Third Party Reproduction and Adoption

Third party reproduction involves the use of sperm, egg or womb of a "third party" to the person or couple attempting to become parents of a child and creates a child who may not be related to one or both parents.

Dawn Davenport, director of Creating a Family, who hosts a webcast radio program on "infertility and adoption" describes adoption as "moving up the treatment ladder" of infertility treatment. Really? Is that how WE think of adoption? Is that the intent of adoption? Is it really all about infertility?

The hottest topic today within this "third party" realm is embryo or gamete adoption.

Karen Roeb, Clinical Administrator of Fertility Miracles, a division of the American Fertility Institute, is quoted on MomLogic.com 9/8/09 as saying that "snowflake" embryo adoption is "a little easier than adopting a child. Psychologically it's almost the same. You still get to experience the birth. When a donor donates, she gives up all legal rights to any children that are produced -- even the egg. She's not entitled to the child or the embryo."

Just two days prior, on Sept 6, a blog post entitled, "Is Embryo Adoption Adoption?" references a Social Science Research Network article entitled, "Embryo Exchanges and Adoption Tax Credits."

I encourage you to listen to Dawn's webcast interview with Adam Pertman, shortly after EBDAI published the study titled “Old Lessons for a New World: Applying Adoption Research” and Experience to Assisted Reproductive Technology” and Marna Gatlin, founder and Director of the nonprofit, Parents Via Egg Donation.

All three parties involved in the webcast agreed that children must be told how they were created - yet sadly they say that most "recipient" parents do not want to or will not tell their child. However, all of these sources missed totally in comparing these methods of OBTAINING a child, the sealing of a child's original and true birth certificate.

None of these sources mention what I see as the difference between the two:

“Gamete adoptees” ARE in fact born to their “adopter” – so that complicates everything in terms of calling them adopted. The “gamete adoptee” - and correct me please if I am wrong - does not have original identity that gets erases when they are adopted.

To make laws requiring people to inform their adopted embryo kids the truth is impossible to enforce, just like it is impossible to enforce telling any child if sperm or egg were purchased and thus he is not biologically connected to one or both of the parents who raised him. No more than you can force anyone who cheats on their spouse and gets pregnant to reveal the truth of their father.

In regular adoption the situation is quite different. Laws can and should be changed to allow equal access to the true record of one's birth which exist.

The child of DI or embryo adoption - a “gamete adoptee” - has no original birth certificate to access and thus could only find the truth if his parents choose to tell him or through medical records of their mother, which are protected by HIPAA law.