Zannah

I wanna talk about how deep and complex and difficult and slow figuring out our feelings can be about being conceived this way. I wanna say that I don’t agree with the kind of assessments and percentage type questionnaires that have potential parents going ‘see it’s ok because the HFEA website states that statistically donor conceived people are happy and well adjusted’. I want to say that I think these feelings change vastly sometimes throughout peoples lives. Sometimes not, sure, but I don’t think it’s ever as easy as ticking a box that says ‘yes this either does or doesn’t negatively affect me’, etc.

The way that you were conceived lives in the deepest part of your consciousness, somewhere that is not at all easy to access. For me it honestly took taking psychedelics at 25 to be able to unearth some of my true feelings (I was told from a very young age) .

I also very much feel like anyone under the age of 25, dare I say even 35 cannot claim to really know how they feel about being donor conceived. I think you need a certain amount of life experience and time to really know yourself full stop let alone how you truly feel about such a deep subject. And I find it’s often DC adults of around those ages that are enlisted at those conferences parents come to, to validate their reasons for having a child that way. The ones that are positioned as examples of ‘well adjusted adults’ so that the parents can feel ok about using DC. I was one of them once upon a time so I know.

Parents are so desperate to hear ‘I turned out fine’ from DC adults so that they can go ahead with this form of conception. But it’s just not and never that simple. And for me, as a nearly 40 year old, who finally found her donor/biological father at age 36, who was ‘The’ poster child for DC, who has been thinking about my feelings on this since the moment I could think, conclude that it is simply fundamentally ethically wrong to conceive children this way (Unless the donor agrees to be a part of that child’s life always/there’s no anonymity ever). I just don’t think we can ever get around the fact that consciously disconnecting your child from their biological family is ok.

I am profoundly changed and affected as a person from meeting my biological father, and even after 3 years of knowing him now I am still unravelling the depth of what it means to know him, to see pictures of my biological grandmother whose face resembles mine. It’s the most naturally moving and meaningful thing I can think of, to be connected and to know your relatives and ancestors. We just can’t ever justify taking that connection away from our child, a parent cannot decide that that won’t be painful for them whether that’s even something they consciously feel or not. It’s as ancient as time, to know one’s ancestors.

What a weird time and cultural epoch we currently live in where we can be removed from them in the name of being wanted. What about being loved? What about really doing what was best for us and not just for them. I feel lonely in my experience processing all of this. The family I was raised with can’t understand, it makes my dad uncomfortable to speak of my bio dad. It’s my own experience to have that no one else understands other than other Donor Conceived People (DCP).