{"id":312,"date":"2025-01-19T20:31:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T20:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ideas.design-preview.link\/?p=312"},"modified":"2025-01-19T20:54:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T20:54:25","slug":"book-review-of-who-am-i-experiences-of-donor-conception-with-foreword-and-afterword-by-alexina-mcwhinnie-idreos-education-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/19\/book-review-of-who-am-i-experiences-of-donor-conception-with-foreword-and-afterword-by-alexina-mcwhinnie-idreos-education-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review of\u00a0Who Am I? Experiences of Donor Conception\u00a0with Foreword and Afterword by Alexina McWhinnie; Idreos Education Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Published in Culture Wars <\/em>January 2009<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Review by Rosemary Fielding

One evening about a decade ago, I connected with my father\u2019s side of the family in a profoundly beneficial way.\u00a0 I was greatly encouraged by realizing the connection between myself and my late father\u2019s side of the family.\u00a0 I realized that my father and I were alike in many important areas of my life.\u00a0 At that particular moment I greatly felt encouraged knowing that I had my father and his kin standing behind me, so to speak.
In the brave new world of the 21st century, there are children and adults who are barred by laws and social contracts from ever having the consolation and affirmation that I needed and received that evening.\u00a0 The children who are cut off from one or both sides of their family because of\u00a0in vitro\u00a0<\/em>fertilization (IVF), donor insemination (DI), cloning or other genetic engineering live in a kind of constant trauma.\u00a0 \u00a0My experiences provide a context from which I can understand their stories, but any identity crises I may have weathered are relatively minor. \u00a0The scale and quality of the disorder that they must deal with is vast and unnatural. \u00a0Their emotional tremors are earth shattering.
\u00a0Who Am I? Experiences of Donor Conception<\/em>\u00a0recounts the stories and the pleas of the offspring of donor insemination.\u00a0 The stories of the three women who were born from the donated sperm of an anonymous father share the same theme\u2014a theme of anguish and dread. The women have lived with a secret that has shattered any question of a secure identity or \u201cfeeling right\u201d in the world.\u00a0 Even when the secret is revealed, one side of them remains in inaccessible darkness\u2014their father\u2019s side. They cannot gain access to his life and his being that is the very fabric of their identity (as I had the comfort of doing).\u00a0 His absence\u2014total and unexplained– is terrible, in every meaning of the word. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Their plea is simple. The experiments that brought them into existence should not be allowed to happen.\u00a0 Stop them. Or if society cannot agree to do that, then at least tell the offspring of DI that they were conceived through DI;\u00a0 and tell them the identity of the man who \u201cprovided a woman gynecologist with a sample of his most intimate bodily fluids in full knowledge that his masturbatory activities could result in the birth of a child, his child, who would be brought up by strangers.\u201d These words are written by one child of one such man. Her description of her father and her conception leaves no doubt as to the repugnance she feels.
The life histories in\u00a0Who Am I<\/em>\u00a0come from the \u201cfirst generation of donor-conceived people, now in their 30\u2019s, 40\u2019s and 50s.\u201d\u00a0 The donor-insemination took place in England.\u00a0 According to Christine Whipp, one of the contributors, an estimated 12,000 donor-conceived adults were born in the U.K. prior to 1991.\u00a0 Only a small minority are ever informed \u201cof this unenviable truth about themselves.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0To understand the implications of this, one must understand what Joanna Rose, another contributor, now knows about herself.\u00a0 \u201cOne of the potential fathers from the clinic at 52 Harley Street, Dr. Beeney, tells me that the students he knows of, those involved at the time and place of my conception, had tried to \u2018corner the market.\u2019 His honesty and information are refreshing\u2014but yet he tells me that this handful referred to the clinics as the \u2018wank bank.\u2019 The young students had \u2018cornered the markets\u2019 of three clinics in the vicinity, and as a now respected and qualified doctor, he estimates that he, and each of his friends, have between one and three hundred children.\u201d\u00a0 These women live knowing they have potentially hundreds of siblings, some of them perhaps living, unknown to them, down the street.
Considering that Joanna Rose was conceived around 1975,\u00a0 it is entirely likely that a young man of that time \u201cmade the mistake of treating his reproductive material as on par with blood to be donated\u2014the more the merrier.\u201d (5) After all, this was well into the second decade of the sexual revolution, and acting like \u201cliving machines\u201d had become standard procedure in the sexual lives of the benighted youth who harvested the fruits of that revolution.\u00a0 I do, however, find it somewhat astonishing that a medical doctor\u2014a woman gynecologist\u2014who performed many of the DI\u2019s could do so without foreseeing the consequences of a man fathering\u2014anonymously\u2014one to three hundred children. I also find it chilling.
