Some things fall into the "be careful what you wish for" category.
Posted on 08/02/2010 7:04:25 AM PDT by NYer
Devon knows her father is a thin man with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair -- but she may never know his name.
A 20-year-old New York University student, Devon was conceived with sperm from the Milton S. Hershey Clinic at Penn State University through artificial insemination. After graduating from high school, she found a piece of paper in her parents' room with general information on her donor but nothing she could use to identify him.
Devon, who asked that her last name not be used, said she isn't searching for her father with any urgency, but in her late teens when she began to feel a sense of medical responsibility for herself, she decided to try to find her donor's medical information. Last year she posted the little information she knows about him on the Americans for Open Records website (amfor.net), which contains a registry for donors and donor offspring.
"I am now 19 and am having some health issues ... which require a more complete family history," her listing reads. "Beyond the obvious health concerns, I'm just curious."
Connecting with sperm donors isn't always as easy as it is portrayed in "The Kids Are All Right," a film starring Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo, which opened in Pittsburgh Friday after early success in other cities.
In the movie, the children of lesbian partners (Ms. Moore and Ms. Bening) find the man (Mr. Ruffalo) whose sperm was used in their conception. Mr. Ruffalo's character and the children attempt to forge relationships, but the experience is not entirely what the parties involved had hoped.
The film's director and co-writer Lisa Cholodenko, who is raising a child conceived through artificial reproductive technology with her partner, said she wanted to explore the idea that a donor might not
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Unless you have experienced this, you can't imagine how it plagues you all your life. I have never found my biological father.
I can understand if the person part of the mother’s life but a sperm donor?
Children have been raised
By men who aren’t their fathers
Since the dawn of time.
When a child is born
You know who the mother is.
Father you assume.
Boy, that's for sure:
41-year-old pacifist DJ discovers his real father is legendary serial killer Charles Manson
Some things fall into the "be careful what you wish for" category.
Still a father, at least biologically.
Or...
Mama’s baby. Daddy’s maybe.
I’ve never understood this.
Mommy didn’t want you, Daddy’s name is “Handsome Stranger”. Neither wanted the child, neither wanted to deal with the issues; the conception was merely a side-effect from a biological urge to mate. No desire to procreate, no desire to raise a child, no desire to invest their time in each other, let alone an uninvited interloper.
So, the child takes it upon themselves to humiliate the only people who did care about them. The person who has invested their time, love, money and life is forced to sit back and be ignored as “not good enough” while the child searches for a stranger to love.
What else can the adopted parent do? All they can do is sit and wish that all that energy, love and need was directed back to them, instead of some stranger that rejected a baby.
Meanwhile, the parents who gave the child up for adoption live in a constant state of apprehension. Will the kid they left trackt hem down? Will he/she disrupt the new lives they have created since the ‘mistake’? Now, how do they explain to the family they have now; the mistakes they made years earlier.
But, hey .... it’s all about the child right? Who cares how you hurt your adoptive parents or what anguish you create in the biological parent’s life; as long as YOU feel better, that’s all that really matters, right? Just seems like a very spoiled and ungrateful child to me.
Wow.... that’s an extraordinarily bitter little screed, Hodar.
My husband’s cousin was adopted. He always wanted to know his parents but had no luck finding them. He found his sister’s biological parents but couldn’t find his own.
When he was 28 he came down with an agressive form of cancer and soon he was dying and he still wanted to meet his birth parents. His adoptive father called in every favor he had ever had and finally got information on his son’s birth mother.
He met her on Mother’s Day. He wouldn’t let them give him any morphine that day and he was so happy. He died a couple of weeks after that.
I can only imagine, so many unanswered questions. Good Luck on your continued search.
there is some other stupid “sperm donor” movie comming out too. It has that actor from kangaroo jack who can’t seem to find a hit movie. Plus it has the added burden of having jenifer aniston in it. It is a definite do not watch, do not rent, do not watch for free. A yawnfest.
Not true. I am both partially adopted and an adoptive parent. I have always considered my adoptive father to be my father. My daughter was raised knowing she was adopted. In the teen years (that is the time when identity if formed), she wanted to search for her biological parents. This a normal and natrual drive. There is a certain curiosity combined with a desire to know from whom did I inherit "my big nose, small feet, ______ (fill in the blank)." More importantly, there is a need to know what one may have genetically inherited. Since the beginning, each time I fill out a medical questionnaire, I can only answer half the questions.
I am a strong supporter of adoption and can assure you that children love their adoptive parents who have been there in good times and bad. Their search is simply the response to a natural drive.
This is an article about a lesbian homosexual director. 100% of all such children still have one father and one mother. This “director” is trying to change physics via fiction.
I think anonymous donation should be prohibited. OR in the very least some sort of national tracer bank should be created. Especially in the case of medical history need.
(ie: after the age of 18 how would you allow your offspring to contact you? ___ directly ___ only through intermediaries ___ for dire medical need)
Annonymous donation is just a means of avoiding child support and responsibility for having a child.
I think the very act of ‘donating’ sperm in and of itself means that these men are not interested in being ‘fathers’. Add to that their request for anonymity, meaning they don’t want to meet anyone that might have been conceived with their ‘donation’. Is it any wonder why most of these ‘reunions’ don’t go well.
You and all Freepers should read “Scattered Siblings” written by Lawrence A. Weeks about searching for missing siblings and parents. It took him 26 years to find his mother and then all kind of things began to happen. Very interesting book published 4 years ago and available at all bookstores.
There would end up being a lot less sperm donors, but so what? There would probably end up being more money in it, so theres a good thing.
See “Made in America” with Whoopi and Ted Danson. The poster movie against sperm clinics.
My condolences. I think this is a form of rape, only the victim is the child. i hope you find him one day.
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