Saturday, December 9, 2006

YOUR COMMENTS

Today I am interrupting the story of how my observations of others' adoptions influenced my embryo donation. That's because I had my own rude interruption and want to make sure we all understand the ground rules of polite discourse.

For about two weeks I have been recording my thoughts about embryo donation. In that time a lot has happened, including finding recipients for the embryos and beginning to chart a path towards donation with them.

As you can imagine, this is an extremely personal decision which raises many emotions and ethical quandries for donor and recipient alike. I am sharing the process with you because it may help you, or someone you know, make your own decision about using alternative reproductive technologies, or avoiding them. It may give you helpful advice about open adoption, IVF, embryo donation, using donor embryos, dealing respectfully with lesbian families or none of the above. Whether or not you agree with my choices or opinions, I have the right to present them as I wish. Anyone who does not enjoy reading this blog is more than welcome to "change the channel".

I have enjoyed the comments and encouraging personal notes sent by you, the readers. What I did not enjoy, and in fact deleted immediately without even considering publishing it, was an extremely rude and aggressive comment sent in by someone who seemed rather emotionally unbalanced.

In this blog I write about issues that are controvertial. I am always open to hearing well-reasoned, respectful discussions reflecting other viewpoints. I will publish them if appropriate. However, please be aware of a few things when sending in your comments:

1) Be nice.

2) If I write about bad behavior by my ex-supervisor, a birthmother, a birthfather, donor, recipient or anyone else, it does not mean I support that behavior. Quite the contrary, I am usually presenting their examples as ones to avoid.

3) This is my blog. I get to say what I want. If you think my values are inherently wrong, write your own blog.

4) Anonymous comments are much less likely to be published.

5) I'd rather write about our recipient-selection process than our comment-selection process. So if you really need to fire off that abusive email, please don't waste your time or ours by submitting it here. I can change the settings to see your email address if this continues.

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