The false fertilization affair – what about the baby’s wishes/best interests?
peace,
Much has been written and said about the affair from a legal, halakhic, and moral perspective. It seems that everyone has something to say on the subject. Everyone talks about the rights and difficulties of the parents and about belonging (property). Ostensibly, there is no reference to the child himself as a party to the issue, even though once the child is born, he is already a person with his own rights and desires.
In principle, after a pair of parents raise a child, he or she usually becomes attached to them and loves them, and therefore, seemingly (I will argue later…) there is no fundamental advantage to the environment in which the biological or genetic parents grow up, as long as the attachment process is not disrupted. However, if a person were given a choice of where he or she would prefer to grow up and to whom he or she would become attached, it seems reasonable to me to assume that he or she would prefer to grow up with biological parents together with his or her biological siblings and become attached to them. Perhaps it could even be said that this is also the objective best interest of the child, since adopted children discover at one point or another the fact of their adoption, and this can affect the child, the treatment he or she receives within the family and/or the treatment he or she receives from the environment. (I have made assumptions here that require confirmation, but they seem reasonable to me.)
What is your opinion on the subject? Is it possible to evaluate the child’s own will? If so, is there a place to give weight to the child’s will and not just the parents’? Can this override the parents’ rights, assuming that his reasonable will is his right anyway?