Good thinking
Jun 13, 2005 Adoption
Jody brought up a lot of good, hard thoughts in her comments below. They really challenged me, which I appreciated.
I’ve written her off-blog about some specifics to our adoption but I’m not going to blather on about those things here (I know! It’s crazy! I’m reigning myself in!) so I’m just going to muddle my way through and hope it makes sense.
I was thinking about something specific she wrote, which was this: “It’s not J’s pregnancy that Dawn keeps writing about as creating the bond that she and Brett value, and work so hard to maintain and celebrate for and with their daughter.” I had to think on that a lot and I realized that, for me, it is J’s pregnancy that changes it all for me.
I hadn’t realized that explicitly until I read Jody’s comment.
But I can’t totally dismiss biological ties either. After all, J’s father didn’t give birth to Madison but I can still see how important his feelings are in this adoption, right? And specific to our adoption, I feel more sympathy for Madison’s paternal grandparents than I do for Madison’s birth father. And they didn’t give birth to Madison either so what gives?
I guess for this adoption that I’m living in, it’s about participation and opportunity. Madison’s birth father chose not to participate despite having the opportunity. I think this is what makes the big difference for me. His (birth father’s) parents haven’t been given the same opportunity to participate and this makes me sad. Unfortunately, it’s the way things have to be for now although we are open to that changing if and when such change would be appropriate.
But back to general musing…
So then I think to myself, well, there are men who would like the opportunity to participate and it isn’t given to them. Is that fair? No, it’s not. But unless I know the reason they’re kept out of the situation, I don’t feel like I can speak much to it. I get all flummoxed when it starts being about specific policy.
Then just to make my eyes cross, I started thinking about other alternative ways of family building. In talking to friends of mine who conceived via donor sperm or donor egg, I see that there are a lot of the adoption issues present in growing your family that way, too. It’s different but then sometimes it’s the same.
If I believe that open adoptions — or rather the possibility of open adoptions — are ideal (because I don’t think anyone should be forced to have openness but I think it’s swell if people are able to find a level of openness that suits the members of their unique triad) then why don’t I think there should be more openness in egg donations or sperm donations? Or do I think there should be? I haven’t thought about it much. Although I hear that more and more people want openness in their egg/sperm donations and now there’s all of this talk about embryo donations to mix things up still further. I don’t have time to think on all of that too much (although sometimes I look longingly at the discussion) because I’m too busy mindf*cking adoption over here so I had to think more about why adoption is different in my own chattering little monkey brain.
If donating sperm or an egg is different than getting a woman pregnant via sexual intercourse, why is it different? Because donation is a deliberate act of potential procreation and having sex isn’t always? (Ironic, that.) Is it because the man, perhaps, had a relationship with the woman he had sex with? Does the absence of a relationship change things?
If it’s about the rights of children, what makes a birth parent a birth parent?
Even if a woman decides to make an adoption plan the minute her second double line appears, she is still not going into it assuming that the child won’t be hers. Her act of getting pregnant was not a deliberate act of procreation, generally. (Although I read the blog recently of a woman who chose to get pregnant and then her relationship fell apart and she made an adoption plan. It’s an incredibly moving blog for a number of reasons, this being one of them.)
Is that it then? Is it that deliberate act where the person donating his sperm, her egg, the use of her uterus that makes them not a birth parent?
It’s almost midnight and I’m making less sense than when I started. So back to birth fathers, I want to find out why and when putative father registries started being created so maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.
June 14th, 2005 at 9:51 am
Ok, so I’ve been thinking about this for quite awhile now. I think the mother vs carrier question is answered by society. In the carrier situation, the donor, surrogate etc. is helping someone,(e.g we couldn’t get pregnant, Herb’s sperm count is too low, so we used a donor, Agnes’ womb is a rocky place where a seed could find no purchase, so we used a surrogate). Here the donor provides a valuable service–you can hear it int the verbage–’used’ is so very utilitarian. In the case of adoption, the adoptive family is ‘helping’ the woman in trouble, by relieving her of the burden of raising her child. Although those of us who parent via adoption know this isn’t the case, you hear it in the language about adoption–”was she a teen mother?” indicating she is too young to raise the baby. “Isn’t the father around?” indicating that she was abandoned and can’t possibly parent independently. In our situation, we also heard, “Oh, she already has one by herself? She must have her hands full already.” indicating that there isn’t room in this parent’s life for another child.
I really think this is the gist of it, although I think there’s an ownership issue implied as well. In adoption, the birth mother ‘owns’ the baby until she chooses to place her, but in many donor situations, the donor is providing a raw material to make a baby, not the entire baby. Not a very elegant response, but then neither is society’s point of view.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:57 am
Now this is an entry I need to read to Karen tonight…. What makes a parent is a topic pretty central to our lives.
June 14th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
I believe it was “gestational surrogate”.
These are all fascinating issues. Thanks for probing them.
June 14th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Years ago I briefly looked into egg donation as far as filling out (but not sending) the application. I was asked about openness and checked “whatever the family /child want.”
I think gamete donation should be as open as anything else for the sake of the child. I am less concerned about surrogacy that doesn’t involve gametes of the surrogate. In that case, I figure it’s up to the adults to decide what they want. But the child, I believe, deserves access to her genetic roots for medical purposes.
This is not an opinion I express too much in lesbian circles, since anonymous sperm is often (though not always) a highly desirable option for lesbian bio/adoptive moms. But I think the desire of the adults should take a back seat to the future well-being of the child.