Can autistics be sperm donors?

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He (or she) who hath children hath given hostages unto Fortune, be it for Good or Ill. Having kids under any circumstances is a crap shoot. Even people in apparently good health might be carrying some lethal recessive characteristics.

ruveyn

Im convinced that ASD is a contributing factor. Note that I let "single" out of this.



Im also happy with my life and was informed about ASD because my brother was diagnosed

I should hope you'd have grounds to sue for discrimination if they did that. We're people too and we deserve to be treated as such.

I have a friend who tackled this topic from a different orientation. She is gay and wanted her DNA to go on (if possible) but without getting pregnant or raising kids. The only way for women to do that is to be an egg donor. So she signed up.

One of the questions asked as part of the application was sexual orientation. She and I talked for days about this before she finally turned the application in. On the one hand, she really wanted to perpetuate her DNA without herself becoming a mother. On the other hand she didn't want to lie and pretend to be hetero. In the end she went with truth.

She is very beautiful, and there was a requirement to include a recent photo. She is also very athletic with some marathons and sporting wins to her name.(Included on the application. You were supposed to list hobbies and interests.) She was chosen by an infertile couple and somewhere out there is a child carrying her DNA. This child is likely beautiful and athletic. He/she may also be gay, if in fact that is genetic (I believe it is and so does my friend and so did the egg donation people since they put it on the application).

So what caused the couple to choose her? Did they consider the genetic benefits of her beauty and athleticism to be more important than the increased likelihood they would have a gay child? Did the pros outweigh the cons? Did they not see homosexuality as a negative thing at all and therefore it didn't have to be weighed against anything? Do they believe homosexuality is a choice and not genetic and therefore her choice was not relevent to the DNA she would be passing on? Did they consciously hope for a gay child? There is no way to know the answer to any of these questions. The only thing known is that she put "gay" on the egg donor application and some couple wanted her eggs.

And so I advise honesty. Like StuartN said, people have a right to weigh the knowns before choosing DNA. Generally looks and behaviour are a proxy that people use when choosing a partner (choosing whose DNA they want to join theirs with) and people did this even before anybody knew what DNA was. If you don't know about something, you don't know. But if you do know, you have a moral obligation not to lie about it, just as people in reltionships have a moral obligation to make that sort of disclosure before marriage.

And just as happened with my friend, disclosure of something deemed negative by society does not mean nobody will choose your DNA. You may have other attributes the infertile couple feels overrides the negative ( a very high IQ? ). Or they may not feel that autism is genetic and therefore not relevent (your DNA might get chosen by people who firmly believe it is caused by vaccines). Or it may get chosen by a couple that sees this as a positive rather than a negative despite the more prevalent belief.

Be honest. And also be hopeful that somebody out there will look at your application papers that describe you genetically and think "I want that for my child". After all, some couple out there chose DNA from a woman they had been told was gay.

There is an analogy with kingfisherx's point about the increased possibility of suffering. Just as autistic people are at an increased risk for a difficult life (judging by The Haven), bullying and suicide (again, judging by The Haven), so are gay people. To knowlingly have a gay child is to knowingly have a child who will likely be bullied, harrassed, face discrimination etc. And yet a couple out there decided that- for reasons of their own- that was a risk they would take . In all honesty, to have a child at all is to risk that the child will suffer some terrible thing. Parents with no genetic problems whatsoever can wind up with a severly disabled child due to an accident. To have a child is to gamble.

Oh come now. Reproductive rights and all that. Everyone can make their choice -- it's the law!

Question: do you actually think having a disabled child is comparable to dying in a plane crash? Personally, I know which one I would much prefer. I'll take far greater odds of having a disabled child (especially if that disability is autism) than of being in a plane crash because the latter is so much worse it's impossible to make a comparison.

I'm fine with a one in eleven million chance of a plane crash if I want to get somewhere. The reason I'm not fine with a 50/50 chance is because a plane crash could kill me. Probably would kill me. That's a risk I might take for various reasons, but travel is almost certainly never going to be one of them. On the other hand, what happens if I give birth to a disabled child? Well, then I have a little baby God made just for me, full of possibility, and while there are disabilities I would consider worse to have than not to have, and though some of those are not just minor annoyances but serious problems, a disabled child is a child, with all the wonderful things that implies. (Though I would actually worry about having kids because of the very real risk that I would have an NT, odd as that may sound. I wouldn't be able to properly care for a child unless it were autistic, so I would have to let someone else raise an NT, but giving a child away to be raised by whoever would take it would be possibly consigning it to suffer far more than it would if it were disabled. And that IS a reason not to give birth.)

Seems kind of mean.

Ive opted out of having children because I always suspected there was something wrong with me. I was correct.

Are we seriously comparing being "gay" to being "severely autisitc?"

Why not? Do you have a problem with gay people?

Exactly.

Both sexuality and autism are thought to be at least part genetic, so they are comparable.

In terms of what a potential parent might consider an acceptable or unacceptable possibility, yes. Whoever wound up with my friend's eggs considered a gay child an acceptable possibility. A conservative religious couple might consider a severly autistic child to be an acceptable possibility preferable to a gay child. Everybody has their own internal list.

I think this post I read a few years ago is relevant to this thread (link).

Also this one (link), although it's linked in the above post as well.

Why don't you stop reading malicious intent into what people are saying.

There is a big difference between the two and it has nothing to do with having a problem with gay people.

It is idiotic to compare autism vs orientation.

People are medically diagnosed with autism because they have severe problems functioning in various areas. No matter how much you spout the "neurodiversity" nonsense, it is an incredibly debilitating disability.

There is no comparison with homosexuality, where the only real problems are the prejudices of others.

We are swerving back towards hostility. If this keeps up I'll have to lock it down.

Thanks Midlife Aspie for keeping things sane in here (relatively speaking)

I am sorry, but being gay and being severely autistic are two entirely different things. We are comparing apples to oranges IMHO. Let's compare nuero-disease to neuro-disease and again go back to my example of parkinsons or bi-polar. Do you think anyone would chose that?

Verdandi: Great link. I agree with that author wholeheartedly RE value of human life that exists today. I do NOT agree that we should purposefully go off and pro-create when there is increased risk that the child being born will be severely disabled. I know that seems a little gray to most of you but this is not a black/white topic at all.

I think that whether or not people choose to have children, it's really up to them. They can take any and all information into account and it's still their business. I do not see the point in taking a stance against the possibility of disabled children being born, and I am uncomfortable with speaking on behalf of people who actually do have those disabilities as to whether more children with lives like theirs should or should not be born.

I do not see it as a black and white issue because I do not see one solution as being workable. I do not think that reproductive freedom is something that should be reserved for people who aren't autistic, or have ADHD, or have bipolar disorder, or any other disability. I am more concerned that there be supports - guaranteed medical care and social supports, among other things - in place so that disabled people can live as they need, which may also include their own choices to have families.

This is where I stand on this, I'm not here to call anyone out.

Last edited by Verdandi on 09 Feb 2011, 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.