"protect Canadians using AHR to help them build
a family, so that their health and safety are
not compromised"
the human beings left out in the cold are those children
who are created "through donated reproductive material".
According to the press release found at Health Canada's
website (2), also distributed by Canada Newswire:
"The proposed Bill seeks to safeguard Canadians by:
* protecting the health, safety and privacy of those
who turn to AHR and that of the children born as a
result of AHR;
* ensuring that Canadians considering donating eggs,
sperm or embryos for AHR treatment or research,
give fully informed written consent prior to any
procedure;
and,
* giving children born through donated reproductive
material access to medical information about the
donors. The identification of a donor would be
treated in a similar fashion to the manner in which
provinces deal with adoption, i.e., the release of
donor identification is an option with donor consent."
Although the legislation has been created after committee
review and debate (3), it is so wrong-headed and against
the natural laws of family and human rights, that it must
be withdrawn immediately and deeply reconsidered.
As with the hodge podge of provincial adoption legislation,
this bill creates privacy where that is unnatural to the
laws of nature and places the rights of the parents of the
children ahead of those of the children themselves and
those providing the donated reproductive material. The very
language used seeks to devalue the notion of mother and
father and replace it with "donor".
Ms Minister: do you think of your own mother and father as
donors of reproductive material? Or is there a more
meaningful bond between you that is based on blood and not
circumstance? Would you be satisfied to transfer the words
"mother" and "father" to anyone older than you? Or do the
words "mother" and "father" transcend donor or custodian?
The fundamental issue is who is allowed to be in charge of
the life resources, the heritage, of the children created
-- the children and those who provide the means? Or the
custodians of the children in collusion with government?
No child born into this earth deserves to be denied, by
dint of the circumstances of his or her birth, knowledge
of his or her place in the universe. It is cruel and
unnatural for a mother or a father to be denied to a child;
for a child to never know the face, touch, name of his
mother; to be denied the right to join with his own clan,
those uncles, brothers, sisters, aunts, grandparents who
make up the biological and psychic family most children
are born into.
This legislation, by focussing on privacy for the donors,
and using the punitive and archaic framework of adoption
legislation sadly implemented in the 1920s, denies the
children created through this process access to the
fundamental information the rest of us take for granted.
Every man and woman ponders these primal questions. Who am
I? Where did I come from? How am I a living variation of
my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters? Where do I
fit in the grand scheme of things? Who else am I like? Who
do I belong with? Where does my laugh come from? Do I
deserve to be here at all? Am I simply alone?
The ability to find satisfying answers to these questions
is taken for granted by those raised by their biological
family. Adoptees, and children created through the rules
of this legislation, are denied these innate human rights.
I am a man. I am not a reproduction. When I was born I was
not asked if I was willing to live my entire life without
knowledge of my mother's name, my father's touch. These
things were denied me by legislation designed to protect
my adopted family from the potential of discovering that I
was born from other parents.
Privacy for the adopted parents serves only to allay the
fears that these surrogate parents are not somehow enough
and so the child is bound to the new family "AS IF" born.
Yet some adoptees, and the children born under your
legislation, do not know that their raised parents did not
create them. They may wonder why it is that they feel
different, why they don't quite fit in. The legislation
does not require the child EVER to be told he was created
through AHR.
Most of us have a strong desire to create our own families,
to be able to look into the eyes of our own children and
see our own reflection. Grandchildren are often a huge
blessing and a great celebration: the grandparents can see
their own lives echoed in giggles, in looks, in hair
colour, in mood, in talents. It is a way for each of us to
feel like we belong not just in the past but in the future
for all time. It is an innately human longing.
Privacy for birth parents, for donors of reproductive
material, severs that connection by making it impossible
for an adoptee, or a child created under this legislation,
to be able to look backward and see himself. Alone in the
world in this primal sense, the child is the beginning
instead of a natural continuation.
No wonder he is so lonely!
Do you believe it is proper for a mother to be able to
hide behind the cloak of a government file number so she
may deny she bore a child? To deny to that child that she
is his mother? Is it proper for a father to be allowed to
deny his role in the creation of his son? If a man or a
woman chooses to provide reproductive material, then they
must be held accountable, as any other parent is, to provide
in perpetuity information and access as may be required by
the child born from them. It is a choice and a privilege to
donate; the child should not be cast adrift through no
choice of his or her own.
