Alana, the child of a sperm donor, says that adult children who speak out about their losses in never knowing their biological origins face fierce criticism:
For children of anonymous sperm donors yearning for a connection to their biological father, the world can be an unwelcome place.
Instead of meeting compassion, many say that society treats their pain with a dismissive or even hostile attitude - a rift caused by lack of awareness as much as by the brute force of a $3.3 billion industry.
Alana, the child of a sperm donor and the activist behind AnonymousUs.org, says she realized the hard way what she was up against when she began her awareness campaign.
“I thought it would be so easy to arrive, state the obvious that children need their fathers, and everyone would be like, oh my God, thank you for reminding us!” she said in the documentary “Anonymous Father’s Day.” “But there is a huge monster of money and people desperate for children, who don’t want me to make it harder for them to buy and sell children.”
... Another hurdle, according to Alana - a women’s studies major who says she was inappropriately ridiculed as a Christian extremist because of her advocacy - is the gay and lesbian community, who see sperm donation as “the cleanest method for them to have children.” Another major demographic, she said, was “older couples with money.”
“The fact that they’re willing to spend $100,000 for a kid is—money talks, and I can’t compete with that,” she said.
Lahl said she was hopeful that the LGBT community would be won over to oppose sperm donation once they heard the stories of children conceived in this way. “If we can educate gay men on the harms of fertility drugs, on the harms of these procedures to the women that they need, and the reality of the children’s needs and children’s right to know, then I’m hopeful that we’ll win them over,” she said. --LifeSiteNews
6 Comments
This is an excellent film. Watch it and share it with everyone you know.
In this film we finally get to hear from a segment of the population nobody seems to care about - the children themselves.
Disturbing testimony from Alana. Such unbelievably callous and nasty attitudes held towards people who felt that their interests were not taken into account when they were bought and sold.
As she said, people are scared that negative testimonies from the donor-conceived will impinge on their ability to make transactions for kids. They'd rather shut their ears to these testimonies so that nothing can be considered that might affect their lifestyle choices.
Barry makes a few excellent points throughout the article. I particularly love the hypothetical he gives about a nurse bringing just *any* baby to new parents in a hospital. Sad that such a picture has to be drawn so that adults can begin to understand what their children might feel.
This reminds me a little of the "choice mom" in the StarTribune article a few threads back. She wants a partner so that she can have companionship when her boys go off to college. As for her boys' need for a father? Well, she just hangs around families with fathers.
The "children as pets" mentality that we see so much these days...
3.3 billion dollar business. And the game hasn't even started yet! Another blessing to the economy. If we can confiscate the word “marriage” from the civilization, than we can really get this ball rolling. This can easily become a 300 billion dollar business just for starters.
We did outlaw the money market business of buying and selling human beings with the end of slavery. A quick 150 years later and we're back with a Wall Street market of buying and selling human beings for economic benefits. It was a crime against the dignity of man, the capturing, marketing, selling and buying of slaves in the past. It will be a crime against the dignity of man, the making, marketing, selling and buying of children. And of course it can go on for centuries, completely legal. With everyone being taught and made to think that its all quiet normal and natural and harmless...
Sorry to those children (who are not slaves but free human beings) that I was not able to do more to stop it from happening. Sorry that your questioning of the correctness of your situation will no more be heard (or allowed) than that of the slave. I'm sorry... I don't know what to do!
Also be sure to check out Alana's site AnonymousUs.org
So sad. It's bad enough these kids have to live with the consequences of not knowing who their dad is, but to be ostracized because they want to know? Monstrous.
I think "monstrous" sums it up.
We win elections when we talk about the effects pseudo-marriage and industrial child-manufacturing have on children.
Let's talk about this from now until November.