Thanks for posting this. We are discussing this in PHIL 211 right now, and the conversations with my students have been amazing and often draw on media sources to supplement the philosophy we are reading.

I would not put things quite so bluntly, but its true that if you google around even just a little, you will find NPR and other news outlets discussing identity and individuality issues that some donor conceived persons face. You will also find some chilling testimonials from donor conceived persons who do feel abandoned by their biological fathers (though you will also find testimonials of people who feel just fine about it). And once you think about it, none of this is all that surprising. Why should we be surprised to learn that human beings think a large part of who they are is bound up with where they came from and WHO they came from, and that they quite reasonably seek a connection with these sources? And why should we be surprised to learn that when these persons either can’t find that source, or are actively prevented from finding it, they feel a genuine loss? Or, that if and when they do find it, the biological parent is utterly uninterested in its offspring, there is genuine loss, confusion and pain? Whatever we want to say about making human beings from commodified genetic materials at the end of the day, it would be a mistake to refuse to listen to these voices, or to understand their experiences.