It makes me think about DCN and the value of being part of a community.  At our national meetings we run three types of group for offspring.  First of all a creche for children up to age 11, where they are cared for and entertained by qualified children’s workers; a children’s group for 8 – 12 year olds to explore their feelings around donor conception in a fun, age-appropriate way.  This is run by child psychologists and experienced children’s group leaders.  And finally a group led by a donor conceived adult for those young people of 13 and over who would like to meet together to chat about topics of mutual interest.  For our national meeting on 17th March 2012 the creche is now full with over 70 children, there are 34 8 – 12 year olds in three separate children’s groups and several 13s and over booked, with the deadline for bookings (parents and DC young people only now) still a week or so away.  All these children and young people are growing up within the DCN community.

Our aim, and strong hope is that, like Zannah and her respondent, children growing up in  Network families will share that sense of belonging and that they will experience their situation as one of having something ‘extra’ rather than a missing part.  This does not mean, however, that parents are not open to listening to what their children have to say as they grow older and develop their own feelings and views about their DC origins, as they inevitably will.  Some DC adults are very keen to stress what they call the ‘brain-washing’ that parents give their children about DC.  ’ Zannah and I talked about this yesterday as well.  I wanted to know if she felt she could talk to me about negative aspects of being donor conceived.  She acknowledged that she had been brought up with very positive feelings about her origins, but said that it would have been very odd if her dad and I had not behaved this way.  Why would we speak negatively about it?  How could this attitude possibly have benefited her and her brother, instilling doubts and fears in their minds.  She feels that the open minded culture she has been raised in has given her plenty of opportunities to talk about difficult feelings, but that, for her, they haven’t been there.  This will not necessarily be so in all families.  ’Zannah’s respondent, referred to above, did not learn of her origins until her early teens and then under difficult circumstances.  She has made a long journey to get to where she is now, including painful conversations with both parents.  Some families may go through rough patches, even needing outside help or therapy to reach a more comfortable place and perhaps never able to feel that they have something extra instead of something missing.  But our community will remain and I am very optimistic about it’s benefits for all family members.

If you are a donor conceived person who would like to contribute to ‘Zannah’s survey on identity, please contact me via this blog or on enquiries@dcnetwork.org and I will pass your details on to her.

What are we to make of someone like Trent Arsenault?  And apparently there are many more like him, not only in California but here in the UK too.  Men, advertising on the internet, who are willing to help a woman become pregnant, do not seek the traditional anonymity of the sperm donor, do not want to be paid but are not wanting to be parents either.  Some are in it for the ‘sex without ties’, offering NI (natural insemination) as having a higher success rate (it doesn’t) than artificial insemination.  Some seem to be Darwinian egotists wanting to spread their genes as far and widely as they can.  Others are apparently nice guys just wanting to help out (really!!).

The Donor Sibling Registry, most donor conceived adults and the thinking behind UK legislation are all in favour of limiting the number of offspring from each donor.  Partly for reasons of possible consanguinity, but also because it is just plain weird to have huge numbers of half-siblings whom you couldn’t possibly get to know properly.  And what about donors, how would they be able to give time to children in very large numbers of families?  It makes a mockery of any statement about being willing to be involved in the lives of their offspring.  And what are children to make of the stranger their mother met on-line, who contributed to giving them life, is known to their mother(s) but who isn’t around much and possibly seems a little odd when he is.  What is this relationship, what is he to be called?  Surely not dad.

As we know from recent hearings in the High Court in London, having a known donor is not straightforward.  Misunderstandings are all too common and whilst most situations don’t end up in the Court of Appeal, many cause everyday frictions that cannot be good for the lives of anyone involved, particularly the children.  Yet, some donor conceived adults are crying out for situations where they can know both their donor and their dad (or mums, whichever the case may be).  Known donor arrangements can be good for children.  We have families in DC Network who carefully chose a friend who already had a partner and children to be their donor.  But they worked hard at getting things right beforehand.  Specialist Fertility Law Solicitor Natalie Gamble gives some excellent guidelines for anyone contemplating a known donor on her web site http://www.nataliegambleassociates.co.uk/blog/2012/02/10/how-to-avoid-a-known-donor-dispute/      Essentially, it is all about talk/listen, talk/listen….then listen and talk some more.  Iron out potential problems before you start and have a written agreement, even if this is not actually legally binding.

Meeting someone on the internet has NOTHING to do with the type of relationship you need to have in place before entering into any level of known donor arrangement.     Of course would-be parents have to take responsibility for the decisions they make as well.  There would not be Trent Arsenault’s without those who use his services… but I can’t help hoping the FDA get him and set a precedent towards regulation in a country that is shocking in it’s cavalier attitude to donor assisted reproduction.

