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Carina's avatar

I’m someone who should appreciate this article, in theory (we’re an interracial gay couple who used a known donor and found the fertility clinic annoying) but I just found myself groaning over and over. It’s a great example of how people who are overly concerned with queer rights end up centering themselves at the expense of DCP. The article barely considered the impact of any of these practices on the children who will be created. It was all about adult desires.

Some of this “gatekeeping” is to protect the clinics from getting sued, but counseling and genetic screening is also for the benefit of the future children.

We also need to acknowledge that reality is homophobic. A lot of these complaints are about it being harder for gay people, but in my experience, the people who think it’s “not fair” and that everyone should bend over backwards to make gay people feel just like a straight couple, are the same people who are adult-centered not child-centered. Part of being a responsible RP is wrestling with all of the ways you are doing something unusual.

If you’re obsessed with making everyone prop up your fantasy that you’re having babies just like any straight couple, how will that make the child feel when he/she wants a relationship with the donor?

All of this academic language about heteronormativity and colonialism is trying to reframe biological reality as oppression. But that doesn’t serve our children.

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Laura Runnels's avatar

I agree that the tension between adult reproductive autonomy and children's interests is real and complex in donor conception. It's fair to question whether advocacy sometimes loses sight of this. I’ve certainly witnessed this in the US.

I disagree with many of your points, though. In my read of the article, the participants weren't asking to be treated 'just like straight couples’, they were asking for culturally competent care and practices that don't impose additional financial/emotional burdens. Frankly, the changes they suggested could have universal benefit. I’m positive there’s room for improvement in how clinics and banks work with known donors (and known donors are a best practice, right?). We all know that donor options are limited for anyone seeking non-white gametes and the potential issues caused by that. The psychosocial counseling session feels very threatening to most families, which is a clear signal to me that it needs to be re-imagined (because it is truly important for the well-being of the child). As a single person, I found my fertility experiences incredibly couple-centric and would love clinics to really be aware of heteronormativity and cisnormativity within treatment protocols and clinic policies.

I'm also concerned by the suggestion that queer families advocating for equitable treatment are somehow 'obsessed with fantasy' or inherently 'adult-centered.' This framing implies that LGBTQ+ parents are less capable of prioritizing their children's welfare, which isn't supported by evidence.

Describing systemic discrimination as 'biological reality' minimizes real policy choices. There's nothing biologically inevitable about administrative policies that charge same-sex couples more or require different screening based on sexual orientation. Many of these barriers exist because systems were designed around one family type, not because biology requires them.

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Carina's avatar

Here is an example of what I mean by framing biological reality as discrimination: "The terming of queer tax here denotes not just the financial cost of the mandatory session, but also the time and emotional burdens that are viewed as a taxation on 2SLGBTQ+ reproduction. The fertility counselling session is required for IVF and third-party reproduction, meaning some heterosexual cisgender people would have to complete it as well. Nevertheless, the majority of 2SLGBTQ+ people accessing fertility clinics are using third-party reproduction, and as a result, the majority of 2SLGBTQ+ people would require this session." (end quote)

This isn't anti-gay oppression. It's something that applies to all third party reproduction, and the reality of being gay is that you need 3rd party. We found the mandatory counseling annoying because we all had to take off work and travel there, but it wasn't threatening. I'm sure many improvements can be made, but gay people seem put out that they have to do it at all when "straight people don't have to." That's because straight couples aren't using donor conception.

I respect that you have a different view of the article, which is completely fine -- but I don't get how you could read it as anything but adult-centered? It was 99% about the adults' experiences and preferences -- all about making them feel comfortable and respected, and reducing the burden on them.

For example, the known donor discussion -- it was all about the parents wanting a certain race, and sperm banks not providing it, so they have to do this counseling, which is a queer tax. How these decisions affect the child was not even discussed, except in terms of the preferences of adults (like "we wanted the baby to have x").

I'm not against clinics being more sensitive about non-heterosexual couples. This comes down to personality, in part -- we got the same assumptions, and had to correct people, but we just laughed it off. But I also feel like if you can't handle questions from a social worker, or navigating a world where your family isn't the norm, maybe you're not ready to do this. For the child's sake, I feel like you really need to be at peace with what it means to have a non-traditional family.

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Cynthia Cheng Mintz's avatar

There’s also the egg donor issue (at least for Confucianist cultures). Slowly changing, I think, as cultures become more integrated, but it takes time (everyone says it takes three generations).

Note: some people think term “BIPOC” others certain groups (including yours truly)

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Laura Runnels's avatar

That's fair. I try to use the terminology used by the authors for defining groups or key concepts. The authors allowed people to self-identify as "BIPOC" and then they selected from this list of options: Indigenous, Black, Latin American, East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, White/European, mixed race.

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