| | | You are here: Home >> Press Section >> Warning over Rights of Child in Assisted Reproduction | | | | Warning over Rights of Child in Assisted Reproduction | | Reproduced from The Irish Times | | By Mary Carolan, 7th December 2009 | | | The rights of the child must be paramount in any regulation of the Assisted Human Reproduction industry (AHR) according to the Iona Institute which promotes marriage and religion in society. The interests of adults and of the industry were prominent and the rights of the child not adequately considered in the Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction, it said in a paper launched at a Conference at the weekend.
The paper was written by Breda O’Brien Teacher and Irish Times Columnist who said that a child’s right to a mother and father must be respected. She likened the plight of children conceived through the donation of genetic material to that of children adopted without being allowed knowledge of their birth parents.
The Commission Report in 2005 and a Sub-Committee of the Oireachtas Committee on Health debated the Report for a year producing a follow up Report which endorsed most of the original recommendations but not those relating to the status of an unimplanted embryo. This Report went back to the Department of Health but no legislation has yet been brought forward.
In her paper Ms O’Brien examined the recommendations of the Commission relating to AHR and in many incidences put forward alternative recommendations.
Among them are that the welfare of the child should be the primary consideration in AHR. The children have the right, where possible to be raised by their biological parents, that the right of Fertility Clinics to choose to treat only married couples should be enshrined in Law, and that donor anonymity should be abolished.
All donors must commit to update personal and medical information on a regular basis and be aware that offspring may someday seek contact she said.
At the Conference Dr Joanna Rose who is a campaigner for the rights of children conceived via AHR and is herself a donor offspring said she opposed the use of donated eggs and sperm by the AHR industry on the grounds that this automatically and deliberately deprives a child of the right to be raised by his or her own biological parent. She said identity issues faced the thousands of donor offspring who are now in adulthood and compared with the issues facing many adopted people.
Ms O’Brien said we need to learn from best practice on adoption and realize that what seems to solve the problem of infertility may have unintended consequences of loss and grief for children conceived in this way.
Noise, a group campaigning for marriage for same sex couples said “The best interest of children conceived through Assisted Reproduction lie in having their families respected and protected. Continuing to stigmatise children born through Assisted Reproduction particularly those born to same sex parents is a retrograde step. Surely what is most important is not how a particular child was conceived but that that child is wanted, cherished, loved and protected”.
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