FAMILY PRESERVATION not Adoption Separaration

NY Times Op Ed, "The Birds and the Bees (via the Fertility Clinic)" reports on a fascinating study from the Institute for American Values, based on a survey of younger adults, ages 18 to 45, who were conceived through sperm donation.

Highlights:

• Sperm donations generate between 30,000 and 60,000 conceptions every year, and roughly 6,000 children are conceived through egg donation annually as well. About a million American adults, if not more, are the biological children of sperm donors.
• Americans conceived through sperm donation are; 
• much more likely than their peers to say that “every person has a right to a child” and to support policies that encourage sperm and egg donations.
•  more likely to oppose payments for sperm and eggs than most Americans and to say that “it is wrong to deliberately conceive a fatherless/motherless child.”
• more likely to feel alienated from their immediate family than either biological or adopted children. 
• twice as likely as adoptees to report envying peers who knew their biological parents, twice as likely to worry that their parents “might have lied to me about important matters” and three times as likely to report feeling “confused about who is a member of my family and who is not.”
AsRobert Wilson Harrington McCullough said on Facebook: "We adoptees are only the tip of the ethical iceberg - there are generations coming who will make us look lucky." However, what I take exception to in the oped is the misperception that "If you want to procure sperm or eggs, the process is completely different [from adoption]. You can shop for gametes the way you’d go shopping for a house or a car..." Ross Douthat needs a wake up call about adoption today: have money = get kid! Kid R 4 Sale...and priced by age, skin color and health...