Writing for Tablet, Simi Lampert recounts her experience first deciding for–and then against–donating her eggs through an agency. She’s charmingly candid about her reasoning in favor: “It seemed like a relatively simple thing to do for the amount I’d be paid. Plus, there was something cool about being able to give someone else the chance to have a child.” Despite the significant resistance she encountered in her friends and family, and the many moral and philosophical considerations they raised in objection, she persisted in her straight-laced intuition of the positive utility and ethical harmlessness of the procedure; “I was just being logical I thought, and everyone else was being excessively emotional.”
What ultimately caused her conversion, she says, was a reflection on the inarticulable yet powerfully compelling significance of natural family life. Her father having died when she was three, her mother remarried, and she enjoyed healthy relationships with her step-father’s family. But there was always something missing, something she felt she could only truly share with her genetic family. Her conclusion:
Thinking about my family, I realized that I’d be taking away from that egg—that future child, even future adult—what I missed so much in my life. Suddenly, I felt protective over that person; I felt the need to keep it safe from harm and hurt. I felt the connection everyone else assumed I’d have all along. And once those emotions were involved, I couldn’t take them back.
Logically, I suppose, my initial instinct was still right. My egg is, biologically, just an egg. It’s not a child. But if I did donate it, one day it might be a child. And that child would grow up never knowing the feeling of loving someone with the same snub nose it might have. That child would wonder why it—not it, he or she—felt the need to insert sarcasm into every conversation. He would never know the bond of a genetic relative. No matter what logic told me, my feelings had changed, and I couldn’t go through with it.
April 13th, 2012 | 10:13 am
Wow, this is pretty controversial. That, all other things being equal, children are best off with their genetic parents is controversial.
Look for people to scream that some genetic parents are not at all fit for the tasks of parenthood. And that it’s offensive to imply that adoptive parents are in any way inferior. And that some people can’t reproduce and it’s “unjust” to suggest they should not have equal opportunity to raise children as those who can.
But we all kind of know this, don’t we? Personality and character are largely inherited. In general, genetic parents understand their children better and do a better job of helping them mature into adulthood than adoptive parents, servants or sperm donation center customers.
April 13th, 2012 | 11:00 am
In general, I think theological and moral debates would better serve us all if we were all more inclined to admit that we’re far less certain about any of this than we pretend. The fact is that there’s really only been one person ever who really “knew” the truth, and He didn’t address every possible question, so we’re all trying our best given imperfect knowledge and our own imperfections.
That said, I think the aversion to egg donation/surrogacy, etc. is a bit difficult to reconcile to the Bible, where God was pretty expressly in favor of surrogacy. (Anyone remember Onan or Ishmael?) Not to be glib, but the idea that a biological father + a biological mother = the best possible family leaves Jesus in a rather odd position. Was God an “irresponsible” parent?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to extrapolate from those examples to some sort of general rule other than the general rule that God seems to take a broader view on what makes a “good” family than many of His followers. In the end, I’m always concerned about any argument that implies some people are better off not existing than existing in some imperfect family. In my case, I noticed that I struggle to find anyone in my family who has a “traditional” family. My sister is divorced, my brother raises his wife’s children from a previous marriage, my father was raised by his aunt and uncle, and so on. If the “traditional” family is so wonderful, why is it so rare? And I can’t find much evidence that the “traditional” families are healthier, happier or better Christian exemplars from my, admittedly limited, experience.
Maybe I’m nuts (or ignorant), but I think God wanted us to be raised in families that loved us. Sure, certeris paribus, biological parents love us “better” than non-biological parents, but life isn’t ceteris paribus, and God’s not some ivory-tower intellectual. He lived here among us – He gets it, He knows what it’s like. Such a practical and pragmatic God wouldn’t be quite so hung up on genes.
I mean, really, what’s more Christian – the parents who struggled and sacrificed to have a child through egg donation or the biological parents who unintentionally conceived while drunk because their contraceptives failed? I mean I know who’d I want to raise me – does that make me a bad Christian?
Now, some people say that infertility means God didn’t want you to have children, but God did tell us to be fruiful, and He allowed IVF and the like to be created, doesn’t that at least open the possibility that God wanted us to avail ourselves of that technology? I mean I know this is one of the most ancient & most difficult issues in theology – on the one hand, God clearly doesn’t want us to do everything we could do; on the other hand, God doesn’t expect us to be completely passive. (Nobody today would argue that Christians can’t use antibiotics because God wanted those people to die.)
Let me close with one last thought: if the worst problem we had in this society was people donating their eggs to childless couples, then I think Christ and His Church would have achieved His purpose. In a world with so much violence, hatred, and selfishness, I think it’s strange to worry so much about the “propriety” of a loving donation that results in a human being. Someday, we will know God’s will; in the meantime, let us embrace His gifts to us, whatever their origins.
