Mother donates frozen eggs to daughter
Legal first means girl could one day give birth to her own half-sibling.
A seven-year-old girl in Canada might one day give birth to her genetic half-sibling. The girl's mother has donated her own eggs to give the child, who was born with a disease that affects her ovaries, the chance to have children of her own.
Read the story here.
Comments
Thirteen years ago, when my daughter began hormone treatments for a different condition, I met with other parents of children with growth disorders. The pediatric endocrinologists told two sets of parents of girls with Turner’s Syndrome that their daughters could grow up to use eggs of an anonymous donor or use their mother’s eggs. The endocrinologists even went further by telling the girls (ages 4 and 10) that by using someone else’ eggs they would have “children of their own.”
Ethically, there is a problem with telling young children such falsehoods. Telling a young child that she can use another woman’s egg to carry a pregnancy to term and call that child “her own” is a lie. The truth would be better stated that “if you want to have children, there are many ways of building a family, but your ovaries don’t work, using a donor’s eggs means that you will give birth to someone else’s genetic child that you’ll raise.”
This is a concept many adults can’t wrap their brains around. Which is why there are no laws to protect the children conceived and born of deception.
There is no legal adoption of such children. There are no legal requirements for any infertility clinic to keep accurate records. There are no laws requiring birth certificates to name more than one mother (and father) on a child’s birth certificate. The parents who conceive and give birth to someone else’s genetic child can hide the truth from their children forever. The child grows up believing they have one mother (and father, if there is a sperm donor as well) while, in reality, the child has two mothers (or fathers).
Using someone else’s eggs or sperm doesn’t cure infertility. One must first grieve for the children one cannot have and then make an informed decision of how to obtain children to parent. Once you make the decision to parent someone else’s child, you also make the decision to be responsible to that child to tell the truth. You must also recognize the child’s right to know, and build relationships with, all her parents.
How would YOU feel to be the child born of a mother who is not only your mother (she gave birth to you) but she is also your half-sibling? And your grandmother is your grandmother by social arrangement, but she is your mother by genetics. Kinda creepy, isn’t it? Is this the way you want to go through life? If not, then maybe you might not want to put someone else through it.
Children of Reproductive Technologies do grow up. Thousands who know how came to be are organizing worldwide to find their genetic parents. They are the new adoptees.
I’m adopted. Thirty-three years ago I was found by a sister I never knew. My adoptive parents never wanted me to know the truth. It’s not the burden of being given away that bothers me (my mother died) it’s living a lie at the will of my adoptive parents that hurts the most.
Joan Wheeler
Posted by: Joan Wheeler | July 5, 2007 01:18 AM