Cerin wrote:
nel, I keep coming back to what I see as an inconsistency: On the one hand, you find the societal view that creating new children is preferable to adoption to be harmful to a range of people. On the other hand, you are sympathetic to couples not naturally able to conceive (among the group you say is harmed by that viewpoint) who emphatically demonstrate that viewpoint by eschewing adoption and instead procuring sperm or eggs from outside the relationship in order to create new children they are unable to create in the natural course of their relationship. I'm having trouble understanding why you would advocate for a course of action that demonstrates an attitude you believe is harmful to the very people demonstrating it. Is it simply that they have as much right to hurt themselves as other people have to hurt them, and you support that right? Or am I misunderstanding you somewhere along the line?
No, you're correct that there is an inconsistency. I began this thread more-or-less sharing vison's and Impy's mindset. To my own surprise, I've found myself advocating a position I hadn't expected to take. I'm a fairly strong individualist, and I I tend to favor people who are facing challenges or disadvantages. I think those things are both playing in somehow. The latter plays into my view that adoption should not be considered inferior to biological procreation (which is also influenced by the various concerns I shared in my first post). But BOTH my individualism and my pro-underdog tendencies are playing into my feeling
really uncomfortable with a string of people who have had their own biological children speaking rather dismissively about how others (for whom biological children are apparently really important) don't have a right to the practical things that would make biological parenthood possible. (Essentially, it's a "negative right" - all that is required is for the state
not to interfere with the anonymous sperm donation process that is otherwise freely available to these prospective parents. It's not a positive right that requires any further accommodation from society.) I am especially concerned about lesbian couples who want children and single women who haven't been able to find the right partner, and on top of that are struggling with the possibility of having to give up their apparent dream of having children. In other words, we're not talking about uber-privileged demographics who believe everything in life has to go exactly right for them, contra vison's suggestion. We're talking about people who have inherently faced some rather serious challenges (okay, from a first-world perspective) and are going to face additional legal and practical challenges after the birth of their children, because they will be in alternative (and sometimes despised) parenting arrangements.
Now, I can't relate to the idea of wanting biological children at all. It's something that's just, at this point, completely out of the realm of my experience. So I don't quite get, at an emotional level, why it is so important to the single women or lesbians in question to have kids at all, let alone with a biological tie. But I accept that it is very important to them, even if that is puzzling to me. And it makes me uncomfortable to see people who have found themselves in the more "privileged" position of being able to procreate naturally and easily (as many have confessed, simply by thinking about it
) insist that others should have to give up on their rather-fervent desire to share in that experience. In many cases, that can be the consequence of barring anonymous sperm donation.
So yes, you're absolutely right that there is a contradiction, because I have been completely flummoxed to find myself typing the things that I am typing. A week ago I could've written the first half of your post myself. I'll probably end up on Team Cerin/vison/Impy eventually. But I just don't understand why I'm not there right now. This thread has been unexpectedly weird for me, in its causing me to support a demographic that I've more or less disagreed with until now.
I could easily go completely mad, bonkers, nutz, loony, insane, thinking about it.
Actually, what I "chose" was to have a husband whom I loved and who would be a wonderful, responsible father, before I actually had children. I just couldn't find him, right off. 
