Sperm bank ban in Turkey sparks debate

A recent law against artificial insemination, fueled by celebrities traveling abroad to become pregnant, has once again put the sperm bank issue on Turkey’s agenda.

Opinions vary on the matter as debates take a “woman’s rights” turn, but research on sperm bank babies has shifted attention from the mother to the child, by pointing out the long term effects of the mother’s decision on the child.

The new “Regulation on Treatment Centers to Aid Reproduction” law, which makes it a criminal offence for a woman to go abroad to get pregnant via artificial insemination, has been in effect since March 6, 2010.

A statement from the Ministry of Health reads; “Pregnancy through unknown sperms or eggs has been banned in our country through law, as in many developed Western countries.”

“The law is not to ‘protect the Turkish race’, as it has been misinterpreted, but rather based on a “genealogical connection”, meaning the identification of the father,” clarified the statement.

Minister of Health Recep Akdağ later commented on the law saying that the artificial insemination of an anonymous sperm could lead to complications such as legal problems between the father and the child on the subject of inheritance, and the possibility of siblings unknowingly entering a romantic relationship.

“A child knowing the identity of the father is just as much a universal law as it is a universal law to have children” said Akdağ.

The issue first drew interest in 2007, when actress Leyla Kömürcü became the first Turkish celebrity to become pregnant using a sperm bank.

Following scrutiny from various family members, Kömürcü announced at a press conference that she had legally changed her name to Leyla Bilginel, deciding that she did not want her son to carry the last name of a family that used such “heavy insults” towards her.

Güner Özkul, daughter of famous actor Münir Özkul, also became pregnant using a sperm bank in 2009.

The publicly debated issue became a real problem in March 2010 when the law was passed, creating legal consequences and jail time of one to three years for both the mother, and any Turkish doctors and medical institutions that recommend or aid in finding foreign sperm banks.

Most recently, celebrity personality Sevda Demirel announced that she had become pregnant using a sperm bank in July 2010.

Only after an investigation was launched by the Ministry of Health to determine whether or not criminal charges were to be filed did Demirel reveal that she had become pregnant out of wedlock, and was prompted to hide the pregnancy by the father’s conservative family.

The experts weigh in

İsmail Mete İtil, chairman of the Turkish Gynecologists' and Obstetricians' Association, was quoted in a March 15, 2010 article by BBC News; “It is a huge step backwards. The law should be reformed to take into account the new choices technology offers women- they have done the opposite.”

Also speaking to BBC News, prominent women’s rights campaigner and co-founder of Women for Women's Human Rights Pınar İlkkaracan stated, “This is completely against the philosophy of the reformed penal code. We spent years fighting to improve the law so that it would properly protect women's autonomy over their bodies and sexuality.”

“Women have possession over their own bodies and the decision to have children. The results of their decision only concern themselves” echoed Selen Doğan, of the Flying Broomstick Woman’s Communication and Research Association, to the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

Children’s author and mother, Mavisel Yener, however, told the Daily News; “I look at the subject from the perspective of the child. The child has the right to know who the father is; therefore I find it contrary to human rights.”

The reason for the law was interpreted as “religious and social” by obstetrician and gynecologist Associate Professor Yusuf Üstün of Medicana Hospital in a statement to the daily HaberTürk.

Ömer Taşçıoğlu, the mufti of Edirne, announced recently that artificial insemination is forbidden in Islam. The Wise Woman Research Center’s 2010 “Sperm Bank Report” also labeled it as “illicit.”

On the other hand, a column by Murak Kınıkoğlu in the daily Akşam quoted theology Professor Beyza Bilgin as saying, “If Allah would not allow that, then it would not be possible to do so.”

Facts reveal children’s plight

These varied comments have been based on personal opinions alone, until now. The first extensive research on the matter was conducted in the United States by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future.

Titled “My Daddy’s Name is Donor,” the study compared 486 young adults conceived through sperm donors, 562 young adults adopted as infants, and 563 young adults raised by their biological parents.

65 percent agree, “My sperm donor is half of who I am,” with almost 50 percent agreeing that they think about donor conception at least a few times a week, and 70 percent wonder what their sperm donor’s family is like.

Nearly 50 percent of donor offspring are sad to see their friends with their biological parents, and have trust issues with their mothers. Only around 20 percent of those raised by their biological parents feel this way.

With twice the number of those raised by biological parents, nearly 60 percent of donor offspring feel that they can depend more on their friends than their families.

Even walking down the street is stressful for the 58 percent of donor offspring, who become doubtful when seeing a random stranger who resembles them. Romantic relationships are harder for the 46 percent who worry about being related.

These feelings of isolation and frustration manifest themselves in negative ways for donor offspring, who are twice as likely to report problems with the law before the age of 25, 1.5 times more likely to report mental health problems, and 2.5 times more likely to struggle with substance abuse.

Statistics reveal that single parent families contribute to the downfall of children. The National Commission on Children reported that almost 75 percent of American children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before the age of 11, compared to the 20 percent of children in two-parent families.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Center for Health Statistics announced that children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems.

Three out of four teenage suicides occur in households where a parent has been absent, according to the article by Jean Bethke Elshtain titled “Family Matters: The Plight of America's Children.”

“In studies involving over 25,000 children using nationally representative data sets, children who lived with only one parent had lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, poor attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived with both parents,” reported the book “Growing up with a Single Parent,” by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur.

New research has revealed that being raised without a father could actually change the way your brain physically develops.

German biologist Anna Katharina Braun and her team at the Institute of Biology at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg conducted research on animals typically raised by two parents, to better understand what single parent humans go through.

The preliminary result was that fatherless degus (guinea pig-like rodents) exhibited more aggressive and impulsive behavior, compared to those raised by both parents.

The research, published in the journal “Neuroscience,” revealed that the neurons in the brains of single parent degus developed slower than those with both parents.

Dr. Braun and her colleagues are hopeful the research will help humans, as the basic wiring between the brain regions are the same between degus and humans.

While the women’s struggle for basic rights and freedoms cannot be ignored, these startling statistics reveal that the children conceived through sperm banks are often the ones ignored.