The United States has long been acknowledged to be the Wild West of assisted reproduction and donor conception in particular.  States have, or have not, legislated individually in these areas and many clinics are simply in the business for the money.  They care little about donors or recipients as people and even less about the children who are the result of their interventions and the families they are to grow up in.  Many destroy all donor medical records before the child turns 18.  One state is bucking the trend.  Effective since July 22nd 2011 the state of Washington requires any donor of sperm or eggs to provide a medical history and identifying information to fertility clinics.  It also allows donor-conceived people to request this information from clinics once they reach the age of eighteen.  Donors may still veto disclosure of their identifying information but offspring now have guaranteed access to non-identifying medical history.

Some commentators have all but dismissed this legislation as useless because of the veto that donors can apply but in a country that has so far steadfastly resisted regulation of any sort in this area, I think it has to be considered a huge step forward.

In his report Ravitsky very sensibly separates out the two main reasons why donor conceived people want information about their donor.  The first is for medical and genetic inheritance reasons.  The second emphasises broader a interest in donors’ personal information which is sometimes seen by  donor conceived people as being helpful in constructing their identity, thus promoting psychological well-being.  The new law in Washington state only addresses the first of these two.  Ravitsky asks the question, “What do we as a society owe donor-conceived individuals in terms of obtaining access to information about genetic origins” but keeps the tempo low and the waters unmuddied by confining himself to the regulatory changes required to address the medical interests of donor conceived individuals, regardless of whether a human right to know one’s genetic origins in acknowledged.  In doing so he opens himself to criticism from those who would say that it is imperative that donor conceived people are told about their origins and also those who believe that donor conception is inevitably damaging.  Although I would count myself amongst those who advocate openness by parents, I find Ravitsky’s approach refreshing in that it takes one issue at a time.  Do read the full report, it is very worthwhile.

Slow…generally seems to be the mood of the moment.  Slow food (yummy casseroles) and slow (eco-friendly) travel are two examples.  I’m usually rather a fast person.  I never walk slowly, I get very impatient with people who speak slowly or who are slow to catch on, but I do believe that we should not rush change in the area of donor conception.  For some people it seems that supporting and encouraging parents to be open with their children,  pushing for the end of donor anonymity, ending payments for donors and promoting contact between donors and offspring at 18 is not enough.  We should be putting the donor’s name on the birth certificate, making sure that children grow up knowing their donor (or ‘parent’ as some people would have it) from day one or, at the most extreme end of the spectrum, abolishing donor conception altogether.  All at the same time as many people, even in the UK, one of the world leaders in legislative change and open culture, are going abroad to avoid identifiable donors, remain ashamed of their infertility and need for a donor and have no intention of telling their children anything about their conception.

Walter and I have always envisaged the future as being one where donors and recipients will be brought together by some sort of not-for-profit agency, whilst doctors are left to work their scientific spells to bring about a pregnancy.  Donor matching and embryology have always seemed like strange bedfellows to me.  When the day comes that neither men nor women feel less of a person for being infertile and are able to handle knowing their donor from the start (as of course the minority who choose known donors do now) it will be accepted that the donor is part of an extended family network.  But with DC really only very recently out of the closet I don’t see this happening in my lifetime (but I am pretty old now!) and I would have thought it would take at least another couple of generations for the culture surrounding gamete donation to catch up with that of adoption and the openness that exists between adoptive and birth parents.  Not that this is always unproblematic.

DC Network has always followed the raising awareness and education route to change.  This won’t suit some donor conceived adults who long for something faster, more radical.  But the slow way takes more people along with it and given that nothing is  going to stop people finding ways to have children, better to tackle one issue at a time.  Washington is showing other States the way in the US in doing this.

DC adult Olivia Pratten is of course leading the way in Canada in attempting to access medical and identifying information about her donor.  In May last year the Supreme Court of British Columbia made a decision in her favour giving the province 15 months to draft new legislation that will not violate Section 15.1 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The Court also granted a permanent injunction to prohibit the destruction and disposal of the records of gamete donors. The government of BC appealed the decision and Olivia has been back in Court over the last couple of days.  We await the outcome.  Fingers crossed for for my name sake.

