244 - Baby Blues

"I am a 33 year-old male. At some point, ideally before I’m 40, I want to have a child conceived through egg donation and surrogacy. I want to know your opinion on something. Awhile ago, I discovered a website called anonymousus.org, which is run by Alana S. Newman, who was donor conceived, and is currently an activist against assisted reproductive technology (ART). The website is filled with anonymous personal stories from children who were conceived via egg donation or sperm donation. Most of these children seem to have issues over the manner in which they were conceived. While it is my dream to be a single father, when I read these stories from donor conceived children, I do experience some second thoughts on the subject. Here's my question for you Sandman: Are you concerned over issues your future child may experience over the way he was conceived? I know you plan to keep in touch with the egg donor so that your child knows who the mother is, and that is certainly better than keeping an anonymous relationship. My view on the subject is that assisted reproductive

technology exists for socially infertile people (socially infertile referring to people who are unlikely to reproduce the regular way, such as gay couples, socially inept single people, or even single people by choice). And I’ve heard it argued that, “A mother and a father is preferable to one parent, and even though it’s not necessarily your fault that you’re socially infertile, your child shouldn’t have to suffer for it by not having a mother, so it is unethical for you to conceive a child using an egg donor. You are violating that child’s right to have two parents.” An argument I’ve heard in response is, “Well, if it’s unethical to conceive a child without a mother because children with two parents statistically do better than children with one parent, then let’s talk about the African-American population as an analogy. Statistically, black people don’t do as well as white people do. One out of every three black men will go to prison in their lifetime. Black people are also less likely to go to college. Black people have to deal with a lot of racism. Clearly, black people face a lot of challenges in life that white people generally don’t face, so it would arguably be preferential to be born as a white person instead of a black person. So by the same logic, wouldn’t it be unethical for black people to reproduce because they’re having children who aren’t white and therefore will face more challenges in life?” I believe everybody should be treated equally in regards to reproduction, whether they are socially infertile, black, white, gay, married, single, etc. The resulting child is no worse off by luck of the draw than any child born to less than optimal circumstances.

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