Advice from another donor who is about to register on the DSR. I hope this helps
families, particularly donor offspring, better understand why a donor might have
chosen to be anonymous. As usual, these issues and the choices that are made are
more complicated then we might have thought. And it’s so important to know that
donors thoughts about donating can, and do, change over time.
“….a message to donor families about one facet of my experience as a donor.
The basic point I would want to communicate to them is to never just assume that
because someone donated ‘anonymously’ a long time ago, that they definitely
don’t want to be ‘found’ or be a helpful part of the child’s life…
..When I signed up to be a donor, Fairfax was starting a known ID donor program.
I initially started in this program, because I wanted to be available to any
future offspring. However a month into the program, I changed to an anonymous
status because of the way their known ID donor program was structured. The way
it worked was that at age 18, the donor families would receive a lot of my
personal information. To me, that didn’t make sense at all. It was too much to
agree to..that they can have all of my information in the future and that I
could never change my decision to allow this…I didn’t know who I’d be in 20
years or what my future family might think so how could I volunteer all my
personal information right away? Why did it have to be all or nothing right
then? In contrast, it SHOULD have been structured more like the DSR and I
would have been much more inclined to stay in the known donor program.
The entire way the industry functions is appalling the more I learn about how it
actually works. It is a bit shocking to learn how driven it is by money and how
little regard they have for the people (donor offspring, parents, and donors)
involved. These companies have created a culture where this is okay and some
people actually believe it! In reality these companies’ interests are trivial
and absurd compared to the interests of the actual people whose lives are
impacted.
I do not regret being a donor, but at the moment I’m not in love with the idea
that I freely involved myself with an industry that doesn’t understand what is
sacred. I feel that in most ways being a donor was a beautiful thing and the
positives outweigh the negatives. Still, the not being able to know what you
might want to know (about your own flesh and blood) can be a frustrating thing
and I don’t believe it should be this way for anyone.”
Donor P.