Opinion: The “Right” to Have a Child Dominates Adoptee and Donor-Conceived Rights

Occasionally, we will link to media opinions on aspects of adoption and child welfare that you may never have thought about. This opinion piece discusses the Australian Premier’s apology in Parliament about forced adoptions and compares the silence of its  “role in overseeing the laws and bureaucracy that ran the adoption industry” and  the “lessons of traditional adoption for  donor conception, surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology. ”

The end states it best “What hasn’t been discussed is what we are doing for thousands of young  people, produced  using these technologies; children born into the same  half-world and who face similar challenges as the adoption generations. The  ”right” to have a child often appears to dominate the landscape in comparison  to the future rights and interests of the children who are being brought into  being.

If the medical technology is too entrenched to now be limited, where is the  planning for the support for those children, now adults, affected by it? Where  is the understanding of the identity and connection issues they face? By not  having that debate, difficult as it is, Parliament is destined to repeat the  mistakes of the past.”

Read the whole opinion at  ‘It’s all for the best’ was the cry and then her baby was gone [The Age 10/25/12 by Leigh Hubbard]

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