Giles Hattersley in the Sunday Times talks to Alison Burt a solicitor with a family law firm that is seeing an increasing number of difficult and upsetting situations occurring with complicated and un-thought out parenting arrangements.  Sam Dick, head of policy at Stonewall advocates that gay and lesbian parents when seeking someone of the opposite sex to help them have a child, have a long ‘dating’ period where they get to know each other very well before deciding to go ahead.  Condou is adamant that everyone must understand to the letter what the term ‘involvement’ means.   All interviewees agree that  ”Until you have a child you have no idea of the intensity of emotions that rise” and that everyone has to be as prepared as they possibly can be to reconsider arrangements and compromise in the interests of the child.  This being something the women in the current case seem very reluctant to do.

In the meantime the lovely Elizabeth Marquardt asks Do Mothers Matter? in this weekend’s edition of The Atlantic.  I hesitate to mention her as each time I criticise this woman armies of her supporters come out of the woodwork to post their strongly held views about what I have to say.  But I can’t let this pass.

In the article Marquardt starts by proposing that not having a mother was, until recently, widely regarded to be a tragedy.  She then goes on to list ways in which children have historically been separated from their mother and how painful this is for mother and child.  And of course no-one would disagree that any forced separation between parent and child where there has been a bond of love and attachment is something to be avoided at all possible cost.  The argument then moves from one where mother and child are separated to that of egg donation and surrogacy where the parents are gay men and two women, neither of them intending to be mothers, helped them to have a child.  This is a new form of family not in the conventional heterosexual mould – yet another way in which what we mean by family is evolving in the modern world – but lesbian couples have been having children together for a long time now and research shows that their children do very well.  No father present there, unless they have chosen to co-parent.

Is there something special about a woman that makes her more likely to be missed than a man in the family?  I don’t think so.  Men cannot breast feed but they can be equally nurturing and supportive of their children, providing warmth and comfort as well as boundaries and boisterous play.  I’m not dismissing the positive roles that both a father and a mother can play in children’s lives but same sex couples are likely to bring a range of qualities to their parenting that fulfil the needs their children have.  Heterosexual parents who are left on their own with children find that they develop the qualities that the other parent used to bring.  Not having a man or a woman in the house does not necessarily mean that children are missing anything.

Marquardt’s underlying position is always that anything other than a heterosexual couple family with children conceived with their own gametes, is inevitably damaging for children.  Donors are viewed as ‘parents’ who have given up their children to be raised by others and non-genetically connected parents are raising ‘other people’s children’.  In her methodologically flawed study My Daddy’s Name is Donor and quoted in the Atlantic article, she shockingly claims that “Compared to their peers raised by biological parents, sperm-donor conceived persons are more likely to struggle with delinquency, addiction and depression.”  Whilst she has every right to her views on the way in which families are changing, Marquardt has no right to make such statements about donor conceived people in general.

To return to the questions raised at the beginning of this post, it is vital that men and women, straight and gay, understand what they are doing when they bring children into the world.  Adult relationships may be evolving but children’s needs for love, nurture and security do not change.  I believe these needs can be met by same sex as well as heterosexual couples, those who are not genetically connected to a child as well as those who are.  Mums and dads (in same or different sex couples) are those people who are there for their children day in and day out.  Donors are important too but in a different way.  They are not parents who have abandoned their children but contributors of a vital ingredient of life.  They deserve thanks, recognition for their gift and (hopefully) their willingness to make a connection with a young person who needs to know more about them.  Mature responsible parents; mature, responsible donors.  Happy children.

I could have done with the train back from Bristol not being 50 minutes late, making it 1am before I was able to climb into my bed back in London, but it was a good trip West yesterday and worth the very long day.  My colleague Chris and I talked with a group of about 12 people, most of whom were planning egg donation. One couple already had a child conceived this way but were frozen with anxiety about beginning to share information with him and others.  I was glad that Chris and I were bringing the experience of sperm donation as there was just one couple present that this situation applied to and they seemed a bit lonely, saying little during the evening.  This ratio very much mirrors our experience at the Network where new members needing egg donation are outnumbering those requiring sperm donation, although in overall numbers, sperm donor families are still in the majority.    On the whole participants at the meeting were very willing to share their experiences and anxieties and if that group represents the people having donor conception treatment in Bristol, then Wendy the counsellor is doing a great job as there was no resistance to openness at all.

One last thing about Bristol.  I can highly recommend the cafe at the Arnolfini art centre on the very picturesque waterfront.  I can’t recommend the art, it was dire, but the shop has some lovely children’s books (I bought two for my grand-daughter) and can’t speak highly enough of the Sicilian eggs (lunch fare) and the coconut cream and lime cake.  Delicious with a mug of Earl Grey tea and a wonderfully warm insulation for the trudge back to the station with my sister in the icy air.   Great day.

