Wir haben heute einen, wie wir denken, interessanten Artikel über das ewige "to tell or not to tell" gefunden. Diesen könnt Ihr hier lesen, ist halt leider auf english, war uns aber auch zum übersetzen zu lang.
My daddy's name is Donor
Many children conceived by donor sperm have grown up angry and confused, and want a debate on their conception.
Catherine Bruton
Slogans on T-shirts have been causing controversy for as long as the T-shirt has existed. So it’s not surprising that a picture of a young boy in a shirt bearing the slogan “My daddy’s name is Donor”, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune two years ago, should have so offended Elizabeth Marquardt, of the Institute for American Values, that she felt compelled to write a book bearing the same title.
What was it that so offended her? The T-shirt is offered by a company called Family Evolutions, founded by a lesbian couple whose son modelled the shirt. The co-founder, Stacey Harris, says that the T-shirt is empowering. “We want to lift the taboo surrounding donor conception so that kids don’t feel that their coming into the world is a shameful secret,” she says. “Kids who are empowered will grow up well-adjusted.”
Marquardt, however, was “shocked and angered”. Why? “Not because the parents are lesbians,” she says. “Not because they are raising children. Both realities are fine with me. What troubles me is that children today are being raised in an era of increasingly flexible definitions of parenthood, definitions that often serve the interests of adults without regard for children.”
The T-shirt was brought to Marquardt’s attention by a member of the growing online community of donor-conceived adults who are angry about the nature of their conception. Narelle Grech, 22, is a donor-conceived activist living in Melbourne, Australia: “The poor kid wearing the shirt is basically being told that his dad is not important and is just a donor. I am sure he is one of many donor-conceived people, like myself, who are made to feel like they cannot be sad about the loss of their birth fathers.”
Marquardt challenges the assumption that advances in reproductive technologies are an unequivocally good thing, arguing that debates about methods take into account only the wishes of the parents, not the children.
Marquardt has solicited the views of donor children from across the world. These “babies” are now grown up (one of the most vocal voices is pushing 70) and many are very unhappy. “They tell me that their early attempts to make sense of their origins were made more painful by the people around them who insisted that it shouldn’t matter,” Marquardt reports. “That they should be glad to be alive. That they shouldn’t torment the parents who raised them. That they are silly and deluded for thinking that some guy who went into a little room with a dirty magazine holds a key to their identity.”
But where is Marquardt coming from? The child of a broken home, she has argued in a previous book (Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce) that Western society underplays the effect of divorce. She claims to feel kinship with the offspring of donor conception who, similarly, are “not supposed to have a story” because it might conflict with the reproductive “rights” of the individual: “This debate is dominated by adults’ rights: the rights of same-sex couples, the rights of infertile adults, the rights of singles. But we also have to hear and respond to children’s pain when they lose the ability to grow up with their own mom and dad, whether it’s due to donor conception, or parental abandonment, or divorce.”
Marquardt is prepared to concede that the donor offspring she has spoken to may not be representative of the group. “It is possible that the young people most troubled are the ones who reach out to others.” She therefore plans to embark on a representative study involving 900 individuals and a control group to measure attitudes among the donor offspring community.
Olivia Montuschi, of the UK based Donor Conception Network (DCN), believes that the results of such a study will force Marquardt to eat her words. Montuschi is frustrated that she is speaking out so vocally before collating the evidence.
Montuschi and her husband conceived their two children using donor sperm in the mid-Eighties and were in the vanguard of parents who decided to be open with their children, despite the advice being given by the medical profession. “We believed that our children had the right to be told,” says Montuschi. “In my experience, donor-conceived adults and young people who feel angry are those who found out late and in less than ideal circumstances – during a row, a medical emergency, or following a bereavement.” The DCN welcomed the recent change to the guidelines by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in the UK advising fertility clinics to counsel parents on the benefits of disclosure. Montuschi and her contemporaries were advised: “Go home and make love. Who knows, perhaps one of your husband’s sperm will beat the donor sperm to it – then you can pretend it is his baby!” Now parents are encouraged to undertake counselling before the process. This appears to have brought about a sea-change in attitudes to disclosure. A study by Dr Susan Golombok published in the journal Human Reproduction in 2006 reported that 54 per cent of UK parents who had used donor sperm had opted for disclosure while 78 per cent of parents using egg donation had made the same decision (an interesting disparity that highlights the stigma still attached to male infertility).
