Posted on 01/31/2019 8:58:12 AM PST by Red Badger
Danielle Teuscher's 5-year-old daughter Zoe is one of thousands of children conceived with sperm from an anonymous donor. When Teuscher wanted to know more about her daughter's ancestry and possible health issues, she and other family members decided to get DNA tests from 23andMe and added one for Zoe. What turned up appeared to be one of the anonymous donor's immediate relatives. She was shocked.
The donated sperm had come from Northwest Cryobank, which offers donors anonymity, but Teuscher said the apparent relative she found on 23andMe listed themselves as open to messaging.
"I said 'I don't want to cross any boundaries. I just want to let you know that we are out here and we are open to contact if you are,'" Teuscher said.
The relative responded "I don't understand," so Teuscher said she let it go. But then she got a "cease and desist" letter from Northwest Cryobank, telling her not to contact the donor or "learn more information about his identity, background or whereabouts." The sperm bank warned it could "seek $20,000 in liquidated damages." Worst of all she said, it took back "four [4] additional vials of donor's sperm that" she "purchased" – sperm she'd planned to use to have Zoe's genetic siblings.
"Devastating. I mean … I was shocked, I was crying for days, I could barely eat," Teuscher said. "I felt embarrassed almost. Here I thought I was doing this thing I thought was in the best interest of my daughter … And then it just came back on me in just such a harsh way that made me feel like I did something terrible, like I was a criminal."
Northwest Cryobank told CBS News it does not prohibit DNA testing, but said "concern arises when one uses DNA test results to contact a donor and/or his family." The bank said clients like Teuscher have "contractually agreed to not independently seek the identity or attempt to contact these individuals." According to Teuscher, the contract was online.
"I mean, you just click the boxes," Teuscher said. Plus, she said, it's not all about her.
"My daughter is an actual living, breathing, feeling human being who did not sign that contract," Teuscher said.
Contracts or not, many donor-conceived children and their families are finding each other. Wendy Kramer runs the Donor Sibling Registry, a group that connects donor-conceived children and their families. Her own donor-conceived son has found 18 half-siblings, most of them through DNA test matches.
"All of us, thousands of us, have made these connections," Kramer said. "It's a right for everybody to know the truth about their own DNA, their own background, their relatives and their medical histories."
Northwest Cryobank said not all donors will want that opportunity. It said "there is a human being on the other side of the gift who may have a partner, parents, job and children of his own" and uninvited contact "could jeopardize these relationships and families."
But experts say in 2019, that contact may simply be unavoidable. He said despite our best efforts, it's impossible to promise anonymity anymore.
"The problem we have now is that the science has kind of overstepped where we are, in terms of legality," said Dr. Peter McGovern, an infertility specialist.
But Teuscher said with the loss of her vials, the promise of more children could be ended for her.
"They literally took my babies. My future babies," she said.
After we contacted Northwest Cryobank for this story, a representative sent Teuscher an email saying the bank would refund the money she paid for those additional vials of her donor's sperm, but did not offer to give her vials back.
The representative we spoke to at Northwest Cryobank told us that this is the only letter threatening legal action that they've ever sent to a client, to his knowledge.
Whether or not either one of them signed any kind of contract, the child that resulted, the PERSON, did not agree to any of this. She deserves to know her heritage, her health history, etc.
The child is a person. My issue with donation, either eggs or sperm, is it is the commodification of the children that result.
The adults in these situations are too full of themselves, it’s all about memememe
They give the user name that is provided by the tester. Which can be anything you can make up, or your actual name. Most of the companies have a messaging system. You can also opt out of receiving messages.
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How would the relative know which of his/her relatives to pass the woman's request to?
Probably by part of the country and time frame of birth.
you are correct this is the child’s issue.
but it is not the mother’s issue
I think that the mother’s demanding self centeredness and attention seeking makes her an example of what is wrong with American Women today.
And the picture of her child, yelling with mouth open, must take after the mom. lol
If someone contacted me and said "one of your relatives, sometime before 5 years ago, donated sperm to a sperm bank. Do you know who that was?" I wouldn't have a clue... I have all sorts of cousins, nephews, uncles, etc.
and many of us don’t have a lot of relatives.
if I had that scenario, presented.
