Don’t ask
From the NY Times Ethicist column, currently provided by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah:
44 year old woman has been unable to conceive.
After three years of trying and multiple I.V.F. attempts (fortunately covered by insurance), my doctors have said that, at 44, I won’t be able to get pregnant with my own eggs. My husband and I have decided to pursue egg donation, which, unlike adoption, is covered by our insurance.
Ah right – they want to go the cheaper route.
I’d like the donation process to be as open as possible, ideally knowing our donor so our child could have a relationship with her. Most clinics, however, still use anonymous donation. Private donor-egg agencies that facilitate communication are beyond our budget. I did ask a distant cousin, but she understandably declined.
That’s quite the thing to ask a distant cousin. It’s quite the thing to ask anyone. “I want to have a baby so would you please have surgery to extract an egg to give to me?” It’s so compassionate and generous of her to admit that the distant cousin understandably said no. She understands saying no but she felt ok asking.
Spoiler: she shouldn’t feel ok asking.
My husband and I are professors, and I have a former student with whom I’m fairly close. We think she’d make a great donor, but I worry it would be inappropriate to ask her.
Well worry no more, it would be horrendously inappropriate to ask her.
Where do people get this idea that it’s ok to make such requests?
To me, this is the biggest problem: favoring conception over adoption. Not just on the couple’s part, but also on the insurance company’s. I’m sure the economics of it make sense, but it’s simply inhumane. There are currently-existing children who need adoption. Using elaborate medical technology to produce new children while ignoring those is such a revolting, picky first-world luxury.
Well sure, but most of those children have health or behavioral problems or at bare minimum have existing baggage. People want babies, “blank slates” to leave their mark upon. Having children is a purely selfish process by evolutionary design.
It’s a terrible cliche, but one I actually think is true: If the word “love” means anything at all, then to love someone has to mean you want what’s best for them, whether or not it coincides with your own selfish desires. Well, “what’s best for them” is to not be born into this world in the first place and spend their whole lives as a hostage to the whims of the mob, or whatever strongman is currently in charge. Some of us would say that this has inevitably always been the case (as I keep saying, the fatal flaw of any political system or form of government is human brainwiring).
While most people are obviously not going to share my views, I don’t see how anyone can possibly look at the current state of the world and decide that bringing another child into this dystopian hellhole is a good idea. The least uncharitable interpretation I am able to come up with is that they’re all thinking: “My child will be among the top predators and be in a position to take whatever he wants from others and destroy anyone who gets in his way”.
There is a quick solution to all this, though. If I hear another word about a “fertility crisis” I’m going to drown the world in a tsunami of vomit that will make Noah’s Flood look like a drought. Game over.
Anyone who says “they should just adopt” has zero knowledge of how adoption works in the modern world.
In most developed countries, there are very few healthy babies and toddlers available for adoption, and more than enough people willing and able to adopt them. This is a Good Thing, we don’t want to return to the “baby scoop” era where unmarried women were forced to hand over their newborns and orphanages were a thing. However, it does mean that prospective adopters can’t just pick up a baby.
In the USA and some other countries, it may be possible to adopt an older child from foster care. However, agencies are rightfully fussy about who they let do this. The LAST thing such children need is parents who are unprepared for their special needs.
In other countries, such as Australia & much of Europe, adoption from foster care is much rarer (foster care happens but it rarely leads to adoption) .
Then there’s international adoption from (mostly) developing countries, which is expensive, an ethical minefield, and increasingly restricted. Look up “The Lie We Love”by EJ Graff
None of this excuses surrogacy or egg donations or other unethical practices. But maybe speak to sone adoptees or adoptive parents before promulgating the “they can just adopt” myth.
But no one here did say “they can just adopt” – one commenter said there are currently-existing children who need adoption.
Nitpick, I know, but when it’s in quotation marks it should be an actual quotation.
While this is true, there are work arounds. I have a sister who was turned down by almost all adoption agencies, and for very good reasons (which most people ignore when they get infuriated about how a friend can’t adopt). She found another agency, dealing in special needs, who allowed her to adopt. She adopted nine children, most of them with special needs, two without, one of them a baby.
I agree someone needs to be prepared for special needs. It is expensive, it is heart wrenching, and it is not for everyone. I would not or could not do it, but fortunately, I’m not all that child oriented. The one I had was one more than I ever planned to have.
A lot of these people who are using egg donation or surrogacy might be turned down by adoption agencies for good reasons, too. It allows abusive, unstable people to be parents as long as they can cough up the money. Of course, ordinary child birth does that, too. My sister’s children were abused; most of them are dead now, dying at a young age, most of them because of neglect.
Adoption has justifiable safeguards that parenthood doesn’t have, which is another reason a lot of people don’t want to adopt; they are afraid they won’t meet the standards. Of course, the standards are more to do about employment and a clean criminal record, so many adoptive children end up in bad families.
I’m with Bjarte. It’s time to rethink the pronatalist tendency of not only our culture, but all cultures.
YoSaffBridge, #4:
At the beginning of your comment, you wrote “they should just adopt.” At the end, instead, you wrote “they can just adopt.” There’s a bit of a difference between the two.
Adoption is indeed a difficult process; you give very good reasons as to why, and I fully agree. It’s also messed-up and corrupt in a variety of ways. I wouldn’t think of claiming otherwise.
What I’m saying is, it’s terrible to be expending so much effort towards IVF and egg donation instead of adoption. (Indeed, I agree with Foshaug and iknklast that bringing more children into the world is quite problematic in the first place.) Of course, when I say “expending effort,” I mean so in a rather broad way; I’m not just referring to a few specific actors such as the couple in this case. It’s a problem at many levels, which is not especially surprising given that all these things are quite complicated in their own right. There is no single party at fault, there isn’t a straightforward solution, and although I have rather poor judgement, I don’t have quite enough hubris to believe that I’ve figured it all out. I was merely complaining – rather unconstructively, at that – about the current state of affairs being screwed up. I do think it could be less screwed up if we, as a society, had a change in attitude, which would impact various systems and procedures in ways that are neither very well-defined, nor surprising or unobvious.