Biological v Sociological

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.