My co-investigators—Norval D. Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin and author Karen Clark (who herself was conceived via anonymous sperm donation in 1966)—found that two-thirds of sperm donor offspring agree "My sperm donor is half of who I am," and as many feel they have a right to know about their sperm donor biological fathers. About half are disturbed that money was involved in their conception. As a group, sperm donor offspring fare worse than their peers raised by biological parents on important outcomes such as depression, delinquency, and substance abuse. More than forty percent of them agree, "It is wrong to deliberately conceive a fatherless child."

While the Catholic church does have teachings on donor insemination (it forbids it) most other denominations have had little to say, thus far, about reproductive technologies, much less about their possible impact on the young people these technologies aid in creating.

About one percent of children in the U.S. today are conceived through sperm donation. All this is quite interesting, you might respond, but how relevant are these findings, really, for my ministry today? To which I have three responses:

1) One percent equals millions of young people. Every person matters. Every story matters.

2) Sperm donation, in practice since at least 1884, is an old-fashioned technology at this point. Egg donation and embryo transfers, perhaps combined with gestational surrogacy, are making the new kids on the block. Scientists have created children with the DNA of three parents. Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy's book, Everything Conceivable,  reports a study showing that ten percent of U.S. fertility clinic directors welcome reproductive cloning as an option for couples who have exhausted all other options. Sperm donor offspring are the leading edge of the Brave New World. What they tell us about their experience, and what we learn about their outcomes, informs what we know not only about the impact of sperm donation but raises a host of urgent questions about other reproductive technologies currently in practice or on the horizon.

3) Although sperm donor conception is not widely practiced, it has rhetorical power in our public debates about marriage and childbearing. In the U.S. today, about 40 percent of children are now born outside of marriage (and these children are at higher risk for poorer outcomes). Women who find themselves pregnant can say, "Why should I keep this guy around, when doctors and lawyers help women to have babies with sperm donors and everybody says that's OK?" Women who elect to get pregnant through sperm donation can say, "What's wrong with having a baby with an anonymous sperm donor? After all, lots of kids are born each year to single moms." Meanwhile, men can ask, quite reasonably, why they are accountable for eighteen years of child support after a one-night stand, but sperm donors can walk into a clinic, deposit sperm, and sign away their paternal rights (and get paid for it!).

Further, these technologies are having an impact on how the next generation is thinking about reproductive technologies and parenthood. One of the more striking findings to come out of our study is how distressed sperm donor offspring are when you ask them about their own experience, but how libertarian their attitudes are, as a group, about reproductive technologies and parenthood more generally. Compared to those raised by adoptive or biological parents, those conceived through sperm donation are much more likely to embrace an unqualified adult right to a child, to say that our laws and policies should support the exchange of sperm or eggs, and a full – and frightening – 64 percent of them agree that reproductive cloning should be available to couples who have exhausted all other options. It appears that adult donor offspring have embraced the positive "script" about donor conception and reproductive technologies, even as the majority of them support an end to anonymous donation of sperm in the U.S., and even as they tell significant, personal stories of loss and struggle.

Who are these young people conceived through sperm donation? What do they have to say about their own experience? What do their stories reveal about fatherhood and marriage? Church leaders who want to confront these questions can find the stories, the data, and a set of nineteen recommendations in our 140 page report, My Daddy's Name is Donor, available as a free download at FamilyScholars.org.

It is striking how many of these young adults are in the pews.

In our study, 36 percent of adults conceived through sperm donation said they were raised Catholic, compared to 22 percent from adoptive families and 28 percent raised by their biological parents. By contrast, persons from adoptive or biological families – and especially those from adoptive families – were far more likely to say they had been raised in a Protestant denomination.

As adults, donor offspring are also much more likely to say they are Catholic today. About a third of donor offspring – 32 percent – say Catholicism is their religious preference today. By contrast, their Catholic-raised peers from adoptive families or raised by their biological parents appear more often to have left the Catholic church. As adults, 15 percent of those from adoptive families and 19 percent of those raised by their biological parents say that Catholicism is their religion today.

Finally, about a third – 32 percent – of donor offspring say that they are Protestant today, and nearly one-quarter of all three groups say their religious preference today is “none.” (Six percent of donor offspring say they are Jewish.) So while a minority of donor offspring do embrace a secular belief system, the majority of them are religious and they are over-represented in the Catholic church.

The study is based on a representative sample of more than one million U.S. households and has comparison groups of 562 young adults raised by adoptive parents and 563 raised by biological parents.

Marquardt's Article in Slate Magazine

"Listening to the stories of donor-conceived adults, you begin to realize there's really no such thing as a 'donor.' Every child has a biological father. To claim otherwise is simply to compound the pain, first as these young people struggle with the original, deliberate loss of their biological father, and second as they do so within a culture that insists some guy who went into a room with a dirty magazine isn't a father. At most the children are told he's a 'seed provider' or 'the nice guy who gave me what I needed to have you' or the 'Y Guy' or any number of other cute euphemisms that signal powerfully to children that this man should be of little, if any, importance to them.

What to do? For starters, the United States should follow the lead of Britain, Norway, Sweden, and other nations and end the anonymous trade of sperm. Doing so would powerfully affirm that as a nation we no longer tolerate the creation of two classes of children, one actively denied by the state knowledge of their biological fathers, and the rest who the state believes should have the care and protection of legal fathers, such that the state will even track these men down and dock child support payments from their paychecks."

Slate.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2256212/pagenum/all/#p2

Click here to read 15 Major Findings

http://www.familyscholars.org/assets/Donor_15findings.pdf

Are you my mother?

In 2006 approximately 17,000 artificial reproductive in vitro cycles were performed in the United States using donated eggs, and that number is on the rise. The majority of these cycles were performed using anonymous egg donors, who by contract sign away their right to know if their eggs went on to create a child, how many children were created from their eggs, or who the parents of their biological children are. Would be parents scour the internet and egg broker agencies like “Our Fairy Godmother”, looking for the best genetic material to create a child of their dreams. Certain desirable characteristics, such as being pretty, tall, or having high SAT scores, can fetch more money for the donor. If the donor’s eggs produce healthy children she has secured her position as the coveted proven egg donor who can donate again – often at even higher payments.

Sadly, egg donation puts an otherwise healthy young woman at risk for short and long-term harm. A new film, Eggsploitation, reveals the tragic real stories behind the egg donation side of the baby making business. Ill health, loss of fertility, stroke, and cancer and in some rare instances, death of the egg donor is the reality they face.

And what about the children created through anonymous egg donation? As these technologies are relatively new, the children are just now entering adulthood. It is clear that they long to know who their biological mother is, and to have access to important medical history information. Internet sites exist to help people created by egg and sperm donation to find their biological parents and half-siblings.

P.D. Eastman’s childhood book, Are You My Mother?, is about a baby bird hatched while his mother is away. The story is about the baby bird searching for his mother, all along meeting a dog, a cow and many more asking “Are you my mother?” Human beings long for a sense of belonging and family. Mothers and fathers matter. Children have a right to know who their mother is.

Jennifer Lahl

http://www.ourfairygodmother.com/
http://www.eggsploitation.com/

Send your letter to the editor to feedback@tothesource.org.