The doctors who performed these procedures of artificial insemination are representative of a group\u2014the \u201cexperts.\u201d\u00a0 Their decisions, which are laid bare in these books as being phenomenally bad and bearing tragic fruits for both the individual and the society, are representative of the decisions that our \u201cexperts\u201d still make. The \u201cknowledgeable\u201d elite\u2014the best educated from the most prestigious universities holding the most prestigious positions\u2014are making the same kind of phenomenally stupid decisions that violate the most fundamental truths of the natural law. We all know what these decisions concern in 2008\u2014homosexuality, whether in questions of marriage or adoption or any other issue the homosexual collective has decided to move on; divorce laws, abortion laws, artificial conception, experimenting on embryos, harvesting of embryonic parts, separation of infants and mothers, the destruction of childhood innocence, the creation of sexually active children, cloning, women in combat, perpetual warfare and on and on. \u00a0Their decisions will continue to form whole new groups of wounded, disordered, mentally ill, or traumatized human beings; and to form societies that are becoming so influenced by this disorder that they barely function as societies. And then these same stupid, well-educated experts will wonder \u201cwhy?\u201d\u2014about such things as the increase in childhood depression and other social pathologies\u2014and never be able to put their finger on one valid reason \u201cwhy?\u201d because that reason would deny the validity their own wonderful ideas that they were allowed to put into practice in one continuous orgy of experimentation.
Who Am I?<\/em>\u00a0reveals the stupidity in full light.\u00a0 It is a powerful and convincing argument that we had better not continue to go down this path into the gathering darkness of the total destruction of the natural order.\u00a0 Whether the \u201cexpert\u201d and \u201cknowledgeable\u201d elite will listen, however, is questionable.\u00a0 The contributors are fighting an uphill battle in convincing the experts and their large, well-paid staffs that their experiments are failing and that the fertility industry needs to re-evaluate its ideas, if not deny them altogether.
This uphill battle focuses on one very intimate conflict\u2014that between the infertile couples demanding children and the children that these same infertile couples \u201ccommission\u201d into existence. \u201c[T]he current issue emphasis is not on the outcome but on the plight of infertile adults. Conspicuous by their absence in the debate are the children created by these techniques,\u201d writes Dr. Alexina McWhinnie in the \u201cForeword.\u201d\u00a0 (Dr. McWhinnie is the only one of the four contributors to the book who is not a donor-conceived person, but is the \u201cauthor of numerous papers on social and psychological issues in IVF and DI families.\u201d)
\u201cWhat follows,\u201d she writes, \u201cis an exploration of how these children fare, in particular those conceived from donor insemination. What are the consequences for them in the short and long term? \u00a0\u00a0Are there psychological, emotional and ethical issues for them resulting from their being created through a clinical procedure: insemination of a fertile woman with the sperm of an unknown man, a stranger to her, to her partner and of course to the child?
\u201cMany argue that to be wanted and loved will be enough to make a happy child result. Is such an argument valid? Only those who have donor conception first-hand really know.\u00a0 That is why this publication is of such crucial importance.\u201d
Joanna Rose pinpoints this conflict in her account. \u00a0The infertile couples receive preferential treatment; the donor-conceived (DC) persons are not treated with equal respect. \u201cTo place the pain of infertility, rather than the interests of the child, as paramount is a retrograde social step,\u201d she writes. Those who advocate donor conception because of sympathy for infertile couples but ignore the loss and grief of the offspring are either \u201cblind to their own hypocrisy or happy to endorse the creation of a type of underclass to serve the utility and desires of others.\u201d\u00a0
Christine Whipp writes that \u201cwe all thought slavery had died out in the days of William Wilberforce, but in the twenty-first century we are allowing proto-people to be swapped, bartered, shipped across international boundaries, experimented upon, defrosted and sold like fashionable consumer commodities. I firmly believe that one day, but perhaps not in my life-time, society will look back, as I do now, at the current explosion in \u2018reproductive choices\u2019 with disgust and disbelief, and wonder how anyone could have deluded themselves that assisted reproductive technology was morally justified, within a supposedly civilized society.\u201d
These accounts give expression to the stories of the \u201cguinea pigs.\u201d \u00a0\u201cI am telling you,\u201d writes Rose, \u201cof the results of the experiment on me.\u201d The feeling of being something like a non-person, such as a slave feels\u2014a feeling engendered because their own situation and experience was never taken into account\u2014resounds through all three of the accounts. \u00a0\u00a0These are persons who know they were \u201c\u2019produced\u2019\u201d and who are told \u201cthey should be grateful to be alive, with the suggestion that they should have minimal regard for their own genetic continuity.\u201d\u00a0 (\u2018Genetic continuity\u2019 means that the mother, father and the children in one family share the same genetic material.)\u00a0 Social engineers who regard human nature as malleable and unfixed\u2014the so-called \u201cexperts\u201d\u2014have experimented on yet another group of non-consenting human beings. The desire to have \u201cgenetic continuity\u201d is just one more \u201cmalleable regard, to be controlled and directed by others.\u201d \u201cI know personally what it is like to be experimented on, and those involved got it wrong,\u201d writes Rose.
