There is a huge double think going on in the media about the importance of the natural ties. When it comes to adoption, they seem to think they are very important, but when it comes to assisted human reproduction they seem to have a completely different view.  

This double think became apparent again back in August when RTE’s Liveline took a call from a lady named Andi, who rang in some confusion about the fact that, in order for her husband to adopt her son from an earlier relationship, she also had to adopt him.

The facts were these: the boy’s biological father died when he was three and later the mother married another man. In order for him to become her son’s legal father, he had to adopt him.

However, for this to happen, the mother also had to become the child’s adoptive mother, despite already being his biological mother.

Understandably, she was very unhappy about this state of affairs.

She rightly made the point that, as his biological mother, she shouldn’t have to adopt her son.

But it illustrated the double think in our media culture about the importance of biological ties.

In this case, RTE’s Philip Boucher-Hayes (standing in for Joe Duffy) agreed that biological tie is very important.

She said: “His birth certificate will say adoption certificate on it, which I have a major problem with, because I’m like ‘Oh?’ because as far as I’m aware his old birth certificate will no longer exist, so that in itself is a really big change for a 14 year-old, you know, because that means then his biological dad won’t be on his birth cert.”

She added: “[H]is birth cert tells his story, you know, it’s his life, and I kinda feel a little bit like ‘I’m just going to scratch that, and we’re saying here’s your new birth cert.’  

“In a way were kind of saying, that never sort of happened and then putting the new birth cert with me as the adoptive mother, it’s just not, I dunno, it just doesn’t sit with me at all. How can it be possible that I have to adopt my own child. I’m his mother! I can’t adopt him.”  

Boucher-Hayes responded that the choice to alter the boy’s birth cert to remove his biological father was “quite a profound choice to make, to say ‘I am going to remove my biological father from my life story, from all official documentation, from here on in and I am essentially going to alter the very sort of founding bedrock of who I am’”.

Meanwhile, only yesterday, Socialist TD Claire Daly mentioned the case of a mother whose child had been adopted against her will.  

Deputy Daly said: “For the past 30 years, she has been trying to find her daughter. She contacted the Sacred Heart nun Sister Sarto, who was the order’s search and trace co-ordinator. There were letters, telephone calls, meetings and excuses to the effect that her letter was not received or the order did not have the information.  

“She was told her daughter’s adoptive family did not wish to know her or to have anything to do with their (child). Her request became more urgent when both she and one of her other children twice developed cancer and she wanted her daughter to be aware of her medical history. Even that did not help and she was begging for assistance.”

In other words, the biological link, in both of these contexts, was rightly acknowledged as profound and significant.

But in the context of donor-conceived children, where the decision to sever the biological tie is made before the child is even conceived, we are told that the biological link is irrelevant, that all that matters is that the child has loving parents.

Last September, RTE produced a programme called “Gay Daddy”. The essential theme was that it was very difficult for a gay man to adopt, and it should be made easier.  

The programme went through the various ways that the eponymous gay daddy, Darren Kennedy, could become a father. One of these was through egg donation. The ethical implications of this weren’t even referred to, much less teased out or debated. If Gay Daddy wants to be a daddy, then what possible objection could there be?

So the biological link is of fundamental importance, “the founding bedrock of who I am” in the words of Philip Bouchier Hayes. But not when it gets in the way of the ethic of choice.