Of course, it’s impossible to outlaw sperm banks, but if there were a general societal consensus that denying children the right to know their father is a monstrosity of the first order, it would be easier to keep the practice of consumerist child purchasing at least somewhat at bay. If people who participated in any dealings with sperm banks were shunned like the lepers they are, that would help to eradicate this insanity.
If the US signed on to the Declaration of the Rights of Children, it would be possible for such kids to sue for violating their right to crucial information. Of course, only the people who have not been completely beaten down by their upbringing can file such a lawsuit, and what are the chances that somebody who was brought into this world under the slogan of “you won’t know your Daddy because my whims come first” won’t be completely beaten down?
Clarissa's Blog 
I wasn’t aware that sperm doners were shunned. However, there were funny stories about uses of Starbucks restrooms in NYC. “This guy went into the restroom, ejaculated into a paper cup, came out, handed it to me, and I went in and injected it.” Eggs are expensive, so people work around the system to get what they want. I don’t see legislation as a solution. Nor do I want to go back to the day when children with unknown fathers were declared to be illegitimate and shunned.
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Not the children should be shunned, obviously. But the consumerist parents who deprive a child of a father because it’s convenient. People need to be told that this is a horrible thing to do, and maybe they’d think twice about it.
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Comment on “One thought on Sperm Banks”
I don’t think sperm banks are any more of an issue here than women who have sex freely with multiple partners. I applaud and celebrate women who defy social convention and do this, but it does lead sometimes to children having no idea who their biological father is. In two instances of which I am aware, the mother herself does not know. I wonder whether this situation is more common than women who do not want to be emotionally involved with a man using the services of a sperm bank.
And to Vic Crain: No, I agree, I don’t think sperm donors are shunned, although I am not sure I have ever known any so my knowledge is not firsthand.
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Of course, I’m completely opposed to the exclusion of the real parents from a child’s life for any reason.
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Sperm bank – My sister went through four rounds of chemo to fight breast cancer. The chemo made her infertile. Before she underwent chemo, she did egg extraction, hoping to someday have biological children. Because she didn’t have a husband/partner, she used a special bank to fertilize half the eggs she got because they docs said frozen fetuses survive better than frozen eggs. Now she has a great boyfriend whom I think she’ll marry, and probably use the frozen eggs with, but if the eggs are not viable, they’ll use the fetuses. It’s her best chance at having children, after having her breast and fertility taken away by cancer at age 29. In my opinion, such as it is, sperm banks have a valid use in these sorts of instances, especially if it increases someone’s ability to have children that they desperately want.
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I’m very sorry for your sister! I wish her the speediest recovery possible.
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I think this vein of thought has been around for a long time and predates sperm and egg banks. “Let me keep changing wives and sexual partners so I can have a son. Let me only let the children who come out the way I want live. Let me only recognize the children who have the pedigree I want,” etc.
Have you read The Girls Who Went Away?
I don’t necessarily agree that sperm banks are bad, but there’s an undeniable connection between the ease of donation and anonymity and the ease many men have in shedding children and women they have prior relationships with. My childhood best friend had a father until she was five, but after her parents divorced, her bio dad faded out of her life and has not been in contact ever since. Her bio dad remarried with another family. I see a lot of divorced men who look to younger women to have a “fresh start” with a new family and new children, which is why I question divorced or “in the process of getting divorced” dudes who are 50 and have an age range of 18-25 and have children but don’t want to mess with women their age or who have children and yet they hit me up And they are are clueless and charmless as the younger men without the benefit of retaining their looks.
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You are absolutely right, Shakti! Reproductive technologies are just one more way to facilitate the treatment of children as props that can be tossed around at will.
My ex-husband was a child of his mom and her married boss. The boss balked at dumping his wife and marrying the mistress, so the mistress passed the boy as her husband’s son. The husband and the son loved each other, had a beautiful relationship, but then the married lover finally decided to dump his wife. So my ex’s mom came home one day and told her husband, “Get your things and get out because Mr Boss is moving in tomorrow. By the way, he’s the boy’s real father.” How all of this made the boy feel was not very interesting to her.
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OT: A woman after Clarissa’s own heart (or brain) <a href=”http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/sunday/stop-saying-i-feel-like.html?referer=’>Stop Saying I Feel Like
:p
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Stop Saying I Feel Like
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It’s great to see such thoughtful, intelligent pieces.
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Cannot parents give up their rights to their children, already born or future offspring?
If you follow your logic to its conclusion, all adopted children are living away from their “real” parents. I think the question of who your real parents are is more complicated than whose genetic offspring you are.
My partner and I purchased donated sperm in order to conceive a child during a time when our state would not let us adopt as a lesbian couple. I don’t think our decision to produce a child is any more “consumerist” than any couples’ decision to produce a child–whether or not they purchase ovulation kits, medical advice and intervention, or foods that are supposed to increase fertility. We live in consumer society, we largely purchase and don’t produce our own food, clothes, shelter, sure. Economic exchanges and consumerism enable every heterosexual marriage that produces a child. But my child is not deprived of a father because she has two parents, and the person who donated genetic material never wanted or intended to parent, and in fact legally gave up the right.
My child has two mothers, and if one day she wants to meet the man who donated genetic material and then of his own free will gave up all parental rights, then okay. Maybe she will be curious about her genetic origins, but “father” does not always mean parent, especially in this situation.
I do think that we socially omit men as parents, limit their rights, and put the responsibility of child rearing too much on women. I also agree that a majority of parents are terrible at parenting, and what I’ve learned and continue to learn from my psychoanalysis has shown me what better parenting is. But these are separate issue from sperm donations in my opinion, though there may be connections.
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If people who adopt don’t make every effort to facilitate the adopted children’s capacity to stay in touch with birth parents and the extended families, that’s horrible. I’m obviously not in favor of that. This is why I support a ban on foreign adoptions.
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