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

My very loved 3 donor egg conceived children would disagree! Happy families come in a shapes and sizes.
I sincerely hope u never experience the frustration of infertility.

The comparison with fgm is ridiculous and offensive.

I don’t agree with anonymous donation, and can completely understand how it could be incredibly difficult for the child to make peace with. However I would worry about the potential for criminalising innocent women. Look at places where abortion is illegal. Women are frequently arrested following miscarriages, that someone suspects could have actually being an abortion (often for no real reason). Would we not be risking women who conceive babies around the time of visiting these countries potentially being accused of a crime? Obviously odds are this wouldn’t happen very frequently, but history tells us women have often be persecuted unjustly.

Whether you love your child isn’t in question- the question is why you didn’t want him to have the option to trace his biological parent when he is old enough?

I wonder if you hadn't mentioned fgm, if you'd be getting different answers, op.

It might not bother you, but you aren’t everyone. Different people have different feelings about their family and history- we don’t legislate for or against any practice based on what 1, 2 or even 100 people think.

What a ridiculous comparison. And, inaccurate too. I have a DE conceived child (from Spain where donation is anonymous). I am forever grateful for my donor- she will have been paid expenses but nothing more. I am not my child's genetic parent but I AM his biological parent,. I grew him in my uterus, gave birth to him and breast fed him. I could not love or cherish him any more if I tried. When he is old enough we will explain how we had help to create him and we will do it in an appropriate way.

Of course it isn’t good to choose to do those things.

But the question is the law. How on earth can you legislate against women having a glass of wine?

Does a woman’s body become the jurisdiction of the state the minute she conceives?

Did I really just read that question?
How can you possibly ask that?

Maybe you have a point but I’m really not sure. All the media
stories are about long lost reunions but l know quite a few people personally who aren’t bothered. And the one who did trace her birth mother it was a disaster.

There can be a freedom in not knowing. My birth mother did contact me and I just always felt guilty that I couldn’t be her child because I couldn’t be a child she had raised.

@PurpleDreamCatcher I think the reality of those who wish a baby and those who act intentionally would shock you. Having worked, albeit now retired, in a family court environment for many years, I have lost count of the number of "planned" children I have come across who will never know their father.

Albeit not the norm, a female couple with eight children, four each. As one example.

I don’t think it is a great thing to do wrt your child. For the reasons and experiences described here, it isn’t something I would choose to do.

But that doesn’t mean it is something we could or should legislate against.

I don’t think many step family situations are psychologically or emotionally good for children. If I was a Dad I wouldn’t go and start a new family with children I lived with full time while my first children looked on on their Wednesday evening and EOW. But how could you (or should you? ) legislate against that?

Yes, I agree with you, and can’t believe so many don’t.
I think there are going to be so many people (the current children) with so much anger and so many issues about this in the next 20-30 years.

The clinics abroad who facilitate this are simply there to make money, they don’t care about the people who it will affect.

Now you're just making up scenarios in your head to be angry about.

Users of anonymous donors have no guarantee their child will grow up without the likely curiosity, longing, bewilderment and frustration.

From personal experience of a family member who has no idea who their biological father is, I think deliberately setting out to keep this knowledge from a person is cruel. I think people who want a baby and use anonymous eggs or sperm, or a surrogate forget that one day, that child will grow up and start asking questions.

You’re storing up problems for the future of something that will cause psychological harm to your child. Even children adopted at birth and go to a happy home are more at risk of developing psychological issues. God know what the future holds when the generation of donor/surrogate babies grow up.

I don’t get why people struggle to tell the difference.

Just because some women might smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and take heroin and not realise they are pregnant, doesn’t make it okay to chose to smoke, drink and shoot up when you are pregnant.

You could say the outcome is the same, but a) that’s a low fucking bar to set for basic parental standards and b) there’s a gulf between the culpability for the harm caused to the child by the mother.

Well I don’t know who my biological father and it doesn’t bother me. I would be mildly curious but really more concerned not to open a can of worms. I don’t feel my rights have been denied. I think FGM is another thing entirely and don’t think it’s helpful to link them in this spurious way.

The outcome is not the same.

One involves recognising your mother can be stupid and careless, the other involves recognising your mother went to lengths to conspire with a seedy industry, illegal in our own country, to betray you before you were born. The psychological impact of these two things are entirely different outcomes.

Do you think it should be illegal for a woman to give birth to a child born from a ONS? Same outcome for the child surely?

Ah fair enough, I can see it would be on your mind.

Your friend's biological father was a sperm donor?

But what has got you so agitated about it that you are trying to stir up outrage by linking it with a completely separate issue?

I always wonder where people are coming from when they are foaming at the mouth. And if it is personal, then you can make allowance. But if it is not personal, and the person can't really explain why this specific issue has made them so furious, then I wonder if they just have personal anger that needs an outlet.

It will be possible to identify most donors via AncestryDNA & lengthy detective work. No one is anonymous any more.

@Iaminthefly does it not worry you that your DC won't know their genetic link? Do you think there is a good reason that anonymous donation is no longer allowed in this country?

There are a lot of pretty shit things that happen accidentally, and trying to make the best of them is not a green light for people to set out to do shit things deliberately = “Look over there, they did it, so I’m allowed too”.