David Quinn
Countless children produced from assisted human
reproduction cannot answer questions about their origin. We have little right to be judging the past while we deny children their identity with the blessing of the State today, writes David Quinn
‘Who am I?’ was the question asked by a recent RTÉ programme about illegal adoptions in Ireland. It is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask ourselves. Most of us grow up with some version of an answer to the question. We know who our parents are. We have some idea who our ancestors were. We know who we take after and who we look like.
Adopted people
Adopted people often don’t know any of these things. Some don’t mind. They are happy about the family in which they were raised and have no wish to find their natural families. Others might love their adoptive parents, but still have a burning desire to find their biological parents. It often depends on the person. We all differ.
The worst cases involve those who were led to believe that their adoptive parents were their natural parents only to find out they were deceived, especially by the people who raised them.
Then, when they go looking for their natural parents, they find that their birth certificates were illegally altered, often with the collaboration of adoption societies, medical personnel and members of religious bodies.
This was the subject matter of the RTÉ Investigates programme mentioned above. The Child and Family Agency, Tusla, upon examining the files of the St Patrick’s Adoption Guild, found 126 cases of children whose birth certificates were illegally altered to pretend that the adoptive parents were the natural parents.
Those affected were contacted by Tusla. They are all now in middle age at least. Imagine reaching the age of 50 or 60 only to find out that the people you thought were your natural parents had deceived you with the help of others who should have known better?
So much of what you thought you knew about yourself disappears overnight. The sense of betrayal would be huge.
In some of the 126 cases, the name of the biological mother could be found, but often the mother had already died.
They might also hire a woman to have the baby for them, a so-called ‘surrogate mother’”
People are rightly shocked. The only possible excuse (and it is not a good one) is that the adoptive parents felt it would be better for all concerned if the child they were adopting was not aware of their origins and believed their adoptive family was actually their natural family, or else that the biological mother never wanted to be traced.
But the fact that it was against the law even at the time shows that altering birth certs was never considerable acceptable.
Today, we like to think things are much improved and that we are far more enlightened. It’s not true though, not by a very long shot.
The children produced in this way might never be told of their origins”
The big complaint of the RTÉ Investigates programme is that those who were illegally adopted cannot answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ But countless children produced by the Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) industry cannot answer that question either.
If the people who use, say, IVF to have children provide their own sperm and their own egg, then the question can be answered. But often couples or single people use the sperm or eggs (or both) of a third party, a donor, or more like a seller.
They might also hire a woman to have the baby for them, a so-called ‘surrogate mother’.
You can look up sperm banks in the likes of the US and find whole catalogues of sperm sellers. It won’t give you their names, but it will provide details, such as the height and weight of the donor, their education, their ethnicity, and maybe a picture of them as a child.
Market
The ‘better’ the sperm donor, the higher the price. It is the same for eggs, but the price is always much higher for eggs because eggs are far scarcer than sperm and much harder to extract from the person.
This is a market. There is no other word for it.
The same applies to surrogacy. Even when the surrogate mother (that is, the birth mother) isn’t paid a fee for the rent of her womb, she will be paid ‘reasonable expenses’, which can run to tens of thousands of euro.
The children produced in this way might never be told of their origins. A woman might be impregnated with the sperm of a donor, but she might not tell the hospital. The hospital will be none the wiser, nor will the registrar of births. How is this better than past practice?
Currently, the AHR industry in Ireland is not regulated. It is the Wild West. The fertility industry even admits that sometimes a couple might use the sperm or egg of another family member to have a child. The woman, for example, might use her brother-in-law’s sperm, meaning the child could grew up never knowing his or her ‘uncle’, is, in fact, his or her father.
Eventually, programmes will be run asking again, ‘Who am I?’, and this time the people asking that question will be the products of the fertility industry”
A law governing AHR is in the pipeline and has been for a very long time. It bans anonymous egg and sperm donation so that a child upon reaching 18 will be able to discover that their father or mother might be an egg or sperm donor. But there is no need to tell them before that.
In addition, the sperm will almost certainly have been obtained from overseas, from a country like Denmark, or the egg from Spain. So even if you find out your father is ‘Lars’ from Denmark, or ‘Juanita’ from Spain, how likely is it that you will ever get to know them? How much closer will you be to finding the answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’
Modern Ireland
This is what we are doing now in modern Ireland, and for the most part with the blessing of the State. We have little right to be judging past practices. Eventually, programmes will be run asking again, ‘Who am I?’, and this time the people asking that question will be the products of the fertility industry. We will wonder society today allowed their rights to an identity to be so badly abused.