I am an adult male adoptee, born in Saskatchewan nearly 50
years ago. I have only known my mother's name for 18 months.
I have only known my father's name for a year. I was and
continue to be denied this information by my government. I
was a lucky one and discovered my family through luck and
heart-breaking persistence which most children do not face.
Do you know your mother's name? Do you know how and where
your grandfather lived? Can you feel the warm fingers of
your clan reaching forward through time to you today?
In Canada -- though I bear no responsibility for my own birth
(do you for yours?) -- the laws of parliaments across the land
deny me my mother's name. Yet this woman, who held me only
once before I could see, knows me more intimately than any
woman: I rode with her in her belly for nine months. Current
adoption disclosure, like your legislation, denies me her name.
Closed adoption, and this legislation allowing for the creation
of children using anonymous reproductive material, creates a
terrible non-legacy for the child. It cruelly renders the birth
mother and father, the heritage and safety of the clan, null
and void. Mother and son are severed unnaturally through a
cold-hearted legal procedure which protects only the adopted
parents.
Many mothers experience great anxiety when, having just given
birth, the child is tagged and placed in a room for observation
with other children just born. Many mothers are in terror that
the hospital might mix up the babies.
But does that matter? A child is a child; a new born is a new
born like any other. Closed adoption, like your Assisted Human
Reproduction act, devalues the birth bond, burying it alive. A
child under current adoption rules, and under this new
legislation, is simply any other child chosen, or created, at
random. That is innately unnatural; it is a legality posing as
reality. No law can create a birth bond between a child and a
parent who is not the biological creator. "AS IF" is a legal
sham and a deceit of the basest order.
We are getting closer to the day when we can unravel individual
genetics. Perhaps our SIN system will be replaced one day by a
SmartCard: PersonalDNA (TM). Then none of us will need to know
their heritage as everything necessary for medical purposes is
contained in this convenient swipe card. We don't need to know
that grandpa Bob suffered from high blood pressure, that uncle
Phil died of a heart attack at 43, that dad died of cancer at 52.
That aunt Barb had a heart of gold, or grandma Jane had an
unusual way with pets, that mom knew how to touch your hand and
suddenly the pain eased.
Yet according to the premise of this legislation, none of these
things matter, since Dad is just an anonymous numbered sperm cell
and Mom was the egg donated by "a young woman, hoping to go to
college, who had long red hair". With genetic tagging all one
really needs to know about a creator parent is that she or he
left the child with an increased risk of cholesterol. Values
steeped in generations, like a tendency to be creative or good
with numbers, is lost. Yet these are what ground us in life.
There is much more, I believe, to belonging in this world than
a medical history. We prosper when we are connected; we wither
and die, slowly, painfully, tragically when isolated.
We are getting close to a day when family, blood bonds, can be
discounted, tossed aside, rendered untraceable for a whole class
of citizens -- those whose heritage begins with themselves. Those
babies, those creations, those reproductions from facilities
licensed and monitored by the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency
of Canada (AHRAC) become commodities set adrift.
Closed adoption across this country since its introduction in the
late 1920s, has already caused untold grief to the hundreds of
thousands of adoptees, and millions of family members. It is the
saddest thing in the world to be so alone not having answers to the
most fundamental questions in any man or woman's life. Who am I?
Where did I come from? Adoptees cannot know; yet the government
holds this information in its files. This legislation will extend
this travesty to a whole new class of created children, created
from the anonymous deposits of genetic stuff from which donors may
escape detection.
Ms Minister, this new act creates anonymous, abandoned souls. It is
more brutal than any notion our governments have yet conceived.
Why are you planning on approving it?
Alexander Inglis
Unit 1007, 60 Gloucester Street,
Toronto, Ontario M4L 1L7
Resources referred to above:
1. The introduced legislation itself is found here
AN ACT RESPECTING ASSISTED HUMAN REPRODUCTION
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/protection/reproduction/legislation/index.html
2. The May 9, 2002 press release is found here
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/media/releases/2002/2002_34.htm
3. The background committee report December 12, 2001 is here
http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfoComDoc/37/1/HEAL/Studies/Reports/healrp01/03-cov-e.htm
Alexander Inglis (May 9, 2002)
In Toronto
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