After reading an article about problems with AI or artificial insemination, it puts me to ponder on AI cases as well as the four position foundation or 4PF goal of the blessed married couples who could not have their biological chemistry to have their own child.
Pregnancy as well as sexual activities before the blessing of marriage is not only prohibited among the many churches like in Christian beliefs or tradition. Adultery after the blessing-marriage is also prohibited.
But beyond the desires of sex, married man or couples aim to have their child. And what if their chemistry and health won't allow them?
Child adoption is a way to help them. But in science and medical developments, doctors are offering the AI and other methods to help the couples have their own biological child. Artificial Insemination or AI is a medical process where medical doctors mediate to assist the sperm cells of the husband to reach and fertilize the egg cells of the wife giving a chance to have the wife develop the pregnancy. But deeper problems cannot be solved here if the husband could not have even a single sperm cell or the wife to produce a single egg cell. A third party called donor is available. But is this allowable in the Christian belief and tradition?
The cell from a third party is out from the blessing of the couple. The cell which will serve as a seed of life of a child, does not come out due to love. It comes from somewhere outside the realm of true love. In a sense, AI for the blessed couple can be allowable but AID is outside the blessing of the couple.
And how about 4PF-D or a four-position foundation with donor?
To have an adopted child from a donor who offers his/her child to a couple in order that the couple can have an object of love, an object of their parental love, may not violate the blessing of the couple to recieve a given child. Somehow, the child came not from a third party but from a couple who made the child from their own seeds of life through proper love.
If the adopting parents are to apply their parentship to the child, from the very start, they know their dream before-hand. Now that they have a child adn they can practice parentism and express their God-centered love to the child, then the child will have a good start.
Eventually, the child, even when told about his origin, will not be over-shadowed by his revealed biological fact, if the proper love and care of the practicing parents are good and solid enough.
The story news below is a supplement to this case on parentism.
Kapuso
Group airs problems with artificial insemination
By AKEMI YOSHIMOTO of Japan Times
Kyodo News
As an academic panel prepares to offer its judgment on the ethics of surrogate birth and related issues, a group of people conceived through artificial insemination by donors is going public to shed light on existing problems.
Everyone in the group was conceived with sperm donated by a third person because the fathers were infertile due to illness or other causes.
Conceiving children through artificial insemination by donor, or AID, has existed in Japan for about 60 years, although the practice is largely kept under wraps.
The Science Council of Japan, an independent academic panel that makes policy recommendations to the government, is expected to make a judgment on the ethics of surrogate births this month.
At a Dec. 1 Tokyo symposium, the support group said it wants the council to know "about the problems that have been occurring as a result of existing medical technology before it takes the expansion of reproductive technology into consideration."
One woman in her 20s who asked not to be named said her mother told her five years ago she was an AID baby. She learned the truth when she was distraught about whether she would suffer from the same illness that her father had, which was hereditary.
She said her mother's acknowledgment cleared up why her father did not have much interest in her, and her own feeling that she was somehow different from the rest of the relatives.
"Children can feel the tension in families that have secrets and are distressed about it," she said. "It's wrong for parents to think children would be better off if they didn't know the truth."
Japan had its first AID baby in 1949 when a girl was born at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo. More than 10,000 babies have reportedly been born via this method at Keio and other hospitals since then, but details have been kept secret, including the names of the sperm donors.
Most of the parents of AID children have hidden the matter, except when the mother or father falls ill or they divorce. Many offspring — whether young or grown — in such a situation have become distrustful of their parents for not telling them the truth.
A doctor in his 30s said he learned from a blood test five years ago while in medical school that his father's blood was not in his veins.
He said he felt like "half of what had sustained me suddenly disappeared." He had never suspected that his father was not his biological father.
The man visited Keio University Hospital, where his mother had undergone treatment, for clues about the donor, but the hospital rejected his request.
Based on the information that many Keio medical students were sperm donors, he tracked medical students at the time his mother was undergoing treatment. He also collected mug shots from newspapers and on the Internet to see if he resembled the people in the photos. His efforts proved futile.
"My parents are my present parents. I don't consider the donor my father," he said, while admitting he would still like to find the person. "I'd feel completely different if I'd known about my background when I was a child and met the donor."
The group's booklet says if surrogate births and donations of eggs begin to spread, "the children born through such means may experience the same distress and pain that we had."
If the Science Council of Japan approves surrogate births, the twentysomething woman said: "A guarantee of the right to know one's origin is a minimum requirement. I want them to think carefully about the feelings of future children."
By AKEMI YOSHIMOTO of Japan Times
Kyodo News
As an academic panel prepares to offer its judgment on the ethics of surrogate birth and related issues, a group of people conceived through artificial insemination by donors is going public to shed light on existing problems.
Everyone in the group was conceived with sperm donated by a third person because the fathers were infertile due to illness or other causes.
Conceiving children through artificial insemination by donor, or AID, has existed in Japan for about 60 years, although the practice is largely kept under wraps.
The Science Council of Japan, an independent academic panel that makes policy recommendations to the government, is expected to make a judgment on the ethics of surrogate births this month.
At a Dec. 1 Tokyo symposium, the support group said it wants the council to know "about the problems that have been occurring as a result of existing medical technology before it takes the expansion of reproductive technology into consideration."
One woman in her 20s who asked not to be named said her mother told her five years ago she was an AID baby. She learned the truth when she was distraught about whether she would suffer from the same illness that her father had, which was hereditary.
She said her mother's acknowledgment cleared up why her father did not have much interest in her, and her own feeling that she was somehow different from the rest of the relatives.
"Children can feel the tension in families that have secrets and are distressed about it," she said. "It's wrong for parents to think children would be better off if they didn't know the truth."
Japan had its first AID baby in 1949 when a girl was born at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo. More than 10,000 babies have reportedly been born via this method at Keio and other hospitals since then, but details have been kept secret, including the names of the sperm donors.
Most of the parents of AID children have hidden the matter, except when the mother or father falls ill or they divorce. Many offspring — whether young or grown — in such a situation have become distrustful of their parents for not telling them the truth.
A doctor in his 30s said he learned from a blood test five years ago while in medical school that his father's blood was not in his veins.
He said he felt like "half of what had sustained me suddenly disappeared." He had never suspected that his father was not his biological father.
The man visited Keio University Hospital, where his mother had undergone treatment, for clues about the donor, but the hospital rejected his request.
Based on the information that many Keio medical students were sperm donors, he tracked medical students at the time his mother was undergoing treatment. He also collected mug shots from newspapers and on the Internet to see if he resembled the people in the photos. His efforts proved futile.
"My parents are my present parents. I don't consider the donor my father," he said, while admitting he would still like to find the person. "I'd feel completely different if I'd known about my background when I was a child and met the donor."
The group's booklet says if surrogate births and donations of eggs begin to spread, "the children born through such means may experience the same distress and pain that we had."
If the Science Council of Japan approves surrogate births, the twentysomething woman said: "A guarantee of the right to know one's origin is a minimum requirement. I want them to think carefully about the feelings of future children."
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