Hello and welcome to FAB Gab. This is the podcast for the International Journal of feminist approaches to bioethics brought to you by fab Network. My name is Kathryn MacKay, and today I'm joined by Daniel Groll from Carleton College to discuss the author meets critic section of this issue where we're talking about Dan Groll's, book 'conceiving people, genetic knowledge and the ethics of sperm and egg donation'. And we'll be talking about some of the responses that Dan got to his book through this author, meats critic session. So hello, Dan.
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Thanks for joining me. I wonder if you could just give us a sort of very brief summary, which I know is difficult. The book.
Yeah, so the book is about the ethics of sperm and egg donation, and particularly on the ethics of anonymous versus non anonymous donation. And I argue against anonymous donation. So I think when people conceive of donated sperm and eggs, they should other things being equal use someone who's willing to be known, an open donor or an identity released donor. And I make the case, by appeal to the empirical fact, to the extent that it's been established by social science, that most donor conceived people are quite interested in knowing who their donor is. And so the argument really turns on the idea that parents should put their children in a position to satisfy their interests, whatever those interests might be, provided the interests aren't pernicious, or immoral or problematic. But if they're what you might call healthy or normal interests, then parents ought to help their children meet them. And so to the extent that it's foreseeable that a donor conceived person is going to have an interest in knowing their donor, I make the argument that it's part of sort of one's parental obligations to help your child meet that interest. And so that means using a open or identity release donor, I mean, the same thing by those terms, someone whose identity can come to be known by the child at some point, so that they should use an identity release donor rather than an anonymous donor.
And for folks who might not be so familiar with this sort of area, is it more common to have known donors at the moment? Or is it more common to have anonymous donors at the moment?
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, depends where you are. So in some countries, there's no such thing as anonymous donation. So in the UK, there's not anonymous donation, and in fact, they're having, in fact, this is the year this is 18 years after they outlawed anonymous donation. So all the social scientists are waiting with anticipation to see what kind of requests come in.
And as the cohort will be, turning 18...
...so able to access the identity of their donors, exactly. Colorado, just last year is the first state in the United States to outlaw anonymous donation. There are other countries like France, where there you can only do anonymous donation. So it really depends on where you are. And of course, that will affect what your options are. So if you live in France, my argument is not you must go seek out an identity release don't because that's really hard to do. But the the adolescent dividual level, the argument suggests that we should be moving towards systems where identity releases the norm. And so in the United States, it's becoming more and more common, and my understanding is, is that sperm and egg clinics have offered no or sorry, identity release donors much more frequently, and that the norms have changed on the advice that people give. So it used to be that, you know, in the bad old days, here are some gametes, Let's not ask too much where they came from. Don't ever talk to your child about it. Because of course, it was typically bio normative heteronormative couples looking to conceive, a man and a woman. And now the advice is to not keep it from not keep a child's donor conceived status from the child. And of course, for you know, gay and lesbian couples keeping the secrets not an option in the first place. But one thing that is not unfortunately, it's still quite common is that people will intend to disclose but then they don't. So my understanding of the social sciences that heteronormative parents who announced that they plan to disclose often won't, because you know, the time is, quote, unquote, never right, and then time passes, and it gets harder and harder. So
interesting. So I wonder if you could maybe say something about the kind of, I don't know, I guess this interest that people might have in their, in having their genetic information. I mean, on the one hand that sounds like, yeah, that kind of makes sense. It could be really useful maybe to have genetic information of various kinds. But on the other hand, is there something that kind of outweighs that that makes you think? I don't know, maybe that's not so valuable?