Many people mistakenly believe that I only support biological
ties. This is not true. Both biological and sociological ties in families are
important. What I am opposed to is the trivialisation of the biological
connection and the over-emphasis by various people and groups that these
biological connections do not matter and that love is all you need.
Firstly on the sociological aspect. I was raised by two
different non-biologically related men in conjunction with my biological
mother. My dad who raised me till I was 10 and a step-father who raised me
there-after. I was indeed raised in a loving home and both these men were
exceptional and I love them dearly. Could they have raised me better than my
biological father, absolutely, that is a distinct possibility. Does that mean
that it was perfect? It would seem not, otherwise myself and many others would
not be advocating for change in the way donor conception is practiced.
But here is the hypocrisy. Donor conception exists because
typically one parent wishes to have a biological connection with the child,
rather than adopt or foster other children. Yet the other biological connection
is deemed disposable. This is clear hypocrisy. You cannot decide on behalf of
the child which biological connection will be important to them and which one
should be erased. That is unethical.
In the wider society, if biological connection weren’t
important then we wouldn’t have genealogy and we wouldn’t have popular TV shows
like “Who do you think you are?” We wouldn’t have millions upon millions of
people on sites such as Ancestry.com or FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe (the latter
two both DNA genealogy testing companies). In Australia we wouldn’t have had
national apologies to the Stolen Generation, Forced Adoptees and the Child
Migrants, all of whom were separated from their kin. Doctors would not ask you
what your family health history was. Ethnicity and culture would not be
important to people. But these are indeed clearly important to people and
society as a whole, just it is not allowed to be important to donor conceived
people.
If biology was not important then every time a woman gives
birth in hospital then they should not go home with the baby that she delivered
but any baby from the nursery will do so long as they are healthy. After all
biology doesn’t matter right and love is all that matters? They will love that
child and that child will love them. So not a problem then? Yet you will not
find one person who believes that this scenario is ethical or moral. It would
very much be a massive problem and hence the hypocrisy. There are far too many
people that are too fluid in their emotions and beliefs in when biology matters
and just flip-flop on their stance.
In essence both biology and sociology do matter. But if you are going to have an opinion that is biased toward one side or the other then just don’t
have a large dose of hypocrisy apparent in your opinions.
