The fear of sterility is well known among people. Most people know someone who has trouble having children, and hardly anyone would have suffered the pain if they knew they couldn't have children of their own. I have always been afraid of not being able to get my own biological children myself.
This desire to have children is so strong, so expansive, that almost no limits seem to recognize the quest to "cure" infertility, and to find infertile couples what they most desire: a child.
The thing is, the desire to have a child of our own has become a de facto right, or so it seems. But this "right", when "donors" are used to achieve it, tramples on the rights of the children born this way. Because when a child is born because of "donor conception", he or she is deprived of the opportunity to know his or her biological parent(s) and to have them as a normal part of their lives.
There is no right to have children. But there is a general right (according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) to family life. The full enjoyment is denied to donor conceived people by the part of them is being bought and sold, what is it but human trafficking? People sell their embryos, their own children - their genetic material, with the express intention of creating children who they will never know. This is strong language, I know, but people who do this can't really be blamed. The donors are told that they are doing something altruistic, and the parents-to-be are told that this is a perfect way to get a child. The fact is that infertility is not being overcome here, it is only a solution of not being able to get a child. The fact remains, however, that society condones the primacy of the older, stronger and wealthier party over the younger, smaller and voiceless. The intended parent vs the unborn child.
I feel this not only intellectually but also viscerally as I am such a product. My mothers wanted to have children, so they went to a clinic and had artificial insemination with donor sperm. The donor was an identifiable donor, a man and a senior. I'm in a relationship with him since I was 16, I know how many half brothers and half sisters I have but I have no right to find out more about them until they request they want to get to know us.
The independence of this was officially recognized in 2004, after a legal action by donor conceived people, empowered the public health of the donor to adults. All donor conceived people who are conceived in the Netherlands after that date have the right, as soon as they turn 16, to find out the identity of their donorparents and the last known contact information of them. Just like I had already before 2004, but now it was a right for every donor conceived person to be conceived in the Netherlands.
This hard-won right is severely limited. Relying on the child's social/ raising parents telling the truth about the child's origin. For a lot of people this just doesn't happen. The deception involved is a lie - literally - to the research that "the kids are okay" is often kept in a state of ignorance. Families in which a father and mother often try to hide the origin of the donor child until puberty. And finally, a "reunion" at least 16 years old barely compensates for spending one's entire childhood without any contact with a congenital/biological mother or father.
For the donor conceived people born before 2004, the situation remains that most of them have no right to learn anything about our genetic/biological parents. It's hard to describe how strange and disturbing it is not half knowing where you come from. I didn't know my father's name for the first 16 years of my life, so I didn't know him and his side of my family. I didn't know where my characteristics came from for the first 16 years of my life. And critically, I didn't get half of my medical history, and when I had to be examined, my parents probably couldn't answered many of the doctors' questions about my family history. Those who say DNA doesn't matter don't know what they're talking about.
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