My husband and I are thrilled to be welcoming our first child this spring, after an arduous I.V.F. journey lasting nearly two years. We ended up needing an anonymous egg donor, whom we found through an egg bank, to conceive our child.
Select family members and close friends who knew that we were trying are aware that we took this route. However, my husband told me that he doesn’t want anyone else knowing that we used donor eggs, and that he is upset that some people already know. He is afraid that in a few years, someone will let slip to the child that they were conceived with donor eggs before we as parents have a chance to tell them ourselves. He believes we’re violating our unborn child’s right to privacy by sharing this fact with others. His fear stems from an experience in his family in which an aunt accidentally revealed to a cousin that his biological father was not the man who raised him.
I have pointed out to him that what he fears is not likely to happen, that this is our story to tell as much as our child’s; and I’ve reminded him that we should let our child know how they were brought into this world at as young an age as possible, using language they can understand. Further, I wouldn’t have been able to get through this incredibly difficult and painful process without the small group of family and friends we had to rally around us. It was important to me to be able to share the experience with this group, and with some other good, trustworthy and loving friends. He doesn’t understand or respect this and is depriving me of something I hold dear by insisting on secrecy — and this is what hurts the most. I have pleaded with him to see my side, but he doesn’t budge. Out of respect for his wishes, I’ve now kept it from several additional close friends, which has been painful for me.
What could possibly bring him around? Or how could I make peace with his position? And have I really deprived our unborn child of a right to privacy by telling a few people about how the child was conceived? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
When your husband talks about the child’s privacy, he’s suggesting that the child deserves the right to decide (at some unspecified age) who does and who does not know how this conception occurred. Yet we don’t usually think that the basic circumstances of our conception are something to keep secret. In the typical case, people understand children to be the product of sex between their parents. Is that a violation of privacy? It’s true that people who are the result of an anonymous egg donation can keep this fact quiet. The question is what interest it serves.
The way I think about privacy rights is to ask whether someone has a significant, special and legitimate interest in controlling access to a piece of information. If so, let’s try to grant the person control over that information. There are lots of facts about me that I can’t stop other people knowing: that I eat food, go to the bathroom, breathe — to start a long list of things everybody does and everybody knows that everybody does, not all of which are things that you would want to be seen doing by strangers. Does your child have an interest in other people’s not knowing how he or she came to be?
Children can tease others about pretty much anything even slightly unusual — having red hair was a torment for Anne of Green Gables. The fact that there’s nothing shameful about being born from a donated egg, then, doesn’t mean your child couldn’t be teased about it. This, though, seems like a manageable risk. And anyway, if your kid’s playmates find out, it’ll probably be because he has told them. All things considered, I’d say your child wouldn’t be in a worse situation if people knew about the egg donation.
Now, in this case, as in many cases, there’s no way of revealing the information about your child’s origins without revealing facts about others — notably you and your husband. But your husband hasn’t said that he’s worried about how the disclosure would affect him personally. And you’ve made it clear how much you’ll suffer from not being able to talk about your experiences with people close to you. Besides, if the facts come out later, maybe because your child brings it up, those friends may be upset that you acted as if you couldn’t trust them. Amid all the arguments about privacy, we should remember that being able to freely share facts that matter to us among friends and family is also something to value.
Your plan to be fully transparent, discussing the issue as soon as your child can make sense of it, makes your husband’s stated concern about premature disclosure a nonissue. In fact, you might start mentioning egg donation even before your child can understand. That’s a common technique with parents of adopted children: Introduce the language early, so there’s never any sense that it’s a fraught topic.
Unless, for your husband, it really is a fraught topic. Perhaps he thinks there’s something vaguely shameful about the fact that you aren’t both the biological parents. You say you’ve reminded him that you want to be as open as possible with your kid; you don’t quite say that he has committed to the plan. Because, in the end, his position on privacy isn’t compatible with it — little kids aren’t known for their discretion. And if your husband treats the egg donation like a taboo subject, not to be spoken of outside the family, a result could be that your child feels some shame about it, too.
That would be unfortunate, because your plan is a good one. A two-decade study by researchers at the University of Cambridge found that in assisted-reproduction families, both kids and parents did better when the facts were disclosed early. Many fertility clinics have therapists who can help couples work through such issues. In the meantime, encourage your husband to rethink the episode about his aunt. Because that’s a cautionary tale about keeping secrets, not about spilling them.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a woman who’d had an existential conversation with her boyfriend. She wrote: “My boyfriend and I were talking about protecting human life, and he said that he doesn’t believe that human life is necessarily worth more than any other kind of life. For example, he said that if one of our cats were drowning next to a human who was a stranger to us (who was also drowning) and he could save just one, he would choose our cat. Is this morally wrong?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “For many people, pets are fictive kin; they’re considered part of the family. In one study I’ve seen, hundreds of people were asked to consider how they’d respond if their pet ran in front of a bus at the same time that a foreign tourist stepped in front of it. They can only save one; the other will be killed. Which would they rescue? What the experimental psychologist Richard Topolski and colleagues found was that about 40 percent of respondents said they’d save their pet. … These aren’t people with some grave defect of character. … But yes, it’s very wrong. … Those human strangers? They had rich emotional lives and they had plans, short-term and long-term, big and small; it’s a good guess that they were also part of other people’s plans, other people’s emotional lives. … I’m saying that your boyfriend is wrong; I’m not saying that he’s rotten. The more pressing question for you is this: If he had to choose between you and one of those cats, would he have to think it over?” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I would argue that The Golden Rule applies here. If I would choose to rescue my pet before another human being, I could then expect that someone else would choose to retrieve their retriever while letting me or, worse, my loved one (child, parent, spouse) perish. Do unto others, right? It’s more than a little unsettling to think that almost half of us place so little value on human life. — Diane
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I don’t think it’s wrong to save a pet over a stranger. When I adopted my pet, I agreed to care for her throughout her life. I live alone, and I do not think I would have survived Covid isolation without her. How could I choose to save a stranger over a dog I pledged to support and who saved me from mental distress when I was not able to physically socialize with others? She is part of my family. — Michele
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Pets are not murderers, rapists, wife batterers or child abusers. People are and can be any of these. I grew up in a “family” of physical, mental and emotional violence. Many survivors like me find peace more with animal families and have purposely chosen not to procreate to prevent passing on mental illness, addiction, etc. We have chosen partners, often survivors, who have made similar decisions. The fact that 40 percent of the respondents opted to save their pet does not surprise me. — Marion
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The Ethicist’s response is overly confident in the supreme value of human life over all other beings. He cites our emotional life and social interconnections as the basis of our value. Yet plants and animals also share complex interconnections. And many animals demonstrate emotions. I am am a physician and a humanist. I would save the drowning human over a mere pet. This decision is instinct, nothing more — a loyalty to my tribe. Indeed, we live on a fragile planet of limited size and filled with life-forms interdependent upon each other for survival. Let’s not justify our kinship with hubris. — Peter
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We know what the boyfriend said, but there’s no predicting what he would actually do in an emergency situation. It’s an adrenaline thing. — Kenneth
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