This situation almost exactly mirrors that of a lesbian family I recently interviewed for my Mixed Blessings booklet.   An arrangement had been made without signing agreements (although all parties were professionals and should have known better).  Everyone thought they were on the same page but no-one understood or realised prior to conception the powerful feelings that can be aroused in both men and women by the birth of a child.  There is just no legislating for feelings particularly, as in both the current court case and the family in my booklet, the man is around at the time of the birth, holds the baby and attends the christening.  How could he not want more than to be an occasional visitor.  How could it be right for the child not to see him regularly.

Of course written agreements can only state intentions and are not legally binding.  Courts can and do make judgements in the interest of the child that do not reflect the wishes of adults concerned.  But at least signed, written agreements can lay out in cold print what both parties intended and that is a starting point.  But a document can never take feelings into account.  A ‘hands off’ agreement between adults may also be drawn up without realising how a child might feel about a man who is part of his parent’s social circle, is known to have contributed to his creation but who doesn’t seem to want to be a father to him.  Isn’t this going to feel rather dispiriting at least and a rejection at worst?  Surely better that a known donor, where there is no social father, plays an active parenting role, even if the two women are ‘main’ parents.

Not all known donors behave as responsibly as it sounds as if the man in the current case is doing.  In the family I interviewed the man regularly fails to consult with the women about presents he brings to the child, which are often completely inappropriate.  He tried to force the child to call him ‘Daddy’ long before the little boy was ready to do so and has made life very difficult at times for the women.  But they persist because they hope that their son will eventually be pleased that he has his father in his life.

Raising children is one of the most challenging tasks anyone can ever take on.  The feelings on becoming a parent are overwhelming.  It is not surprising that things are going wrong when emotion is not taken into account.  This court case, which no doubt is causing turmoil to the people concerned and their wider families, is a sad failure of adult’s best intentions not taking into account changing feelings and circumstances and the best interests of the child.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9064241/Lesbian-parents-betrayed-by-gay-father-demanding-to-see-his-son.html

I was struck once again today when responding to a post on Fertility Friends forum how people almost always assume that when they tell people – it could be relatives, friends or the child themselves – about donor conception, that this is bad news.  Of course for heterosexual couples and most single women it is not the way they would have chosen to have a family.  For most people, an integral part of loving your partner is wanting to have a child with them.  Finding out that this is not going to be possible is a loss that needs to be mourned like any other.  But once the grieving is done – or well underway anyway – and it is time to think about ways in which it is possible to have a family, then donor conception can become a very positive second choice that does not have to be second best.   And having to think so very hard about having a family can be very good for parents in committing themselves to each other and the future of life together with children.  It mostly weeds out the relationships that weren’t going to stand the test of time anyway…and where parents with donor conceived children do split up both parents tend to remain very closely in touch with their children, whether or not they are genetically connected to them.

So the fact of donor conception is not bad news.  It is joyful news that should be shared with others as such and with a child as simply the way they came into the family.  Children have no preconceptions about DI or egg donation.  Our history is not their history.  They are happy to accept that mummy and daddy needed some help from a kind man or kind woman to help make them.  Questions will certainly come later, but parents who are confident, comfortable and able to listen to children and young people’s feelings without being defensive or overly emotional, are likely to find that bumpy patches can be overcome without long term hurt setting in.

That’s what I’ll be talking about in Bristol.  But first I’m going to have a damn good lunch with my sister!

Openness and ‘telling’ is the reason for DCN existing so we felt we might have something to offer, but we also wondered if this dad would be willing to help us with connections into the world of gay parenting and perhaps to develop some resources.  So this week Nina and I went to meet him at his workplace.  We were all very excited.  He by making contact with an organisation that he felt had similar values to himself and his partner and us by meeting someone who was so clearly a besotted parent and was willing to help us as well.  He told us his story, which of course included egg donation and surrogacy outside of the UK and how his children are just now beginning to understand that they must have grown in someone’s tummy and if it wasn’t in either of their daddy’s tummies, then whose was it.  The two men were wondering if it was right to include all the elements of the children’s stories at the same time or whether to introduce the surrogacy first and then add the egg donor in later.  We all went away to try and think of some appropriate language that could include all elements in a very simple way.  Single women who have had double donation often leave out the egg donor to start with and then find it increasingly difficult to introduce her at a later stage.  The situation is not the same and the reasons for potentially leaving the egg donation to later are different too, but we find it better to include everything from the start so that there is a hook to hang further information on later when children ask questions.  Pete, as I shall call him, bought two of our Telling and Talking booklets and said he would also buy most of the story books from the website so that he and his partner could take ideas from each of them.  In return the two men are going to write one of our Letter Leaflets for us.  These are Letters from experienced parents to people just starting out on the road to parenting in a particular family formation or type of donation and can be downloaded free from our website.  They are very popular and sometimes, as a recent post on our forum testified,  change lives.