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. I mean, so one thing to say right away is I think everyone acknowledges that there can be pretty significant health and medical reasons to want to know your genetic lineage. So you could you know, if you don't know that your donor conceived, you might think that you're prone to certain genetic conditions, because your social parents or one of them has, but you're not because you're not genetically related to one of your parents. Or it could be that you are prone to a certain genetic condition that's passed down through the genes, but you have no idea because you either you don't know that your donor conceived, or maybe you do, but you don't know your health, your health history. So that's really important. I tend to move past that quite quickly in the book, because I think that though, it's important, it's not getting at what interests I think, many, many people that are interested in this kind of information donor conceived or not, which is that so the the idea that you hear a lot is that knowing who your genetic progenitors are, and knowing your genetic parents are is really important to understanding yourself to identity formation to knowing your place in the world. So I focus mostly on that rationale. And I'm with you, I think it's an intelligible desire. I think many people have it, I think it can be a really important part of identity construction and the story that you tell about yourself. So I'm on board there. There's a position which I argue against, which is sort of most famously advocated for by David Velleman, which says, well, actually, it's true that people are interested in knowing this. But that's a little bit like saying people are interested in drinking water, which is true. But saying, oh, we should give people water because they're interested in it seems to be missing the main point, which is that you really need water. There's a really good reason why people are interested in water, you absolutely need it to divorce. Now Bellamy doesn't think that the need for genetic knowledge, as I call it is like the need for water. But I think he thinks it's not so far away in the sense that it's a sort of a fundamental good, and that a life without it is severely diminished. Even though one could flourish in many other respects. I'm inclined to think that that overplays the hand? Well, I think he overplayed his hand. I think it overplays the importance of genetic knowledge because I'm inclined to think two things. One is that we have choices about how we understand ourselves, that we are that that the the task of constructing your identity or telling a story about yourself is not purely epistemic, it's not just it's not merely a task of discovery. It's also a task of construction, deciding what matters to you and what doesn't. And I think there are many people donor conceived and not who construct views of themselves and understand their place in the world without putting any particular emphasis on their genetic lineage. So I think I think that shows that it needed to play the role development thinks it does. And then relatedly, I think it's well worth asking about why we have the interests that we have. And this is true, just any interest, right? We're all social creatures were raised in particular times, and places that have particular values and cultures and institutions. And they inform who we are, in some ways, in ways that I think are very healthy and productive. But in other ways, it can be very pernicious. So the other thing I tried to do is sort of take a critical stance on this desire to know and wonder to what extent it's a function of what the philosopher Charlotte would calls bio normativity, or bio normative prejudice, which is the idea that, you know, proper family is constituted through genetic relations, that the platonic ideal of the family is a man and a woman with children that are genetically related to them. And that who we are is a base in a really fundamental way, a matter of the genes. And that's very common thought and our world. And if you grow up in that Millia, it's no surprise if you discover that you're missing something, and he even putting it in terms of missing I think is already stacking the deck a certain way, but that other people have something that you don't, no surprise that you would feel like you are really missing something important. So I tried to steer between the velum interview on the one hand, which says like, look, this is just fundamentally important, it's closer to to meeting water than then than it is to something totally optional. I try to steer between that and the view that says this interest is in fact, pernicious. It reflects bio normative prejudice that we would bet that if we dispensed with If we find that the interest just disappeared altogether, and my view is, is that no it can, it's an intelligible interest, it can be a healthy interest. And I don't think it would disappear if we if we somehow could snap our fingers and be rid of bio normativity. Though maybe it wouldn't be as common and maybe it wouldn't be felt as strongly. But you know, this is a miracle conjecture. Who knows?
I want to come back to that in a second. Because I think that's an important place where a few of the critiques in this symposium. Yeah, kind of connected with your book. But I wanted to, I guess this is pretty this is like a probably a pretty basic point. But I thought it might be worth for the listeners, just commenting on what we're talking about when we're talking about interest, because it seems like on the one hand, you could say that people have an interest in knowing things about themselves. But that that interest is like a shallow thing. What we're just talking about there is that they'd like to know it's there. They're curious or something like that. Yeah. Whereas sometimes in philosophical literature, the word interest actually means something much deeper, where it's like, there is a very significant good here, yes, that you have extra reason to want to pursue or obtain. And it seems like it's being used in both ways here, kind of.
