A response to a response on sperm donation

This excerpt from Jenifer Lingeman from 'The Nation' acknowledges that adults have obligations to offspring and children have natural rights to be raised by their biological parents. This is in reference to the recent results from "My Daddy's Name is Donor" Study

What disturbed me the most about Ms. Douglas's response was her dismissal of the voices of the donor-conceived children. I cannot help but see, once again, parallels to the experience of adult adoptees, particularly transracial and transnational, whose multitude of voices have been silenced by need of the affluent, white and Western market for adoptable children, and the huge profits that follow, similar to the big business interests of sperm banks. There is a growing rights movement of donor-conceived children advocating for their rights, most vehemently (and successfully in Sweden and the UK) for an end to anonymous donation. Sadly, their voices are frequently silenced in the United States. It saddens me to see the gay rights and feminist movements in such seeming opposition to the welfare of children. The truth of the matter is that in sperm and egg donation, as well as adoption, children simply have more complex kinship than in the traditional Western nuclear family. Is the right of adults to start families as they choose more important than the right of children and the adults they become to know their genetic heritage should they choose to? I don't think so, nor does the Hague Convention, the United Nations, the open records movement, or the donor-conceived person's movement, or the countries of Great Britain, Sweden and Croatia.

The appropriate response to the Marquardt study is a bigger, more comprehensive study on donor-conceived outcomes, an open ear to the voices of those whom this affects most, the offspring, and an openness to the complexity of heritage that is inherent in this kind of reproduction. Gay- and lesbian-headed families, interracial families, those created by adoption, and families created by assisted reproduction are different from the traditional American family; shouldn't we embrace that truth, study it, understand it, and not suppress and deny it? The rights of adults to start families as they choose is surely not more important than the rights of children to their heritage. There is simply insufficient information to really assess the long-term outcome of egg/sperm donor-conceived persons, but to throw out the largest and most longitudinal study to date because one does not like the conclusions is not the answer. The donor-conceived children, and the adults they become, should be the most powerful voices in this debate, as they have become in other countries. Perhaps you will feature some of their viewpoints soon.