Stop keeping genes secret from kids

In this age of getting whatever you want and commissioning babies to be born, everyone gets what they want — except the kids.

Thanks to technology, medicine, the internet and progressive social attitudes, so much is possible nowadays, yes? We can so often live the lives we want to live, and there are many options open to us all. I want, I feel, I think, I need, therefore I have rights, entitlements, and society has an imperative to satisfy me. This is an underlying proposition, commonly held.

This idea we hold dear, that our individual rights and our emotional needs take precedence over anything else, extends even to human reproduction, the creation of new life.

Go to the internet and consider what is being touted. Here is the text from an advertisement for a “co-parenting” website. “Want to have a baby but you are single? Co-parenting match for everyone! Australia,” it says. People can register for free, and do a “simple search” to find someone with whom they can make a baby.

The ad says along the bottom: “I want a baby. Free sperm donor website. Sperm donors online. SpermOnline. Sperm donor Laws. CoParents Match. I want a baby.”

I want, I want, I want. I want a baby today, and today I can have what I want.

“There is no right to be a parent,” Federal Circuit Court chief judge John Pascoe said in the 2016 Louis Waller Lecture. “There are rights that attach to people once one is a parent … However, there is no right to have a child, even in circumstances where one’s ability to choose has been removed.”

There are those who disagree. They think they have the right to be parents, and there are those who think they have the right to donate bits of themselves to create children, while the children they produce should have no rights at all — no rights to know where they came from, no rights to their medical history, no rights to financial support.

This week, federal Attorney-General Christian Porter intervened in a case before the High Court to argue the term “parent’’ should be expanded to include sperm donors who are not in a relationship with the mother at the time a child is conceived.

If Porter succeeds, men like “John” will be affected, as will his offspring.

In 2015, ABC news online ran a story on John who, between 1979 and 1992, in various hospitals around Sydney, donated his sperm — 318 times.

Depending on the quality of John’s sperm, an expert said, hundreds or even thousands of children could have been created, and probably 90 per cent of these don’t know they are donor conceived and the ones who do are unlikely to find out that John is their biological father. John’s children could be growing up close to each other without ever knowing each other. They could meet, marry and have children of their own without ever knowing they are half-siblings.

John wanted to donate, probably altruistically, to help infertile couples. The women who took his sperm wanted a baby, and most are probably great parents.

The only thing wrong with these scenarios is that all of the adults got what they wanted, and the children didn’t.

In this tradition of getting whatever you want and commissioning children to be born, everyone gets what they want — except the children.

There are at least 60,000 donor-conceived children in Australia. Many of these people have enormous emotional struggles with their identity and origin. They want to know where they came from and whether they have other family members.

It is quite difficult to find information, sometimes impossible, so many are turning to DNA tests on the internet, which are cheap, accessible, and sometimes incredibly revealing.

Charlotte Smith, manager of Vanish, a search and support service for adopted and donor-conceived people, says: “Society tends to think that because donor-conceived people were wanted and were raised by one natural parent that they are OK, but this is based on the premise that ‘love is enough’, which is often not the case.

“While love is essential, so is the truth of who you are. The fact that some people search for years or even decades to locate a parent says a lot about the need to know, and the pain of not knowing.”

According to Pascoe: “Parents who commission a child often want their role as mum or dad to be beyond dispute. They may wish that their child never know that they are anything less than 100 per cent theirs.

“This strikes at the heart of the right to know.

“It is selfish and does not indicate love but rather insecurity, and creates unnecessary confusion, pain, and secrecy. Moreover, in an age where genetics are known to play a role in cancer and congenital disorders, it is just irresponsible.”

Porter needs to go further on this issue. The regulations on the commissioning of the creation of human life vary from state to state. There is no national register of donors and no consistent approach that protects the rights of offspring.

There should be, though, because this problem — like the children who are being created — is growing, and coming of age.