you know, that's, that's a great point. I mean, the way that I use it in the book is I mean, it, I mean to I mean, two things. I mean, one is I mean it in this subjective sense, like it's actually like a like a, like a psychological item, if you want to put it that way. So some people are interested in, in hockey and other people are interested in gardening. These are facts about their psychology. So So that's, that's sort of the subjective side. So when I talk about people having this interest, that's that's a report on people's psychologies. And then there's the question of how significant and interest is it for the people that have it. And I do my best to follow the social science here, which is, which is kind of in its infancy on this topic. So my view is very dependent on what the social science tells us, my reading of the social sciences that most donor conceived people who know their donor conceived, would like this information. And the interest is significant in the sense that it is. And the way I think I put it in the book is it like, you know, it plays a fairly substantial role in their psychic economy, which, which doesn't mean that they're thinking about it all the time. It's nothing like an obsession or anything like that. But it's important. However, I think the literature shows that the interest in a lot of cases, is expressed as a form of curiosity. So my understanding is, is that and I mean, I should have said this right off the bat, I'm not donor conceived. And I'm happy to talk about my relationship to the topic. So I am, I don't think anyone can speak for donor conceived people, including any individual donor conceived person. But I'm especially reliant on what the social scientists tell us. And so my reading of the social science is that the majority of donor conceived people who know their donor conceived would like this information, and that they're not looking for another parent. They're very often not looking for a deep relationship. They are looking simply to know who the person is, and to be minimally acquainted, and typically to just sort of have questions answered about. I mean, in addition to the medical stuff about who made me What explains why I look the way that I do. And that can sound superficial, but I guess I'm in a way that I have difficulty articulating why I don't I don't think it is superficial, I think it's like, very understandable and can play a really significant role in people's lives. So that's how I locate the nature of the interest.
Yeah, thanks. That's helpful. So let's talk about a couple of the responses, I guess, the commentaries on your book. So there are four of them. Two of them by Roth and Brandt approach the question of the interest that people have in their genetic knowledge, as though either it could be not really significant interest, or if it is a significant interest or when it shows up as a significant interest. It is only that because of the influence of the bio normativity that you were describing a moment ago. And then there's a third commentary by Skow is actually almost the flip side of those views where Skow was actually really skeptical that bio normativity is even a real thing. Yep. That's kind of interesting. And I wondered if you could just sort of say something about that.
That dynamic repeats itself a lot when I talk about this work, so Um, yeah. Which I don't know if that's a sign that I'm like, definitely getting things wrong. Both views are like this is not right or, or that's like, No, I've like, really hit hit the middle. Yeah, to some people, it's just seems obvious that bio normativity is doing a lot of work here. And other and to other people the idea that there's even anything particularly puzzling, or a philosophical question to be answered about why someone would want this information is puzzling. And I think for some No, I don't think I don't think for Brad, this is the case. But for some people like offensive to think that there's even a question here. Why, what do you mean, why would I want this information? What what could be important about this information? I think the way I put in one of my responses, it's just like, like, it sounds a little bit like asking, like, why why is pain bad? Or something like that? The answer is right there. And I don't quite know what to make of the fact that people seem to fall into one of these two camps. I mean, I think all of us are subject to certain pressures. I guess that's a non philosophical pressures that maybe push us toward one camp or the other. But yeah, I it's just it's a great observation. And I think it's really interesting.
Mm hmm. Yeah. And so what's your response to the skepticism? That bio normativity is a real thing? Is that a kind of empirical thing that you'd want to draw on? Or is there a more philosophical answer?