I would know immediately.
It turns out that real families matter after all.
One of my children is from a formerly unwanted embryo in a frozen vial. She is now a beautiful human being with the only family she has ever had.
My issue with donation, either eggs or sperm, is it is the commodification of the children that result.
It seemed awfully important to the kids who were tracking down half-siblings, for example. Not "BS" to them.
The perspective is the one from the children's side, not from the adults who have already decided for them that genetics should not matter.
Besides, if genetics didn't matter to people's hearts, "just because", the interest in geneaological research would be a fraction of what it is. People like to find "long lost" cousins, or travel back to the Old World farm where g-g-g grandfather was born, etc.
It's a concept far beyond the circumstances that exist under one roof, or of who raises whom and why.
"Just because" is perhaps the next category of thought crimes. Plenty of folks out there who are keen to decide for others what should or should not matter to them.
Children have been conceived or adopted for all sorts of reasons, none of which are their fault. I wouldn't think to demand how they should ultimately feel about it. For that reason I wouldn't intentionally conceive a child under genetically dubious circumstances, or support an industry that promotes it.
It's way too complicated and potentially damaging on a number of levels. There are enough unfortunate results when people honor the original ideal of Creation (children can be orphaned, for example). Therefore I reason, why start out with and then have to double down in defence of weird sketchy foundations. Something is intuitively "off" about all that.
There's no denigration of those who step up to the plate to give a pre-existing child a loving home, but Big Conception is an abominable industry overall.
Depending on the how close the match is, if it’s a very close match, it could be one of 4 possibilities. Grandparent/grandchild, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew,or half sibling
There is a lot of self centeredness involved in assisted reproduction. It’s all about getting a child, ethics be damned.
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
It’s up to the adoptees and donor conceived persons to decide for themselves who their “real” family is. Personally, I consider both my bio parents and my adoptive parents “real”. They both had a hand in making me who and what I am. I won’t tolerate anyone disrepecting either by placing one above the other. It’s my decision, no one else’s.
I know you are interested in how we view ourselves, please take a moment to listen to donor conceived persons speak their own truth
Not sperm donor.
Sperm *vendor*.
What bothers me the most about the anonymous donor industry, is that mothers purposely conceive a child with the express intent of denying that child the knowledge of half his bloodline. She's decided that it doesn't or shouldn't matter to him. Or she doesn't even bother to consider it in the first place. And don't get me started on the surrogates who will do this for a man, or "men". :-(
Not a matter of the health history so much, but rather that a child is then raised by a parent who did this on purpose, and that it should be no big deal. Ordering a child to "love", by denying him half of who he is. Well maybe the child won't think about that, but... come on, humans have basic feelings.
It could be, that children of sperm donors seek out their half siblings beyond a desire to answer "Who am I, or "Whom do I look like?", but to bond with siblings who know and understand what "it" feels like, unlike parents who might allow only one approved thinking model (theirs).
Besides a literal genetic definition of real, a real family understands, loves, and bonds. Real families matter after all.
Some people are raised by genetic parents who hate and abuse them. They too desire a real family.
I think there is more of a craving for real families than society is willing to admit, so it covers it by promoting all manner of strange substitutions. It's become so complicated that nobody knows how simple it is supposed to be.
The world will change when love starts at home, and "ethics panels" won't have any reason to exist.
What a mess.
Sperm "donating" (actually *vending*) involves a guy masturbating into a baggie while looking at porn, and then selling his couple milileters of semen to be inserted up the genital tract of a woman he doesn't know, guaranteeing his ability to walk away from any responsibility for the child he sires, and getting paid for it.
How is this jerkoff-based, dehumanized, depersonalized, commercial sex-related transaction OK for an infertile male-female couple to get involved in?
Does this couple have a right to acquire a baby by, despite or against nature, "by hook or by crook", just because they're a couple?
How is this part of "God's pattern and purpose"?
I don't get your reasoning here.
The woman was flat wrong to get pregnant via an impersonal commercial transaction.
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