to do your job — to advocate for the long-term mental health of donor families.  We plan to create a new system that does not pit the needs of children against their parents or their donors.  And there will, unfortunately, be conflict between us — until you start listening to everyone you are supposed to serve.

Listen, Mr. Essig.  I’m not an angry teenager.  I’m a 43 year old woman with two children of my own, also conceived by DI.  And what I and other DC adults are telling you, and other members of the ASRM, is that you are *wrong*.  You are totally, entirely, and dangerously wrong.

Your policies are wrong, your thinking is wrong, and most importantly, you are on the wrong side of history.  I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news.  Everyone did the best they could, but the system is terribly flawed and we all hate it.  We’re telling you to change it now, before we sue.

There aren’t many “older” adults like me.  We’re everywhere, of course, but you can’t organize a group of people who are dreaming.  But there’s an entire *army* of DC adults coming of age, right now, as we speak.  Do you really want to fight the very children you helped create — in court?

It’s your choice.  Future generations of textbook writers will judge your actions.  When social norms fall behind technology, we need to create them, not wring our hands and wonder what will happen.  I’ll see you on the battlefield of history.  May the best ideas, the best practices, the best path forward — win.

Susan Kane
Boston, MA
July 1, 2011

Subject: Balancing the Rights of Donor Offspring With Those of Donors: But What About Parents? - Todd Essig - Managing Mental Wealth - Forbes

An interesting article by Todd Essig,PHD.

http://blogs.forbes.com/toddessig/2011/06/30/balancing-the-rights-of-donor-offspring-with-those-of-donors-but-what-about-parents/

Talking With My Kids About Egg Donation

This weeks Motherlode blog by Lisa Belkins in the NYTimes takes on the topic of how to talk to kids about sperm donation.

I thought it was time for an update.My 7yo twin girls were conceived via anonymous egg donor. They have heard me talk about it many times to other adults in my life ie friends, family, and of course the community of third party reproduction and parenting that I am involved in. My kids dont really engage in the conversation about how babies are made or how they specifically came to be very much. When one of them finally did recently, she was making silly jokes, calling the donor ''donut'', something I would never do. I asked her about it when we had a private moment, why were you joking around, would you rather I didnt talk about this, do you have any questions, etc....and she said she doesnt care about the donor and I pressed on because thats also not how we talk at home and I asked does this bother her and she said "No, its just that I'm not ready to talk about it yet." Of course I nearly fell over. (footnote-A few weeks later she very clearly talked about when people are sad because they want a baby and need help from the doctor and jumped up and said, "and a donor"!!) So later the same (donut) day when I had my other daughter alone I asked her the same thing and she said she didnt really want to talk about it either Why not, I asked? She said because she just wants everyone to be happy.

A few weeks prior to this, one of them asked me how they got the sperm from the man to do IVF. I admit to doing pretty badly at trying to answer such an advanced question in technical terms for a 6.5yo.I am definitely getting better at saying things like, I'm not ready to answer that question, or I'm not sure and I have to think about that more to be able to answer you in the best way possible but I really do want to and will try to very soon, ok?

My parenting instruction manual didnt come with an answer for that one but I may have seen that in one of those "Its so amazing '' books about reproduction, written for kids. Back to the library....

Older dads try parenting the second time around - USATODAY.com

Buried not too far down in this article, a couple is freely disclosing that they used a sperm donor to create their family. Also mentioned is the change toward greater social acceptance for divorce,compared to the 60s and 70s.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/story/2011/06/Older-dads-try-parenting-the-second-time-around/48463948/1