I wouldn't want to draw anything empirical in the way that I try to draw on like the social science about what donor conceived people interested in, because it's not clear to me how you would go about measuring and with the normal tools of social science, how prevalent bio normativity is. One thing that Brad points out is that, you know, the the sort of the official progressive line is that all families are equal genetics, don't make a family, love makes a family, all that kind of stuff. And I think that's true, but I don't think it takes very much to start observing in our culture, the sort of trope of blood and kin, and who gets what from whom, where that's understood in genetic terms. So it I mean, this is just a tiny piece of evidence. But in the book, I give the example of this song by the musician Walter Martin called Hey, sister, and it's a fabulous song. I, Walter Martin is a great musician, I love his music. But the song The conceit of the song is that a brother and sister are singing to each other. And it's all about who they resemble in the family, who gets what from whom there are various jokes that trade on the fact that transmission comes down genetically, and so couldn't run backwards. So the older brother couldn't have got something from the younger sister, for example, there's talk about, there's a little tiny, tiny little bit of me and you tie in a little bit of you and me. And, you know, I think Walter Martin years just written a song that any I mean, I mean, he's a great songwriter. So not a lot of people could have written the way he writes the song. But I think the ideas show up all over the place, in popular culture and everyday practice, in the way that people relate. I mean, just, I mean, I do this with my kids, you play the resemblance game all the time. Oh, you look so much like your grandmother, so on and so forth. And I think those are all forms of making the bio genetic understanding of family the norm. One thing that bread pushes me on, which is right, I mean, I'm not super precise about what exactly bio normativity is. But one thing I think is true is that there's a presumption that bio genetic relatedness is the family norm, or that's just understood as kind of like a statistical thought, like, that's just the default assumption when you when people think about a family, that that's how they're constituted. There's nothing normative there. But I think humans have a tendency to shade from the something being normative in the statistical sense being the norm, or taken to be the norm. And it's just in the statistical sense to being normative in this evaluative sense. I would just want to I guess, talk to people and give them examples. In the world where it looks like, the biogenetic understanding of the family is just, it's like the it's I mean, I feel like it's kind of like the the air we breathe, or the water that fish swim in, so to speak. It's kind of everywhere once you start looking for it.
I mean, that's interesting, because it kind of makes me think about the reasons that it seems like you give for wanting donation to be open. At least partly sounds like some of the reasons are actually like love and trust and relationship oriented. It seems like there's something here where At least a part of what you were saying, in response, I think to some of these criticisms is that, well, the the quality of the relationship between the parents and the child is something that's really important on its own. And the way that that kind of functions, the fear that people have that it will be undermined by genetic knowledge, if it's, if you have a donor conceived or an adopted, I think also mean person in your family, is actually connected to these ideas that we have about what's the kind of fundamental building block of a of a loving, caring, family relationship?
Yeah, yeah, I'm a big advocate for openness and honesty, for really, you know, some, like broadly, consequentialist reasons, which is like, I think things tend to go south with secret keeping, but also for these reasons related to just like the nature of what it is to be in an intimate relationship with someone. And what it is to trust someone and to be honest with them, which I think you know, shouldn't be the case in intimate relationships, including relationships between parents, and children. And I write I think part of the issue is that we don't really have the right concepts now for thinking about ways of being related that don't, that don't conform to like family notions of being related. And so even even the term donor is not a great term. I mean, in the United States, people in the Canada you can't sell in the United States, you can, you know, I use genetic parent, but you parent is a fraught term, parent by itself seems totally inappropriate, I'm inclined to think it's totally inappropriate. So we don't, we don't quite have the words. And it's just a matter of words, we seem not to have the concepts for how to think about these new ways of relating between people. And I think that reflects sort of what you're talking about, like an uncertainty or fear about what it means to have someone who's genetically related to your child, but is not their social parent. And I think it'd be nice if we could just I mean, I'm using some of the work here of Alice McLaughlin who we need a broader notion of, sort of relatedness that can allow for the complexity of some of these relationships. It's, I think, it's a great ideal to strive for. I think one thing that's really worth saying, and that I mentioned in the book, but I don't think I give enough time to and which Amanda Roth has pushed me on is that I think there's a lot of people who are interested in anonymous donation for reasons that have nothing to do with being skeptical of the value of genetic knowledge or worries about their relationship with their child, but are really driven by concerns about the status of their parental rights. So I have in mind here, LGBTQ plus families, who, you know, had very obvious reasons 30, 40 years ago, to not want the donor to be involved in any way in family life, for fear of parental rights being, you know, taken away, and it looked like maybe, you know, 5-10 years ago, we could have said, Oh, we've moved past that. But I think in the United States in particular, these days, those fears are very much on the horizon again. And so while on the one hand, I encourage openness and open donation and the like, I think that needs to be paired with policies, laws and a culture that is 100%, behind protecting the rights of non traditional families.