Christine Whipp writes that the facts of this project are \u201chideously opposed\u201d to her own beliefs.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cI could not understand,\u201d writes Whipp, \u201chow the pioneers of Artificial Insemination by Donor had thought it possible to translate the breeding principles of animal husbandry into the more complex arena of human relationships and \u2018family building.\u2019 How could they justify something which seemed so morally wrong?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0
Obviously the controlling elite and social engineers don\u2019t take moral \u00a0beliefs into account.\u00a0 They \u201ccommissioned\u201d Whipp\u2019s existence because they were sure she, like all humans, is infinitely malleable in every way, including in her beliefs. For them, there is no such thing as human nature. Their experiments are now speaking\u2014and they are using the word \u201cshould,\u201d which means they do have moral beliefs and they are not infinitely malleable. \u201cInstitutions should never promote and facilitate [the fracturing of genetic kinship] as a means to other people\u2019s ends,\u201d writes Rose.\u00a0
The elite group of social engineers do have a \u201creligion.\u201d It says that the ends justify the means. They will use any means to reach their end. Rose writes that \u201cdonor conception has been introduced first by stealth, in the face of public opposition, as a secret practice, and then uncloaked itself and demanded acceptance on the basis that it existed and is expected by some.\u201d\u00a0 It is truly amazing to behold the number of times the great social engineering projects of our age have been introduced and instituted in exactly the same manner, and still the majority of the socially engineered public continues to fall for the next project. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As to how many more times it will happen again, \u201cthe answer, my friend, is blowin\u2019 in the wind\u201d (Bob Dylan).
As in all social engineering experiments of our times, the end result is different for those who find out that they are the victims of experiments and those who do not. For those who don\u2019t find out, their victimhood continues.\u00a0 For those who do find out, they must face the fact that they have suffered a great injustice which has profoundly violated and harmed their very being.\u00a0 The \u201cdouble standard\u201d \u00a0that judges that the needs of the\u00a0 infertile couple are \u201cparamount\u201d and the needs of the DC person are merely \u201ctaken into account\u201d (at the very most) is the fundamental injustice that the contributors bring to light from this great social experiment.\u00a0 \u201cAssisted reproduction actually creates father-or motherless children,\u201d writes Louise Jamison about this injustice.\u00a0 It makes \u201c a child whose existence depends on its being deprived of a relationship with a natural parent,\u201d and it does so without that child\u2019s consent and at the demand of other persons who will not suffer the consequences that the meeting of their demand has caused.
The conflict between the infertile couple\u2019s needs and the DC person\u2019s needs arises because the DC person suffers greatly from the means of his or her conception. \u00a0Obviously, this suffering and fracturing of identity is a fundamental argument that the experiment in DI has failed. The three contributors are eloquent and compelling in describing this suffering.\u00a0 Joanna Rose says the DC person suffers from \u201cgenetic bewilderment.\u201d\u00a0 This means that they know they are different from everyone else, and therefore their lives are not simple, even in childhood, but more complex\u2014bewildering\u2014than those of natural families.\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0\u201cIt is hard to say, or be in any way precise about the age at which I began to feel that something unseen and unspoken was pervading my life,\u201d writes Whipp,\u00a0 \u201cjust as it is simply impossible to describe the tense aura of \u2018something-is-going-to-happen\u2019 or to articulate the feeling of separatedness I endured as a child; one which to some extent I still do to this day.\u201d
She gives a very common sense explanation for some of this feeling, one which the social engineers, with all their degrees, simply missed: \u201cNo wonder my traits and interests did not mesh with those of my mother, for while her blood group may have been compatible with that of the donor, I suspect that their personalities and values would have been very different.\u00a0 In real life my parents would probably never had (sic) moved in the same circles, let alone had anything resembling a relationship, so in turn, some of my inherited characteristics are a conflicting, unruly mish-mash\u2026With so much of my personality diametrically opposed to itself, and having been deprived of the influence of those who exhibited the opposing traits, there was little doubt in my mind that I grew to be only half the person I might have been.\u201d