However, these figures were compiled before the removal of donor anonymity in the UK, a move that some claim will have a negative effect on parental disclosure. Since April 2005, anyone registering to be a donor has done so knowing that a child can seek identifying information once he or she reaches 18. The BMA has opposed the move, concerned that the removal of anonymity may harm openness between parents and children. “Parents who are unwilling for their child to make contact with the donor may be less likely to tell their child they were donor-conceived,” says a spokesman.
Little is known about the effects on the children where parents tell them. Professor Blyth recently conducted a study involving 16 UK families who had disclosed: “The study showed that parents can tell their children and it doesn’t wreck the family,” says Professor Blyth. “The kids were comfortable about their identity and enjoyed positive relationships with both parents.”
However, opponents are sceptical since all the families volunteered and so were self-selecting. Christine Whipp, of the action group Tangled Webs, which challenges donor conception practices, believes that if told early, donor offspring can be “brainwashed by their parents into believing that they have not been short-changed, but biological relationships do matter”.
Whipp believes that the removal of donor anonymity does not protect children from the intrinsic injustices: “Why should the child be held hostage for 18 years, denied a relationship with one of its parents, just to satisfy the whims of adults?” Tangled Webs claims that donor conception practices contravene the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It wants future legislation to provide offspring with retrospective access to information about their biological/genealogical parentage.
Until that comes to pass, Whipp urges all donors to register on UK DonorLink, a pilot voluntary contact register, set up to enable people, their donors and half-siblings to exchange information and, if desired, to contact each other.
So, does the T-shirt slogan express the voice of the donor child, or is it wishful thinking by parents who seek to dismiss donor origins as no big deal? Elizabeth Marquardt believes it is the latter. “We cannot assume that donor offspring easily forget about their biological parents just because the adults in their lives want them to. Banning donor anonymity is a good step, but it’s not enough. Our culture needs a serious debate about the implications of technologies used to form many of today’s alternative families, one that places the interests of the resulting children front and centre.
‘I felt like a sordid secret transaction’
Christine Whipp, 52, from Devon, received a letter from her estranged mother ten years ago telling her that she had been conceived using donor sperm. She felt cheated and believes that donor conception denied her the possibility of having a loving relationship with either parent.
“I had guessed that there was some big secret around my identity but it was a complete surprise – I hadn’t even been aware that donor conception was available in the 1950s. Nonetheless, it made complete sense of everything. I had always felt that my mother viewed me as second best – not the baby she really wanted. Now I understood why. When she looked at me she saw a stranger and it affected our relationship until she died.
“At 41, I had to reassess my life. I felt like a sordid secret transaction, something my mother would have been ashamed of. I felt short-changed and I mourn that I didn’t have the chance to grow up knowing my real father. It took me nine years to trace him by which time he was dead.
“Now I have regular contact with one of his sons and that has been incredibly reaffirming but nothing can make up for the years that I have lost.
“There has never been any attempt to analyse how donor offspring are best served. Reproductive technologies are viewed as a success if a bouncing baby is produced, but that is no guarantee of a happy-ever-after.”
I know that ‘daddy’ means love, not sperm
Susannah Merricks, 21, from Nottingham, was conceived using a donor. Her parents were open with her from the outset. “I don’t remember when I was told that I was donor-conceived. The information was just always around and I accepted it as normal. It was always an open subject: I could ask questions. Consequently, it has not been a big issue.
“If I had found out by accident it would have been very different and I know it would have damaged my relationship with my parents. I really respect them for letting go of their own feelings and focusing on the needs of their children and our right to know.
“If parents hide the truth it seems to imply that it is something to be ashamed of. I never felt ashamed and have always been happy to tell people if the topic arises. It actually made me feel special and interesting. I liked being different.
“There has never been a question about who my father is: a father is someone who loves and raises you. I have always known that ‘daddy’ means love and not sperm. I respect my dad for being able to face up to his infertility.
“I am registered on UK DonorLink and would be interested in information about my biological father, but I don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about it. It would be a waste of energy. Donor insemination is important, because it’s about half of my genetic background, and yet it’s not important at all.”
Quelle: The Times vom 13.12.2007 http://www.timesonline.co.uk