And that kind of connects to the fourth commentary a little bit, too, I think. So Russell has sort of says that she's skeptical of the idea of procreative benefit, beneficence, which is the idea that we should be having the best possible children that we should have, but also says something about how the focus, rather than the focus being on thinking about controlling inflammation or the threat of inflammation or something like that, she sort of emphasizes the way that people should rather think about how they want to be in their relationship with their child. So what kind of parent should I be? It's the kind of important question that she thinks we should be asking, instead of thinking about the child that I should have another bit of a different concern from the legitimate concern about saying, like, I'd like my parental rights to be protected, but that it stems from the same. I think at least it stems from the same attitude toward this knowledge and what the information that genetic information represents.
Yes, you've Right, right. I mean, I think there's a certain irony that if you want it View is the attempt to downplay the significance of genetic information in a person's life, I think can can very radically backfire. Because it ends up suggesting that like, here's this thing that's we can't even like talk about or shouldn't acknowledge. It's like such a threat. And so I My view is that if you want someone's interest in genetic knowledge to develop in a way that is, like, is, is healthy and can be, you know, part of their identity and the way that I think it often can be, you don't want to keep it a secret. You don't want to treat it as nothing. You just want it to be like, I mean, so I'm putting these in abstract terms. But I think like donor conceived, people should know from the, from their earliest memories that their donor conceived. I think ideally, who their donor is, would be known to them at an early age, although, you know, there's complicating factors there. Because using a known donor, someone who's known to the, to the to the parent, or parents and the child from an early age is a different kind of demand. But I think ideally, that would be great. And then I kind of think it becomes like a little bit of a non event, as opposed to something that gets revealed later, and often by accident. And we're where parents, I've spoken to a number of donor conceived people who are, who have found out that their donor conceived and have found their donor and will not talk to their parents about it, because they're worried their parents will freak out. They're really worried about hurting their parents. And I've just feel like this speaks to a can be sure Russell's piece that I feel like though I completely understand why parents would feel that way. I think it's not doing anyone a service, as opposed to just trying to being honest. And open. Yeah, and not keeping anything back.
Definitely. This has been such an interesting conversation, I want to ask you just one final question, which is actually, what was the motivation behind writing the book? Why did you decide to write this book?
Yeah. So questions about the nature of family have been on my mind for a really long time. So I routinely teach these topics. But my interest predates that. So I have three older sisters, and all three of them are adopted. So non traditional. In that sense, we're I grew up in a non traditional family, a family and I'm not adopted. So a question where issues about genetic relatedness were sort of just always there. But then the more immediate cause is that I, myself am a donor, I'm a known donor to two dear friends. And so I did not write the book and then decide that no donation was acceptable. I went the other way. I was a known donor. And then I was like, huh, lots of interesting issues here, and then ended up writing the book. So it's all in my mind for personal reasons.
Yeah, that's super interesting. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me.
Yeah, this has been great. Thank you so much for the questions.
My pleasure. And thank you for listening to this episode of FAB gab. You can find Dan's book wherever books of quality are sold. And the symposium that we've been discussing with papers by Amanda Roth, Reuven Brandt, Camisha Russell and Brad Skow, as well as a response from Dan are in this issue of ij fab, which is linked in this episode's notes. FAB Gab is hosted and produced by me Kathryn MacKay. You can find her other episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts of quality. And you can subscribe to FAB Gab so that you'll never miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening. Bye
