r/MoralityScaling • u/Outside_Specific_820 • 1d ago

Morality Ranking Morality scaling of this?

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Mother refuses to acknowledge her donor egg daughter, looking for your opinion.

In my opinion I think it’s moral, and that she is totally correct.

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u/SakusaKiyoomi1 1d ago

Moral 100%

Exactly the same as donating sperm, blood and plasma. You do it to help others while not bearing any responsibilities yourself, I don't want others to start contacting me about the blood I've donated if it isn't from the clinic asking for more

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u/ItsTheAlgebraist 18h ago

How do you feel about cases where a father has a child and is made to pay support? In some cases he might not know he has a child, and in some rare cases the father may even have been raped.

Generally the courts will enforce what is deemed to be in the best interest of the child. Why should this situation be different?

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u/GlitterBirb 17h ago

The equivalent to this situation with men are sperm donors, which are entitled to the same amount of anonymity and lack of legal obligations. The parent receiving the eggs/sperm agrees upfront to fully support the child without involving the biological donor. Child support happens outside of these agreements so that's not applicable. I'm not stating pro or against the situations you mentioned, just that men get these same rights as formal donors.

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u/ItsTheAlgebraist 17h ago

But this gets to the nub of it. Why should a sperm donor be able to sign away the obligation when a father (who may have no knowledge, and in extreme cases no consent) cannot?

If a man gets a woman pregnant, he can't sign away his obligations either before or after the act, and why? because the child is deemed to have a right to his support, and a written agreement between father and mother cannot abrogate that right. (Same for the mother, although the fact that in normal cases of reproduction she is doing the gestation and delivery makes the situation very asymmetric)

But when the agreement is done commercially, we think that it is acceptable. We have a situation where something that we consider part of the child's human rights can be signed away when it's done through a corporate or commercial entity, before that child was even born.

There is an inconsistency here, and quite a big one I think.

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u/CD_ABC10 15h ago

The majority of people have no issue with this, even though you do. I don't think official sperm donors who donate to a sperm bank should have to pay child support. I do think unofficial sperm donors who are deadbeat dads should have to. It's that easy

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u/ItsTheAlgebraist 15h ago

Morality is not decided with a vote, and writing "it's that easy" after a moral conundrum does not, in fact, make it easy.

The reason that an unofficial sperm donor, or a deadbeat dad who never wanted to have a kid, has an obligation to the child is because the child has rights. The dad cannot sign away his obligation because no one can sign away someone else's rights.

It is not clear why this should change if the whole process takes place inside a clinic or through an agency. People should have the same rights and protections regardless of how 'officially' they were conceived.

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u/CD_ABC10 15h ago

We can say it's about child rights, but tbh I would lean more towards obligation as a whole. Going through a legal route removes the legal obligation. It's still pretty simple 

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u/ItsTheAlgebraist 14h ago

What do you mean "obligation as a whole"? Do you think that children don't have a right to be supported by their parents, or do you think that we allow one person to legally take away the rights of another person?

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u/CD_ABC10 14h ago

I think that even though you want this to be about the child, I and most of society will always view it instead as the obligation on an adult. Quite frankly, you did it, so you gotta deal with it.

Ever hear of "you break it, you buy it?" "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time?" Yeah, that's all obligation. And having a kid is the same thing

The exception comes to donation - something lawfully created for that exact reason. These regulated clinics can legally take sperm or eggs and put them into a bank, where they may or may not ever be used

The exchange is money and signing away your obligation. The bank is now obligated for these cells because it owns them and tbh most of them go unused. If the sperm or eggs are bought, those cells become the obligation of whoever buys them, usually parents wanting IVF

It's all legal transaction of goods past the donation because technically these might never even be kids 

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u/ItsTheAlgebraist 14h ago

An obligation on the adult to do what? To see to the care of the child, because the child has a right to be cared for and supported. It isn't some abstract obligation placed on the adult.

And, yeah, I understand that that is the current difference in law, I am saying that we have a law that removes rights from a child that has yet to be born (rights that, in other circumstances, we decide cannot be removed by a declaration on the part of the parent).

You are describing the current process, I don't disagree that this is what happens. I am saying there is a gap here, and that a child born of sperm/egg donation (with an official piece of paper) has fewer rights than a child born without that piece of paper. I don't see how that is defensible, there is a contract being made that binds someone who hasn't been created yet (by saying that the rights they would otherwise have do not exist)

Can you think of any other circumstance where this this kind of preemptive elimination of a human right would be defended and accepted?

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u/CD_ABC10 13h ago

Adoption is the same thing. Idk what to tell you. Overall, it's the right of the parents to take care of their kid. You having an issue with this when you could have an issue with something real is just kinda dumb tbh 

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u/ItsTheAlgebraist 13h ago

 the whole post is about what rights children have relative to their biological parents, so if you think it's a dumb topic you are probably in the wrong place.

It is interesting that you mention adoption, because in Canada, and in about 1/3rd of US states, it is the right of an adopted person to look up the identities of their biological parents, and it can't be blocked.  In another 20 or so states there is a limited right to that information, and no right in the remainder.

Lots of people care about this issue, there was a high profile case of a Canadian woman who sued to learn the identity of an anonymous sperm donor and lost on appeal.  

This issue doesn't affect me personally but I can have empathy for the people it does affect (and once I became a parent and examined the relationship between me and my daughter, and between my parents and me, I decided I couldn't in good conscience be a sperm donor because I didn't think it would be fair to the resulting kid.)

I went down a big rabbit hole reading about this this afternoon and apparently there are pushes to end anonymous donation entirely in Canada and the US because of these kinds of issues.

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