... I am the result: a donor-conceived child.
And for a while, I was pretty angry about it.

I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the "parents" -- the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his "donation." As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?

Not so. The children born of these transactions are people, too. Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say.

[...]
Those of us created with donated sperm won't stay bubbly babies forever. We're all going to grow into adults and form opinions about the decision to bring us into the world in a way that deprives us of the basic right to know where we came from, what our history is and who both our parents are.

Some countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, are beginning to move away from the practice of paying donors and granting them anonymity, and making it somewhat easier for offspring to find their biological fathers. I understand anonymity's appeal for so many donors: Even if their offspring were to find them one day -- which is becoming more and more probable -- they have no legal, social, financial or moral obligation to their children.

[ 19 December 2006: Message edited by: Geneva ]

Personally, I'd probably never qualify as a sperm donor. I'm 5"11 and 180 lbs, I wear glasses, et cetera, so that's three things put together that would cause any women to veto me as an anonymous sperm donor.

That being said, I don't think they should ever be forced to pay child support. Right now sperm donation fulfills a purpose for thousands of women who want anonymous fathers, and an anonymous father is a full package. You can't have paternal financial support without default paternal financial involvement, that's fundamentally absurd. Note that should financial support ever become the norm, all existing sperm stocks would be invalididated as the contracts the men signed for are no longer legal. Following that, it would become very difficult to find an anonymous door at banks if men are no longer willing to donate for fear of financial ruin.

quote:

---

Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Brian white, interesting questions.
That being said, I don't think they should ever be forced to pay child support. Right now sperm donation fulfills a purpose for thousands of women who want anonymous fathers, and an anonymous father is a full package".
I think lots of women find an anonymous father in a club or a bar and never see them again, too, some by accident, some by design. Do these da's have to pay child support if ever they get caught?
And what of the child growing up not knowing who their father is?
Some people here are so haunted by family roots that they spend thousands of dollars finding their ancestors in europe asia and africa.
Why deny this to people with testtube daddies?
Sure the mummy wants an anonomous da and the da wants genetic immortality but the kid will want to know who the da is. Why should the want of the da and the ma be higher than the kids once the kid is 18? Equal rights seems right to me regardless of paperwork.
And what about rich old tightfisted guys wanting to spread their seed without spreading their wealth? They will be country hopping with their personal grooming staff, their grecian 2000, and their best photographer, jerking off into testtubes all over the world.
I personally feel it is very unfair on the kids to disallow them to find their fathers.
I bet court cases in the future will be focused on their right to know.
Brian

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by C.Morgan:
If we want to see sperm donations hit an all time low, just start forcing donors to be reunited with their offspring.

---