In addition Pete is going to put us in touch with some useful organisations and a researcher who has been interviewing gay men about parenthood.  At last DCN can begin to build a part of our organisation where gay dads can feel comfortable and come to for support and information.

I feel particularly pleased about this connection because I know two young men – whom I have known since they were small boys – who have come out as gay in the last couple of years and who have struggled with their sexuality because they want to be dads.  If I can do anything to help make it easier for them to fulfil this need in a way that makes it possible to keep their integrity as gay men, then I will be very happy.

So if you or anyone you know is going to Spain for egg donation and they want to have more control over choosing a donor and to have significant information to help them with this, they need to make their needs known.  Don’t take no for an answer and particularly make sure that any claim that it is against the law in Spain to give more information, is challenged.  Nothing will change until paying customers demand it.

The big problem with Spain, certainly as far as DCN members are concerned, has always been that not only are donors anonymous but they are chosen by clinic staff, rather than recipients themselves, and that very little information is available.  This varies from centre to centre but in many it is just the age of the donor and her blood group. Many will not even given the donor’s nationality or ethnic background.  The clinic promises that they will match physical characteristics between donor and recipient but the number of very beautiful, obviously Spanish looking, children at DCN meetings with typically English looking parents belies this.  It’s not a problem when children are small and parents are being open with their child, but differences in looks may well mean that children have a lot more questions as they get older.  And there is no chance at all as far as I can see of parents or children being able to get information in the future.  Although it is interesting that in the paper that has just come my way, the writer predicts that it will be the children themselves who will eventually demand a change.

Something that has been hard to establish is exactly what Spanish law says about how much information can be given to recipients about donors.  Many clinics hide behind a presumption that local law actually prevents them from being able to give more information.  This allows them to retain significant control, something we know from UK experience that clinics do not give up easily.  But this presumption was challenged when a clinic opened in Barcelona that gave a large amount of information…their lead doctor having trained at the Hammersmith Hospital in London and been influenced by Jennie Hunt, the senior counsellor there who is a fierce advocate of information and contact.  An enquiry by me, and some UK counsellors, to a Spanish psychologist colleague has brought forth a paper that sets out just what the Spanish system can and cannot do.

Firstly, it is clear that it is within Spanish law to give all information about the physical features of a donor to a recipient.  The paper says nothing about ethnic background, reasons for donating, occupation, educational level or values and I have made further enquiries about these aspects.

Secondly, the Spanish seem to have a rather ambiguous relationship to money.  Their Law 14/2006 of May 20th says, “The donation will always be non-profit or commercial.  The financial compensation can be set to only compensate strictly physical discomfort and travel and labour expenses that may arise from the donation and must not entail an economic incentive for this”.  Now this obviously started off in Spanish and may have lost something in translation but the emphasis on ‘no economic incentive’ seems clear.  However, the paper goes on to say that in research carried out in Spain amongst donors, the primary motivation for donating was financial.  So much for the HFEA copying the Spanish model in setting a fee for egg donation that did not amount to an incentive.

But the greatest criticism of the Spanish system is that there is no National Donor Registry and as a result there is no central control over how their information and information relating to recipients is held.  There is also no control over the number of donations a donor may make – the nominal number is six but no-one oversees this.  In addition Spain is in breach of many EU directives relating to the donation, procurement and control of tissues and cells of human origin and technical requirements of traceability and notification and side-effects and certain technical requirements related to the processing, preservation, storage and distribution of human tissues and cells.

 Provision was made in the first Spanish ART Act (1988) and in the current Act (2006) for a National Donor Registry but this has never happened.  Could it be that the commercial interests of all the clinics has proved an irresistible incentive for the government to turn a blind eye to legislation that might be seen to curb the practices of doctors who earn so much foreign currency for the Spanish economy?

My correspondent calls for the immediate establishment of the donor registry which could then link with other registries across Europe in order to establish traceability of gametes and donors.  Without a registry there is very little chance that children, either retrospectively or in the future, will be able to have information that may help them make sense of their background and secure their identity.  Without the demand from those who use – or in the past have used – Spain’s fertility services, what incentive will Spanish clinic owners have to ease their control and enact their law?  If this matters to YOU, please speak up.