Links to interesting articles

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/nyregion/in-surrogacy-case-nj-supreme-court-is-deadlocked-over-whom-to-call-mom.html?smid=pl-share

This subject for the link is within

http://anonymousus.org

Here is the mission statement from the website:
The Anonymous Us Project is a safety zone for real and honest opinions about reproductive technologies and family fragmentation. We aim to share the experiences of voluntary and involuntary participants in these technologies, while preserving the dignity and privacy for story-tellers and their loved ones.
We honor and are forever thankful for the courageous minds among the donor-conceived who have worked tirelessly before us for justice and education on the ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) family experience. We hold these story-tellers, educators and leaders in high esteem and are forever grateful for all of the sacrifices they have made to improve family policy and thus quality of life for all parties. We also acknowledge that many members of the ART community have serious opinions and experiences regarding their family structure that they'd like to add to the discussion, but feel they cannot because of a need for privacy.This project gives them an opportunity to be heard without having to reveal their identity and potentially hurt their loved ones. Though anonymity in reproduction hides the truth, anonymity in story-telling will help reveal it.
We hope that The Anonymous Us Project will fill out the conversation on reproductive technologies. We hope it will inspire more truth and transparency. We hope it will help shape healthier families and happier people.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/us/kansas-sperm-donation/index.html

A case where a person who intended to be solely a donor, is now being sued for child support.

http://www.cbc-network.org/issues/making-life/surrogacy/

This link is to a non-profit group who looks at all bio-ethical issues. In surrogacy, and sperm/ egg donation world this group is a great voice for the products from these conceptions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/05/india-surrogates-impoverished-die

This is an article about how foreign surrogates are treated. In the quest to be able to go through the surrogacy process more cheaply women who are living in poverty are putting their lives on the line. 

http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/

This is a blog written by another product of traditional product of surrogacy like myself. His blog was the first connection I had to another person like myself. 

Walking the line of emotion

For myself until recently it has been hard for me to communicate honestly about how I feel towards surrogacy. Those of us who are products of donor conception typically care about the adults who were involved in our conception. This creates a natural gag, that makes you nervous to be too vocal about any opinion that might be hurtful.

For myself I always felt a bit like a product that a group of people came together to put into the world. I have felt a bit like I’ve had no voice or say so about this ride called life. The process of putting my opinion out there has been one that has made me feel a bit more empowered. I hope to be able to show people who are looking to start their families that there are pitfalls to egg/sperm donations and surrogacies that they may not even be able to imagine.

Although it’s been helpful to be beginning to put this opinion out here, I still fear that my birth mom may take offense to this process that I need to go through. So I want to be clear that I have no ill will towards her, or most of the people who get involved in this process. I was one of the earlier products of surrogacy, there definitely wasn’t information out at that time that the children of these arrangements weren’t always happy with their situations. I don’t think that anyone realized that children would fight a lot of the same issues that traditionally adopted children do.

Recently, I took part in filming for a documentary about surrogacy. When I sat down with Jennifer Lahl (the director/ producer) I expressed my two concerns. First being that I didn’t want to put anything out there that would seem critical of my birth mom or hurtful towards her. The second one was that I wanted to be able to articulately express my view point, to be able to be effective with what I was trying to communicate. Jennifer Lahl has done some previous documentaries such as “Anonymous Father’s Day”, and “Eggsploitation”. She says when she speaks to people who have been involved with sperm/egg donation and surrogacies (both the products of and donors) they have always had a concern about hurting someone. That they also have censored themselves to some extent.

I am attempting to walk the line where I don’t hurt anyone that I care about, but I feel that this information is very important to put out there because in putting this message out there maybe future children and families can be spared unnecessary turmoil. Maybe if we’re really lucky adults who have struggled with starting a family even after they get one could come together to force adoption reform! To me this would be ideal. 

The commodification of babies

This is one of the touchiest parts of surrogacy. From most of the surrogacy boards that I’ve perused it’s an offensive notion to the surrogates that they would participate in bringing these children into the world for no compensation. I can see both sides of the coins, for women who donate eggs, their womb or both they are putting their health, lives, and heart on the line and that does seem to warrant compensation of some sort. On the other side of it those of us who were conceived via these modern techniques, there is a sense of being a commodity. We wouldn’t be here on this world if it wasn’t for the lawyers, doctors, and donors getting financially compensated.

