Faye is accepting early Christmas presents

Like this book: The Anonymous Us Project: A Story-Collective on 3rd Party Reproduction, edited by Alana Newman.

I discovered the Anonymous Us Project website a few years ago. It’s a sobering piece of internet real estate to visit. Children born of third party reproduction (sperm and egg donation and surrogacy) share their own stories about what it means to be conceived in that way.

Many testimonies reveal heart-break, loss, confusion and anger. Here are a few snippets:

“Who are you to deny me half of my family tree—branches rich and strong with stories I may never be told? Who are you to give away my heritage, knowing it will be replaced with something false?”

“I am a human being, yet I was conceived with a technique that had its origins in animal husbandry. Worst of all, farmers kept better records of their cattle’s genealogy than assisted reproductive clinics … how could the doctors, sworn to ‘first do no harm’ create a system where I now face the pain and loss of my own identity and heritage.”

“As a donor-conceived person, I have a sense of being part of an underclass … Having a child is a privilege not a right.”

This article includes a review of Alana Newman’s book and some additional commentary on the consequences of third-party reproduction:

We must acknowledge the painful truth that, as infertile couples seek to remedy their suffering through third-party reproduction, they are unwittingly inflicting pain on their future children. Eventually, those children must wrestle with the circumstances surrounding their conception. In aiming to satisfy their very natural desire for offspring, infertile couples go to great lengths to create children who are destined to experience complex crises of identity and purpose.

Check out the Project website and read that article (and buy me a copy of the book). It’s a lot of food for thought. And this issue and these children deserve our consideration.

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