April 13th, 2012 | 11:19 am
In (institutional) philosophy, these types of examples fall under what I believe is called the ‘non-Identity problem’, which is basically the paradoxical relation of us (real, living persons) to potential future persons, whose existence or non-existence we determine by our choices.
There seems to be no simple answer to this problem, but I don’t think the best reasoning against donating sperm or ova for in-vitro fertilization (or cloning, etc.) is about the harm to the future person, who would not otherwise have existed.
Thinking too much about this (If I make choice A, person X will exist and suffer greatly; If I make choice B, person Y will exist without the excessive suffering, but X never will exist) can be paralyzing, but I think it creates illusory concern for non-existent persons; yet it is an interesting question, esp as related to policies which will affect distantly future generations.
April 13th, 2012 | 2:51 pm
Wow, this is pretty controversial. That, all other things being equal, children are best off with their genetic parents is controversial.
Look for people to scream that some genetic parents are not at all fit for the tasks of parenthood. And that it’s offensive to imply that adoptive parents are in any way inferior.
When are we going to start acknowledging that there is in fact a difference between the adoptive parent who saves a child from homelessness – vs. the parent who deliberately creates a homeless child?
Adoption’s legitimacy comes from the fact that every decision in the process is supposed to be ruled by what is best for the child. When we justify abandoning that – making it all about what’s best for the child except at the point where what’s best for the child & what the parents want are in conflict – then it’s not adoption, it’s buying and selling.
Adoption is about finding the best possible home for a child who needs a home. When it is perverted into being about finding the best possible child for a home that wants a child, then it’s not adoption, it’s just another consumer good on the market.
April 13th, 2012 | 2:53 pm
There seems to be no simple answer to this problem, but I don’t think the best reasoning against donating sperm or ova for in-vitro fertilization (or cloning, etc.) is about the harm to the future person, who would not otherwise have existed.
Then how come the same people who claim abortion is justified because “every child should be a wanted child” don’t feel bad about deliberately creating unwanted children?
Wanted by someone other the parents isn’t the same. That is why so many adoptive kids feel the need to seek out the truth of their origin, even when their bond to and love for their adoptive parents is strong and good.
April 13th, 2012 | 3:27 pm
Blake:
“When are we going to start acknowledging that there is in fact a difference between the adoptive parent who saves a child from homelessness – vs. the parent who deliberately creates a homeless child?”
I thought the word homelessness is defined as “having no home or permanent place of residence”, and not “not knowing or being raised by your biological parents”. I feel so silly.
In general terms this whole posture concerning parenthood and its supposed immutable connection with biology is funny coming from people whose religion worships a God incarnated who had a putative father.
April 13th, 2012 | 4:21 pm
I thought the word homelessness is defined as “having no home or permanent place of residence”, and not “not knowing or being raised by your biological parents”. I feel so silly.
Well, I will say without family, if you prefer. I thought it was obvious that I meant “homeless” in a different sense, but apparently it was not “obvious”.
The point stands, though: adoption is about finding homes for children who do not have a family, and are in need.
That is, they are adopted because they are in need.
That is very different from they are made to be in need because someone wants to adopt them.
If we are using the “child’s best interest” standard as a measure, then whether the would-be adoptive parents are complicit in deliberately causing the child to be in the sort of crisis that necessitates adoption matters a great deal, since the actions are deliberate, with intent to cause harm to the child, thus in conflict with the idea that the people taking such actions can be deemed to be “good parents” or capable of/interested in “acting in the child’s best interest”.
In short, anyone who does that to a kid needs to be recognized as different in kind from the sort of people real adoptive parents are. Real adoptive parents are motivated by a desire to benefit children, whereas people who deliberately manufacture a child’s distress are exploiting, not helping, the child.
The distinction is relevant.
April 14th, 2012 | 7:30 am
It is contrary to natural law and morally repugnant to separate the unitive and procreative meanings of the sex act.
For this reason, contraception is sinful, as is the process of “manufacturing” children through egg donation, surragacy, ivf, and the host of other unnatural ART’s.
Interestingly, Bl John Paul II had the further insight that separating unitive from procreative is not only morally wrong, but practically impossible. Our attempts to separate them cause alienation, divorce, psychological and spiritual pain, and a host of practical legal and ethical dilemmas.
We will be better off the sooner we accept this fundamental principle of our anthropology, and put it into practice in our daily lives. Hooray for the young woman who could listen to the natural law playing in her own psyche, and came to the right conclusion about egg donation.
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