{"id":224788,"date":"2020-06-06T09:14:11","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T14:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=224788"},"modified":"2020-06-06T21:50:48","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T02:50:48","slug":"fertility-disaster-siblings-not-related","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/fertility-disaster-siblings-not-related\/","title":{"rendered":"Fertility industry disaster: Siblings learn they aren’t related. Women realize they were lied to."},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Buzzfeed has exposed<\/a> yet another fundamental issue with the unregulated fertility industry. Multiple people have shared their stories of growing up with “siblings” and building family bonds with them, only to have their worlds turned upside down when they discovered they weren’t actually related to one another.<\/p>\n

Sam Johnson, a 29-year-old New Yorker, was raised<\/a> by a lesbian couple and there was never any question about his conception — he knew his moms had used a sperm donor. While he was comfortable with his upbringing, he still felt something was missing. According to the donor information card his mother gave him, his father was an Italian, Catholic doctor. Johnson clung to that, attempting to learn to speak Italian and prepare Italian foods. In 2007, he found the Donor Sibling Registry<\/a>\u00a0and began connecting to multiple people, all ostensibly conceived using the same man: Donor #19. He met one of those siblings, Genna Ellis, in person, and they quickly became close. \u201cIt was a powerful experience for both of us, considering that was the first time we thought we were communicating with someone we were blood-related to,\u201d Ellis told Buzzfeed.<\/p>\n

They met other siblings, and reveled in their newfound bond, with Johnson inviting them to his wedding. \u201cI was always proud to be like, yeah, this is my sister \u2014 to be able to say that,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI liked the idea of it.\u201d But then one of the half-sisters took a 23andMe test and learned she didn’t actually have Italian heritage and that her biological father was actually a Slovakian man. Johnson and Ellis then took 23andMe tests as well and discovered that none of the three siblings were related at all. And it was a painful realization.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe obviously didn\u2019t grow up with one another, and we obviously didn\u2019t live close to one another, so that already makes it difficult to maintain a relationship,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut then when you add the fact that we\u2019re not even related, it\u2019s like, what\u2019s really holding it together?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Christy Coyle was happy to connect with another mother named Lauran. Her son Tylen and Lauran’s son had been conceived using the same sperm donor during the same time frame — or so they believed. Coyle and Lauran decided to raise their sons together, excited at the notion of giving them each a brother to grow up with. \u201cWe had planned that when they turned 18 and got to meet the donor that they were going to do it together,\u201d Coyle told Buzzfeed. \u201cIt was just our life plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the boys turned 10, Coyle and Lauran had AncestryDNA tests done and looked at the results while on the phone together. \u201cAnd then it was just dead silence,\u201d Coyle recalled. \u201cThere was no noise at all. And she just said, \u2018They\u2019re not related.\u2019\u201d She told Buzzfeed that she felt not only as though she had betrayed her son, but that she herself had been violated — inseminated by a man she didn’t consent to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was doing what was best. I picked somebody who he would get to know when he turned 18. I had a piece of paper telling me what he looked like. I had all the information, and suddenly you find out none of that was true. You don\u2019t even know who you got,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really hard thing to process. And you have to go back and really reevaluate if you made the right decision. I question myself a lot. It made me feel horrible.\u201d Now, it turned out Tylen didn’t have a half-brother after all, and that decade of bonding felt as though it were for nothing.<\/p>\n

Bryce Branzell told Buzzfeed he had considered donating sperm because he needed money, and a sperm bank was promising $500. He went to the facility, but backed out at the last minute, giving his test sample to a technician and asking for it to be discarded. He was told it would be disposed of. 10 years later, after Branzell had married and had two children, someone messaged his mother, saying they had discovered a match on AncestryDNA. She, in turn, reached out to Branzell, asking if he’d ever made a sperm donation. \u201cIt was one of those moments where I\u2019m like, there has to be some sort of mistake here. There\u2019s no way something could have happened,\u201d Branzell said. \u201cAnd then all of a sudden the thought popped in my mind that this did happen; I did provide a test sample to the company. Could that have been it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Branzell, it turned out, was Tylen’s father — the man whose sample Christy Coyle had been given.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Conservative commentator: Christians must ask \u2018tough questions\u2019 about birth control, IVF, and surrogacy<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Branzell has filed a lawsuit, but Coyle and Lauran said most courts don’t care, as long as the child is healthy. \u201cI\u2019ve read stories of other moms. The judge kind of says, \u2018You\u2019ve got a healthy kid. What do you care?\u2019 Well, because this is a person, and I\u2019ve been telling him one thing for 10 years and now I\u2019ve been lying unknowingly,\u201d Lauran told Buzzfeed. \u201cHe\u2019s a person. He\u2019s not a product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wendy Kramer is one of the founders of the Donor Sibling Registry and pointed out the fertility industry is completely unregulated. \u201cI think for so many of us when we had to use a donor in order to have a child we all thought, Oh, it\u2019s the medical industry. These are medical professionals, so there\u2019s going to be the same ethics and morals and responsibilities and record-keeping,\u201d she told Buzzfeed. \u201cWhat many of us have come to realize over the years is this isn\u2019t the medical profession. These are sperm-sellers, and that\u2019s very different, and their ethics and responsibilities are very different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, stories like these are becoming increasingly more common, as IVF and surrogacy grow in popularity. People conceived using IVF, donor eggs or donor sperm are discovering they have numerous siblings, or that their parents aren’t their biological parents, and suddenly they are questioning their own identity and existence.<\/p>\n

As Lauran said, children born through the fertility industry are people<\/em>, not products. <\/em>However,\u00a0both the fertility industry and its customers inherently commodify children — treating them as products<\/em> to be bought and sold. Women peruse a catalog to find the “perfect” sperm donor, while others rent a woman’s body to carry a child. It is impossible<\/em> to humanize a process that by its very nature is dehumanizing and commodifying. When life is created — and destroyed — as part of a money-making industry, it should come as little surprise that those behind the scenes and in the courthouses don’t actually care how the “product” was made as long as<\/a> it arrived in good condition.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note, 6\/6: A correction has been made with regard to use of IVF.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buzzfeed has exposed yet another fundamental issue with the unregulated fertility industry. Multiple people have shared their stories of growing up with “siblings” and building family bonds with them, only to have their worlds turned upside down when they discovered they weren’t actually related to one another. Sam Johnson, a 29-year-old New Yorker, was raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":192538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nFertility industry disaster: Siblings learn they aren't related. 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