As a product of surrogacy or sperm donation it’s not even considered a reasonable expectation that donor records are kept. If a child is adopted through a traditional adoption, it’s considered reasonable that they might want to find their biological parents to better understand themselves and find out the story as to why they were given up. Children of donation also have a lot of the same questions. I have to admit before I found my birth mom I wondered why she would have wanted to participate in surrogacy, did she need the money, what this something she felt called to do? I imagined what she looked like, did I resemble her. Due the fact that we’re created specifically to be families for other families

There have been people who’ve donated eggs who ran into health issues, who later wanted to let the agencies that they participated with know that they were at risk. They found out that there were no records to say whether or not the egg donations led to a child being born, because their donor records weren’t kept. They had no way of imparting potentially important medical information.

When you look at ads for egg donors, surrogates etc, they’re always interested in compensating people who are attractive, and intelligent the most. Not only do we get the chance to create our own children if we have even more finances we can cherry pick the most desirable traits. That aspect takes away from it being just a simple joy of bringing a child into the world. Also typically these means are only available to people who have more finances. To me personally, having the most money isn’t the most important factor in being able to parent a child.

I also believe that without the financial incentives most sperm/ egg donors, and surrogates wouldn’t participate. This all feels very cold, and very much in the best interest of the adults involved.

I wonder on occasion if people were not allowed to financially gain from these donations, if there would be more of an effort to keep in touch with the children conceived. I wonder if there would need to be a higher level of trust in the parents to be to ensure that the children are going to be in a safe, loving, nurturing environment. The way it is now you can think the doctors will run the psychological tests, there may be a home check, or we wouldn’t be here talking about donation if the prospective e parents hadn’t been cleared yet. However, I personally don’t believe it would benefit these agencies to do a thorough background check, they would be out the money if they turned families away, and if there were ever an issue with abuse or anything like that the agency isn’t really at risk of a spotlight getting turned on them, and questioning why assisted these parents in having a child. The child typically is at least ½ way related to the family that their living with. In traditional adoptions it appears that the motivation to make sure that the children are being places in happy homes appears to be higher. They would get a spotlight turned on them if they put children into dangerous homes.

There are surrogacies that take place for no financial gain, those are termed compassionate surrogacies. Typically people will do these for close friends, or family. I believe that a product of that type of conception probably would at least know they were really wanted in the world just for being themselves, not for what anyone could gain monetarily out of the situation. But what is a good answer? Is the feeling of being a commodity to prospective children o.k.? Or is it fair to say that the women who put their health on the line that they should only participate if they’re not looking to gain financially from it. I find in general the adults come first in all these considerations. If we’re bringing the children into the world why are they being considered last consistently?

The importance of knowing your roots

In general people can agree that children of a traditional adoption might have some abandonment issues, or a harder time trusting the world around them, and that issues such as these would be understandable. I feel that children conceived of donors don’t get the same understanding. People will tell you repeatedly how wonderful it was that a family wanted you so desperately that they were willing to spend huge sums of money to get to have you. People will emphasize the fact that you were wanted by someone.

Being wanted a positive thing(maybe that depends on why you’re wanted?)?  I believe that within all of lies a biological clock, which makes us more aware of our wants. Particularly when we know that our time might be running out. So why would we want to create a child through a sperm bank or a surrogate? Possibly the laws regarding adoption are someone antiquated and for one reason or another and prohibits us from adopting domestically. (If you can afford surrogacy I know you can afford an international adoption). With international adoptions there are more issues with children suffering trauma at their orphanages and we find ourselves not up to the challenge of parenting these children with special needs. Perhaps perspective parents have already gone through adoption agreements with mother’s who backed out after giving birth and they can’t face that heartbreak again? For a lot of couples I believe that they want the genetic connection with their children even if it’s just a half connection.

From what I can see these wants are more about the parents then about the children they will be welcoming into their families. I can empathize with the pain that parents go through when they can’t just conceive a child on their own to start their family. But I think that a lot of the times the adults forget to put themselves into the shoes of their prospective children. When adults choose to start their family by hiring a traditional surrogate, or going to the sperm bank, they are deliberately making the decision to bring a child into this world and to separate them from a biological parent. People who grow up in houses where they are related to everyone don’t ever pause to wonder, where do I get my eyes from? Or feel like they’re a little crazy because they’re acting in a way that no one around them acts.  I can say these things from personal experience.

