tto think it should be illegal to travel abroad for anonymous egg/sperm donation?

No, it isn’t a slippery slope.

On the other hand ‘my child is happy to be alive’ isn’t a useful argument in this case- it isn’t like saying ‘they are happy so they shouldn’t be killed’ because un conceived people don’t exist-conceiving babies doesn’t do them a favour, they literally didn’t exist in any sense before, so they are not sad or harmed by not being conceived.

Parents conceive children because they themselves want children, not for the sake of the non existent child.

If you, or I or any donor conceived child had never been conceived we would all be non the wiser.

I attached in another post a recent research paper showing the negative impacts that are being seen and felt by donor children.

No, I wasn’t talking ‘arguments’. I was talking real world facts about what’s involved in conceiving a child if you need to use a donor egg or sperm. You don’t appear to know much about it, you just seem to be reacting to your friend’s distress. And it seems you want people to collude with your high-pitch of emotion over your friend’s situation, instead of gathering a range of views.

It might be worth you re-reading this when you’re feeling a it less emotional about it if you’re interested in helping your friend deal with her feelings. You can’t go back in time and make her donor give his details. What’s done is done. You could, however, help her come to terms with the situation and make the best of it and move on.

I haven’t. Go and read what I have said.

Then go and have a read of the information posted to the thread on the experiences of some donor conceived people.

There is no advantage to anonymous donation for the child but there is the potential for harm to them.

I'm the adult child of an anonymous sperm donor (conceived in the uk before anonymity was lifted).
I am honestly not that bothered. I have joined 23 and me out of interest but no close relatives showed up. If I were ever to meet him I would shake his hand and thank him for the tadpole. He gave me life! What a beautiful gift! But I don't need or expect a relationship from him. I suppose the expectation of that from donor conceived people is something which may put potential donors off.

But why do people think they have changed the rules re anonymity, not for shits and giggles.

In the old days adoption was all about the couples who wanted to be parents, no consideration for birth parent or child. Now it is all about the child, quite rightly.

It is much more understood that many (not all) children either via adoption or egg/sperm donation want to be able to trace their genetic link. And that should be their right to choose, not their eventual parents. I also the ONS scenarios, the deadbeat dads having ever more children to many women, complicated blended families all need to look at themselves and think is this what is best for eventual children

And you also don't go round declaring it is horrifying and suggesting parents have made choices that will definitely damage their child based on an anecdotal experience

Another issue re: donor conceived is you upload to Ancestry etc to find you have 20 plus half siblings & counting. Apparently now can’t happen. It can potentially.

There's diversity of human experience. I'm an anonymous donor conceived child and I'm perfectly fine and couldn't give two hoots about spending my time tracing my biological father.
I'm sorry your friend is so devastated, but I think it's wrong to equate one person's anecdotal experience with such sweeping statements about how it is horrifying, especially when there are so many other factors at play here (including her upbringing and how it was dealt with as a KEY factor and one that, if done wrongly, can be far more damaging to a child than not knowing your biological parent, and I'm sorry your friend clearly has trauma from how this was dealt with for her). I don't want to devalue your friend's experience, it's valid, but it is hers and personal, so please don't devalue mine by lumping us all in together. My parents are amazing parents, thank you.

I gave the example of My Sister’s Keeper. It could be that the embryos selected to be implanted could be filtered with a view to be a kidney or bone marrow donor. Anyway, that’s not the point.

I am refuting the “If I didn’t do this morally dubious thing, this person wouldn’t exist, therefore the morally dubious thing is actually justified by this person’s existence” argument.

DH and I went as far as we could trying to have our own baby. Donor gametes/surrogacy were out of the question for us,not only because we knew it wasn’t just about us and our wanting a child, but about that potential child too, but because I feel there is a dark exploitative side to egg donation, especially abroad, but also in this country where women are offered cheaper IVF in return for sharing their eggs and they could be in a position where another woman has become pregnant with their eggs and they did not get pregnant themselves, and I wanted no part of it. I agree with you OP.

