My responses to arguments continue:
(3) "I don't think you have the right to tell others that "repro tech" is wrong for anyone who has chosen that path."
False. That right is called free speech. It would be a sad state of affairs indeed if we could not express our opinion on ethics simply because someone might be "offended," which really means that their feelings could be hurt.
Notice, this argument doesn't even try to address whether or not I could be right. Clearly, rationality, logic, ethics and the truth do not matter here. It's all based on protecting the emotions of those who use repro tech. I should not have the right to argue, to even bring up the possibility that someone who uses repro tech could be doing something unethical - not because that is the truth, but because they could be offended and hurt by my words.
Well, if you're going to do unethical things then you should not be surprised if someone calls you on it. There IS a right to free speech. But there is NO "right" to have your feelings protected and to have your critics silenced when you do something that is unethical.
(4) "IVF has bio parents raising bio children and in the case of donor gametes many couples are chosing donors who are willing to have contact, similar to open adoption."
Yes, families who used donor gametes also sometimes choose to have contact with their donors. And indeed, this points out the similarities between donor-conception and adoption. Those who use donor gametes are, in effect, CREATING a child that they will then ADOPT, because the child is NOT naturally, biologically and fully theirs.
It is a good development that donor gamete families choose contact with their donors. But WHY did they choose it?
These developments, the "open" gamete donation and the "open" adoption, are both fairly recent. For many decades, the collective wisdom was that all links to biological parents should be cut forever. Studies have shown that most donor-gamete children were never even told that they were conceived using a third person's gametes! So the social/ intended parents were not exactly jumping at the chance to have contact with the donor and to have the donor become a part of their lives. The social/intended parents did NOT cause this revolution in "openness." They would have been fine with silence, with just forgetting the whole thing ever happened because these are "their" children now.
But over time, the parents realized that their children NEEDED this contact. The children of earlier generations grew up and still felt lost, and needed to search for their missing "halves." They want to have contact with the very biological parents, and families, that were taken away from them by their social/intended parents under the "enlightened" theory that love is all that matters. These children, who always had it drummed into their heads that biology doesn't matter, started logging onto the Donor Sibling Registry and searching for each other and for their biological parents.
Why did these "very, very LOVED" children still long to know those darned DNA donors, their biological parents? Why did their yearning cause this shift towards "open" gamete donation? Because the children have shown us that no matter how much they are "loved," their BIOLOGICAL PARENTS MATTER!!!
The very development of "open" gamete donation should show anyone who is considering the use of donor gametes just how important biological parents really are.
7 comments:
These responses were to my comments and again you are twisting things around.
You DO have the right to free speech and you can argue all you like. But since no one elected you 'God', your truth is not THE truth.
So while you remain miserable and childless by choice, I am choosing to follow my own truth and am creating my family in a way that my husband and I feel is right for us.
You can call it wrong if you like. But that does not make it so.
There is a difference between free speech and condemning the private lives of others. You will never be affected by my choices so your "opinion" is not relevant in this matter.
If you were writing that you feel reprotech is wrong for YOU then I would applaud your right to say so. But when you trample on people who are just doing the best they can with the cards they have been dealt, then, while you DO still have the RIGHT to do so, I have to wonder WHY you would choose to.
You seem bitter, angry, and more than a little pompous.
Free speech goes both ways so don't whine when we don't like your expressions any more than you like ours.
No one is trying to say that biological parents don't MATTER, just that biology is not ALL that matters and sometimes biological parents can not or choose not to parent their children.
So I guess you think that I would have been better off with my violently abusive bio father rather than in a home that loved me?
Veronica is defending the born and unborn people who have been requisitioned and forced into families in which they don't belong.
Tom, that all sounds great except that all children are born at the will of their parents and none are asked about it in advance. Many children are born into biological families (families where they BELONG as you would say) families that in fact make them wish they were never born. "Natural" children are born into abuse and poverty and war and so on . . . every day. No one asked them either.
I would wager that ART families have a MUCH lower rate or abuse and neglect than "natural" families.
Lack of genetic ties is NOT what is harming the world's children. And Biology isn't what will save them.
Dear Anonymous,
Indeed nobody asks to be born. But amongst those conceived naturally, who is saying that was a misguided thing to do? Not many.
Amongst those conceived by DC, who is saying it was a misguided thing to do? Lots. Here are three links that spring to mind:
http://www.tangledwebs.org.uk/
http://whosedaughter.blogspot.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/006/450lpafj.asp
I would wager that ART families have a MUCH higher rate or abuse and neglect than "natural" families. Now where's the research to prove one of us right? That's right: it doesn't exist. Please avoid wild speculations.
Plenty of things are harming the world's children. Some of them you have mentioned. Lack of genetic ties IS one thing that is harming those without them.
Just because some people have harmful biological families is no reason to harm other people by denying them their biological families.
Hi, I just came across this blog, and when I read some of the comments, I have to say it's very refreshing to read veronica's very logical, fair, and impartial comments without any emotion. I think anonymous' comment:
"you seem bitter, angry, and more than a little pompous" are way out to lunch and simply false. I think anonymous is the emotional one here, reducing her credibility.
Truth is objective, there's no way about it.
Unfortuately, our liberal/leftist, culture-of-death world doesn't recognize objective truth, resulting in reduced ethics and morality. It's not my opinion, it's an observable truth. Evil and like-minded men such as Morgentaler have set back mankind centuries, and human dignity seems to no longer count for much.
The bottom line for me in all these discussions is that life is sacred, and society has gone the wrong way to cheapen it through the use of reproductive technologies.
Whatever happened to the good old days when kids could ride their bikes and play freely in the streets? Basically, our liberal/leftist culture-of-death society put God aside, and put man above Him. All this suffering in the world man's own fault, period.
Veronica, I admire your reasoning...keep up the good fight. The good always wins in the end, that's my hope.
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