Donor Conceived Woman Agrees With Dolce & Gabbana on Donor Conception: I Sacrificed My Father to Make My Mom Happy (INTERVIEW)
Correction Appended
Third-party reproduction technologies are unethical because they amount to baby selling and create children for the pleasure of parents, donor-conceived Alana Newman told The Christian Post in explaining her defense of Dolce & Gabbana.
Although many proponents of reproductive technologies claim that surrogate babies are "so wanted," that doesn't make it ethically right to rob children of their natural parents just so that one parent can be enjoyed with the life of a baby, Newman told CP Monday.
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"There is a certain inequality there. Yes, I was wanted but I always understood that the only reason I exist is to bring pleasure to other people, like my mom," Newman stated. "I was kind of a tool for them. So I am expected to sacrifice my sacred things, like my father, in order to make somebody else happy, and that is not a healthy world view."
Although she never questioned the morality of her conception when she was young, Newman said she started doing some research in college on reproductive technologies and was appalled by what she learned.
"Third-party reproduction when you are deliberately separating a child from one or both parents is ethically wrong," Newman added. "It is tantamount to baby selling. If it is wrong to sell an existing child, why would it not be wrong to pre-sell or pre-order before conception."
In an op-ed published Thursday by The Federalist, Newman and Hattie Hart asserted that although they were both born via donor conception, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have valid arguments when it comes to the use of third-party reproduction technologies.
"We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is a traditional one," the designers' said in an interview with Panorama magazine earlier this month. "No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed."
"You are born to a mother and father — or at least that's how it should be. I call children of chemistry, synthetic children," Dolce added.
Although Newman and Hart did not agree with Dolce's "synthetic children" word choice, because it implies that children conceived via third-party reproduction are not fully human, they urged that "there is much underlying truth to what he said: 'life [does] have a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed.'"
"Speaking as two donor-conceived young women — alive because of reproductive technologies — we felt an urgent need to respond … in support of Dolce and Gabbana," the op-ed stated. "Those of us conceived non-traditionally are full human beings with equal capacity in every regard — no one need question our humanity. It is not our individual, case-by-case worth as humans that is debatable; rather, it is how we value human beings in general that warrants discussion."
Newman explained the societal and emotional issues she had growing up as a donor-conceived child who never met her biological father.
Although her mother was always honest with her about her conception and she never questioned the morality of it growing up, Newman told CP she had real "daddy issues" with the fact her biological father was paid to give his sperm and never be a part of her life. She stressed that those issues could not be solved by doctors or her parents.
"When you are abandoned by a parent, for whatever reason, it's very hard to get back your sense of confidence, belonging and trust. It took me years to overcome a residual distrust of men," Newman explained. "I mean, just a hatred of men, pure hatred because every father in my life did not love me or did not love me appropriately, then I became a target for other predators because nobody was protecting me."
Hart wrote that she went through a similar situation as Newman but she was not informed of her parentage until she was 14, after he mother got divorced to her then-husband, who she thought was her father.
"One of the greatest tragedies of donor conception is the loss of belonging: to family, to a culture," the women wrote. "Essentially, one becomes malleable like an infant. I crave a home. I see myself as I travel in many directions — doing anything in order to find one."
Newman, who is a Christian, said that growing up as a donor-conceived child, it took her a while to fully understand the sacredness of childbirth. Additionally, she said she never quite grasped the meaning of the commandment to "honor thy mother and thy father."
"It's in the Ten Commandments and people should follow it," Newman said. "It's been really hard for me to figure out what that means, and more and more I have turned toward Christianity and try to lean on my ultimate Father."
As a child, Newman said she came to understand a false concept of reality where parents had the final authority on the child's life.
"I was taught that the jurisdiction of life, that the parents have the jurisdiction over whether you live or die," Newman explained. "I just thought that whatever a parent wants, they get and their desire trumps all other things, and the worst thing in the world would be for them to be unhappy and suffer."
Also in response to Dolce & Gabbana's comments, openly gay pop singer Elton John, who has two surrogate children, has been vocal in his disgust and staged a boycott of the designers' products.
"He is a tyrant. He wants total control over anything and everybody," Newman told CP. "I don't agree with the way Elton John had his kids. I don't agree with the way he is handling this. I mean, people are entitled to their own opinions. Every human being in human history has had a mother and father and for him this threatens his pride, and for him to suggest that people don't have the right to have their own opinions is an act of bullying."
Newman started The Anonymous Us Project, a website that highlights the plight of individuals impacted by third-party reproduction and donor conceived people. She also plans to launch the Coalition Against Reproductive Trafficking in July.
Correction: Tuesday, March 24, 2015
An article on Monday, March 23, 2015, stated that Alana Newman was raised by lesbian parents and is opposed to adoption by gay couples. Newman was raised by her mother, and had two step-fathers at different times. She is not opposed to gay parents adopting children.