It’s also important to remember that not every child who is donor conceived will react the same way. I know two. One colleague who was conceived with donor sperm due to male factor infertility. Her Dad who has raised her for nearly 20 years is her father as far as she’s concerned and she views the donation as a necessary medical procedure to help get her to her family. The other is a friend of my brothers raised by a single mother by choice. He’s of the opinion that his mum and other relatives are his family and even though he is 21 and was UK conceived and so presumably can trace his donor he has no interest in doing so.

I also know two couples who have adopted, one adopted child is now 17 and has no interest in tracing birth family. The other is only 3 so they may feel differently when older. But not everyone has an automatic pull towards DNA, many people are content with the family they have.

We are talking arguments here.

I am refuting the ‘If we didn’t take this course of action, this person wouldn’t be alive’ argument.

If you believe it is a valid argument, then the same could be said of creating offspring by rape, or experimenting on embryos to foster certain traits, all sorts of things.

The ‘They wouldn’t be alive if we didn’t do this” is a shit one that morally justifies nothing.

This is a complete fabrication. If the mother is an Israeli citizens their children are Israeli too whether or not they are Jewish. 30% of all Israelis are not ethnically Jewish and the majority of Israelis are not halachically jewish (ie jewish according to orthodox jewish law). There is absolutely no requirement at all for children of Israeli citizens to be Jewish to be Israeli. The majority are not.

Further, most rabbis would treat the mother of a child born via egg donation as Jewish if the child was Jewish. So this is an antisemitic fabrication

No that’s not where that argument leads unless you leap to the most illogical extreme.

Putting on my science hat regarding your dystopia- to “genetically engineer children” to be “organ donors” then logically you’d clone the person who needed the organ so you’d have a perfect match yes? You wouldn’t go through all the hassle of genetically engineering children for organ donation and it not be about ensuring they were a perfect match. So you’d be cloning. Obviously. And if you create a child for purpose of harvesting their organs, then they would have to legally be slaves- property with no rights.

What? Not comparable at all. It’s a massive, massive stretch you’re making.

Nobody who’s conceived by donor has been conceived because they’ve been genetically engineered to provide body parts. That’s absurd. People use fertility treatments because they’re desperate for a child.

As others have told you upthread, fertility treatments in the Uk are disproportionately expensive compared to other European countries and there’s a serious lack of donors, precisely because of the lack of anonymity. For many, travelling to Europe and using donor sperm or egg will be the only way they can have a child. If you don’t get that because it’s outside of your experience I would suggest you think yourself lucky.

But how would the authorities know you are travelling abroad for donor eggs? Just don't tell them!!

Well it’s where the “They wouldn’t be alive otherwise” argument leads. Also, no one mentioned clones or slaves. Have you seen the film ‘My Sister’s Keeper’?

Anonymous gamete donation is legal in the uk. Any man can donate his sperm informally.

They absolutely do know it is harmful. Many live in the UK and travel abroad to do it. They are aware of the pain, and physical consequences. Everyone in the Western world at least knows that cutting off someone's genitals with no anaesthetic, purely to control their sexuality is harmful.

Wow that has to be the most illogical extreme ever.
Not sharing information about genetic heritage (which you can get for £39 via. DNA test on your own) is in no way a slippery slope to cloning human slaves that we then kill & harvest their organs from.

That argument isn’t justified.

Otherwise you could justify genetically engineering children to be organ donors or manufactured for other such inhumane purposes and say “You can’t complain, you should be grateful, if we didn’t create you, you wouldn’t exist”.

This

I know a sports coach whose biological dc and partner's dc play for the same team.

When the game ends the coach's partner's dc leaves with him and goes home with him whereas the biological dc goes home with their other mum.

I always wonder if the biological child wonders why/how they spend less time with their dad than the other child who is unrelated.

Have you considered that some of these children might not exist at all if there were no anonymous donation? I’m not sure ‘betrayed’ is the right concept if that was the alternative.

Why is it so horrific?