Louise Jamieson writes that she could not understand \u201cwhy I had not inherited any of [her father\u2019s] strengths or abilities. There seemed to be only one answer: I was a useless person\u2026It seems likely\u2026that the lack of a genetic link increases the likelihood of parent\/child dissonance\u2026I think it was difficult for my parents to even see great chunks of my personality, as they did not know what they were looking for\u2026I suspect I pushed myself into exaggerated identification with my mother, as the one parent in whom I could see myself reflected. Yet parts of me are derived from the black void of my unknown biological father.\u201d
Jamieson writes that \u201call my life, I had felt as if I was standing on a false floor and could not get to the real stuff underneath. It was like floating a few feet above the ground with no place to stand.\u201d
\u201cWith no central government records until 1991,\u201d writes Whipp, \u201cit has been impossible for empirical and longitudinal studies to be carried out into the long-term outcomes for all parties concerned.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Whipp says that \u201can estimated 90% of heterosexual commissioning couples are still hiding the truth from their children and wider society.\u201d\u00a0 This kind of secrecy means that \u201cobjective studies remain practically impossible.\u201d\u00a0
Somewhat more subjective analyses, however, confirm that \u201cwhile we would probably be seen by our respective peer groups as \u2018ordinary, normal people,\u2019 we admit in private to numerous problematic areas of our lives.\u201d\u00a0 Whipp continues: \u201cMy own feeling is that there may be a significant proliferation of parental mental illness, difficult maternal and social father relationships, general family dysfunction, and divorce.\u201d \u00a0(Support groups and internet sites now bring DC persons together.)
Who Am I?<\/em>\u00a0recounts the lives, \u00a0perceptions, feelings, and experiences of the contributors. \u00a0It also answers many other questions in a more objective format in the \u201cAfterword.\u201d The answer, for instance, to the all-important question \u201cHow far are the life histories of the writers typical of donor conception outcome?\u201d is that there is \u201cconfirmatory evidence\u201d that the\u00a0 three histories\u00a0 are typical of the outcomes of the DC-person.\u00a0 That evidence is summarized.
A person with a realistic knowledge of human nature would be not be surprised at the fact that something so unnatural as DI brings a host of problems into the lives of human beings and into a given society. The Catholic Church has always taught that human nature can be largely understood by simply using one\u2019s \u201ccommon sense\u201d\u2014a sense that all humans possess.\u00a0 Even without the benefit of experimentation, the tragic features of DI would be apparent to anyone with common sense.\u00a0 The Roman Catholic Church, which believes in common sense as a fixed element of human nature, and therefore uses common sense, has always forbidden this kind of biological experimentation. But the social engineers who conduct these experiments and create new victims don\u2019t believe in common sense any more than they believe in natural law.\u00a0 Therefore, they ignore it, and unleash their theories instead. \u00a0And they reap disaster after disaster. And when confronted with disaster, they overlook it and create their own reality with their own language. \u201cI go to conferences,\u201d writes Rose, \u201cand hear others refer to the use of donor gametes as a \u2018medical treatment\u2019 or \u2018infertility intervention,\u2019 with the idea they will be \u2018building\u2019 a \u2018normal\u2019 family that then \u2018gets on with life.\u2019 The speaker frequently asserts that families come in different shapes and sizes\u2014all of which must (apparently) be intentionally created and accepted. The simplicity and convenience of this gloss, created and projected from heartfelt aspirations, is familiar to me.\u201d
Who Am I?<\/em>\u00a0 gives ample evidence of what happens when commons sense and the natural law are rejected.\u00a0 We have yet another failed experiment repackaged as a successful\u00a0fait accompli<\/em>.\u00a0Who Am I?\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0gives lie to that so-called success.\u00a0 At least the victims of this experiment, unlike those of abortion, have been allowed the partial justice of telling the modern world just how bad a failed social experiment feels. \u00a0I hope that they succeed in changing minds and changing current practices.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 Rosemary Fielding, 2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Published in Culture Wars January 2009 Review by Rosemary Fielding One evening about a decade ago, I connected with my father\u2019s side of the family in a profoundly beneficial way.\u00a0 I was greatly encouraged by realizing the connection between myself and my late father\u2019s side of the family.\u00a0 I realized that my father and I were alike… Read More »Book review of\u00a0Who Am I? Experiences of Donor Conception\u00a0with Foreword and Afterword by Alexina McWhinnie; Idreos Education Trust<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}