The Ethicist

Vu Quang Hung | school teacher |

My wife and I retained a "fertility consultant" to help us find an egg donor who matched some of my wife's diverse ethnic background, which, as we explained, is part ethnic Hawaiian. After a month of dead ends, we asked the consultant directly whether she had searched any Hawaiian donor agencies. She said no, and that she would not do so in the future. Now she refuses to refund our retainer. Did she behave ethically? NAME WITHHELD, CHICAGO

Donor Agent Provocateur

By ARIEL KAMINER

Published: April 6, 2012

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Illustration by Matthew Woodson

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As a matter of professional ethics, no, the counselor should not have taken you on as clients if you made clear that you were interested in a service she did not intend to provide. That part is simple. The rest of it is anything but.

All prospective parents have ideas — fantasies, really, though I don't mean that disparagingly — about the shapes their families will take. Those ideas shouldn't be subject to anyone else's dictates. But they shouldn't be taken at face value, either. And they certainly shouldn't be taken as universal.

For starters, if your fantasy is a child who resembles your wife, be forewarned that choosing a donor who shares your ethnicity might not get you there. Common ethnicity won't guarantee a close genetic resemblance; given all the unseen variables, two people who have a common heritage might be further apart genetically than two people who do not. In any case, less than 6 percent of Hawaii's population identifies itself as "ethnically Hawaiian." Who knows what the numbers are among the state's egg donors?

Choosing a donor of the same ethnicity wouldn't guarantee a close physical resemblance, either. As in any other group, one ethnic Hawaiian might look like the world's most beautiful linebacker; another might look like a homely blade of grass. Your wife's doppelgänger could be in another state, or even on another continent.

These might seem like purely logistical considerations, but they hint at why a preference that seems almost too straightforward to mention isn't straightforward at all. Not all families, as it turns out, want a kid who resembles them. Lots of parents hope their children will be new and improved versions of themselves, which might include looking either more or less "ethnic" than they do. Meanwhile others dream of children who bear no resemblance to them whatsoever. According to a leading fertility specialist in New York, some couples come to her specifically looking for egg donors whose backgrounds differ from their own. One Anglo woman said she hoped to find a Japanese donor.

Her desire obviously reflects some pretty complex ideas about race. A donor who matches your (or your wife's) background is a common desire, but that doesn't make it less complex. Perhaps you feel that it's better for children to grow up among their own, or that it's kinder to children not to broadcast the complexities of their conception. All respectable positions, to be sure. But all particular positions, which 10 other couples might argue 10 different ways.

So by all means, press your case with the fertility consultant. But also give some thought to the assumptions that might be shaping your search and to their possible ethical implications. With a subject as muddled as race or ethnicity, those assumptions (which we all harbor, in one form or another) are always worth scrutinizing. But never more so than when they are being projected onto an innocent new life.

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