Possibly there are some schools of thought that if we’re honest from the beginning our child won’t contend with these adoption issues. Or I’m sure some people think, if we shelter our child from the truth and let them believe that they are ours genetically  that they’ll never know and what they know can’t hurt them. I don’t believe that people set out to intentionally cause harm to the children who were so wanted. But an outcome a lot of the time is that children who are born through these ways grow up knowing that something just doesn’t fit. Even if they just don’t know what that it is.

When I was 26 I found my biological mom who had been promised that I would be told about her and given an option to have a relationship with her if I chose to at when I was 18. Unfortunately the family that I grew up with did not honor their commitment to her (or me). I eventually found  her information by going through a personal phone book of my bio-dad. As soon as I had her contact info I immediately called her and we made plans for me to come up to Michigan to meet her. Within a week we got to see each other for the first time since I was given to the family that I grew up with. During the first week that I went up I got to meet my birth mom I also met her three sons, all twelve of her brothers and sisters and most of their spouses and some of my cousins! I was immediately shocked to see that I had been wrong in my belief that genetics didn’t play a part in shaping people into who they were. I also hadn’t realized how unsettling it was to have all these personality traits within me that I didn’t know where they came from. I am completely different from my bio-dad and adopted mom, and just never fit in with their personalities. When I met my birth mom we quickly discovered that I had her sense of humor, my Aunt Gail’s love of travel, the same belief’s as my aunt Leslie on how people should treat one another.. and I could go on. It wasn’t until I had found myself in my birth family that I realized it had always left me unsettled to not quite see myself in the people I’d spent my first 26 years around.

It wasn’t until I started to see where a lot of my personality traits came from that I was able to start to accept myself. It wasn’t until I was able to start accepting myself that I was even able to comprehend that I had struggled with trying to find out who I was!

I honestly can’t explain what this need within me was to find my birth mom and family, but there was a drive within me, and if I hadn’t gone through my bio-dad’s personal belongings I believe that I never would have found her. For myself so much self acceptance, awareness and peace came from understanding better who I was that I would hate to see on an emotional level where I would have been in 30 years time with all the issues that come from adoption sitting just below the surface. My birth mom gave me the biggest gift in allowing me to know her and be in the family’s lives, that’s a gift I will eternally be grateful for.

Welcome to my blog :)

Hello I’m Jessica and I’m a product of surrogacy. The reason I’ve decided to start blogging about children who have been conceived either through surrogacy or sperm donations is because when I was trying to learn more about my own history, I was quite surprised to discover the amount of websites that can be found to promote agencies to assist parents in starting a family, websites which offer huge sums of money to donors of sperm, eggs, and wombs. However, there was a lack of information, resources or support for the children who have been created using the above mentioned techniques.

My quest for more information began when I was a teenager and knew I wasn’t getting told the truth about where I came from by the family that I was growing up with. My adopted mother is South Korean, and my biological father is American. They had attempted to convince me that I was biologically related to both of them. However, I later came to find out that my birth mom was Caucasian, therefore I did not have Asian genes and physically I knew that the bill of goods that they attempted to sell me wasn’t possibly true.

During my senior year of high school a medical professional who felt that I deserved to know the truth about where I came from, provided me with two pages of my medical records where my bio-dad and adopted mom let a doctor know that I was a product of a traditional surrogacy. This is when my world started to make a little bit more sense. This was when some of the secrecy and subterfuge was broken. This was also the beginning of a nine year search where I was lucky enough to find my birth mom and subsequently a huge family that I feel is my family more then the one that I grew up in.

A lot of children of surrogacy and sperm donation are not lucky enough to ever find out about their roots, they are considered lucky to be told the truth if they get told.

I am not here to condemn the people who have participated in this new way of starting families. (The sperm donors, egg donors, surrogates, or the people who started their families through this avenue.) My purpose here is to give a voice to those of us who have been brought into the world through these techniques, and to hopefully give people who are considering starting a family through these methods an ability to see what would be unforeseeable issues that can be present. I would love to see couples who are considering these methods to pause and ask themselves, is this really what is in the best interest of a child? I would love to see people push for adoption reform to allow the children who are already in this world a chance to be part of a family. I would love for prospective parents to see that if they choose surrogacy because of the genetic ties, the products of surrogacy still contend with some of the same issues that adopted children have, and how even with the genetic connection a parent may not be any closer to their child then if they had adopted.

Thanks for coming to check out my blog!

Jess