Dangerous liaison: infertility and adoption
Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy wrote a terrific and passionate essay on the relationship between infertility and adoption, and why current mainstream attitudes on this are skewed: Fertility and Getting Pregnant vs Infertility and Fertility and Getting Pregnant vs Infertility and Adoption. I love the grandmother analogy, Claudia, brilliant!
As someone who came to adoption from infertility, I feel like I can write about this subject with a fairly decent chunk of authority. I did, actually, on the old blog, and therefore won’t go into my personal experience with infertility and deciding to adopt here. Instead, and for those adoptive parents who may read Claudia’s post with disdain or dismissal, I’d like to offer a few additional thoughts to encourage you to rethink the “win-win” that often characterizes infertility and adoption.
Infertility is a medical problem: the inability to become pregnant and/or bring a pregnancy to term. Infertility can only be resolved by a successful pregnancy. Pregnancy, however, isn’t an end to itself in the same way correcting other medical problems is (removing a tumor, for example, or putting cancer into remission). It’s no wonder most people view a child as the ultimate cure for infertility, which in turn sends us down a slippery ethical slope.
Take a look at the website of RESOLVE, the well-respected infertility support organization. Click the Family Building Options link, and look at what’s right up at the top of the list. With that simple menu option, RESOLVE sends its constituents and the public a message that, in spite of its tagline (The National Infertility Association), it does not restrict its support to the medical condition of infertility, but instead includes non-medical support for childlessness in its mission.
Look further at the information on the Adoption page. It is a how-to list, focusing on types of adoption and how to pay for it, no more than that. This is not the way anyone should enter the world of adoption.
I say this with regret, as a former member and DC chapter president of RESOLVE back in the late 80s. I, like many others, viewed infertility and childlessness as essentially the same, and adoption as a cure for both. Those of us who moved toward adoption did so with impunity, believing we had the same right to adopt as other fellow infertiles had to a cycle of IVF. It was, and continues to be, a dangerous attitude.
Adoption is not a treatment for infertility. Removing adoption from the infertility vocabulary would do adoption reform and justice a world of good.
Comments
I sure do wish more people were like you!
Dana, I couldn't agree more. I think maybe I've tip-toed around that issue too long for not wanting to judge someone else's reproductive decisions, but honestly people should get that when you incubate an embryo that grew from egg and sperm that aren't yours or your partner's that what you're doing is, at its core, adoption.
And yesyesyes to gamete "donation" (which is too often really sales). It is enough like adoption that it needs to be addressed in the same ways vis a vis the rights of the people conceived in these ways to know their biological history.
The notion that the fathers of children born through AI aren't their 'real' or 'natural' parents, that they are raising "someone else's child", as stated above by 3 comments--that idea relies on some assumptions about the nature of life, family and parenting relationships that are problematic.
Perhaps the way I restated those assumptions was unclear, so I'll take another swing at it: My niece is her parents' child, not the dislocated child of the grad student who sold his sperm. She has access to a comprehensive medical and personality index about that man, and should she wish to contact the other children born from his "donations" (a term I have concerns about) she's free to do so. The only "genetic connection" she doesn't have is contact with that donor, and despite the sales pitch he accepted 15 year ago, if she wants that she can have it. The terms of her parents' agreement with the sperm bank can't be applied to her.
I just don't see how you can meaningfully compare that experience to the disconnections experienced by adopted children, even if they're infants, especially if the adoption is cross-cultural. It's not even apples and oranges. One is an apple, the other is a hubcap.
I don't see how this is possible. In almost all ART donor situations (sperm or egg) One parent is the genetic parent of the infant. Thus the genetic disconnection is not the same as for an adopted child.
Furthermore, children conceptualize motherhood as "who carried me in her tummy." An understanding of genetics comes later unless the kid is very bright - about pre-teen age years age 9-12 yrs. Again, this child would not be similarly situated to an adopted child.
You could argue a child born of sperm or egg donor is a more upsetting experience or whatnot. But to argue it's the same experience as adoption for the children just doesn't follow logically.
I think the identity formation of children is likely to influence and shape the adult response. I am not trying to assert there is no loss for any donor-conceived people as a result of a genetic connection disconnect with one of the parents.
The overall experience of those who are adopted, versus the donor-born, will be shaped by their different experiential circumstances. As overall experiences, they are quite different.
Except in unusual circumstances, adopted people do not possess a genetic connection to either genetic parent. In contrast, a donor conceived person is almost always genetically connected to one parent.
In addition, women who use donors (sperm or egg) almost always give birth to the child.
Finally, kids who are adopted were relinquished after birth. Donor kids are not relinquished at birth. The interpretation of the birthing event figures into the interpretation and experience of adoption, but not in the donor-conceived experience/ memory/ interpretation of their own birth.
And yes, I fully felt that for me there was very little difference in adopting or conceiving via an egg donor as far as genetics goes. Genetics matter. Environment matters too, but we need to not discount the importance of genetics. How many people use Ancestry.com to figure out their family tree? For them, genetics obviously matters. Why do we pretend in ART or adoption that it doesn't.