This is going to be an odd, odd blog post but just stick with me okay?
The other night I was doing a little TV watching with mom. She recently had surgery and has been doing A LOT of TV watching. It's been nice to just lay in bed and have those marathons with her though. So after Jerseylicious went off (I know right? My mom was watching Jerseylicious!) a documentary type show came on about sperm donors.
It was interesting to say the least and raises a lot of questions and I would just like to get opinions and thoughts from others. In this episode, they were following around a specific man who was a sperm donor while he was in law school. Apparently it pays quite well to be a sperm donor. He is currently engaged to a woman, who knew early on in their relationship that he had been a sperm donor. The kicker is that there is a website where he was able to put in his donor ID number and it has opened himself up to be contacted by families that used his sperm. There is also a site where children that were born from donor sperm can look up their half siblings.
That's all a lot to digest. The man that donated his sperm back in school has found out that he is the father of more than 70 children. It showed in the episode where he met with a family, a single woman that used his sperm to have her two children.
Maybe it's a little odd, but I am all for sperm donation. There are 70 families out there that were able to have children because of this man. These were wanted children!! And as someone who has considered the possibility of having to use donor sperm to have a child, I can't help but see the good in it.
What I'm not sure I agree with is the doing away of the anonymity. Granted this man willingly put his ID number and information out there to be contacted, I just can't understand why. He met with two young children that are probably confused now, that while this man is their biological father, he's not their dad and that was never the intention behind it. You didn't become a sperm donor because you wanted to have a relationship with 70 families. It just gets tricky I think.
They also showed several half siblings that had found each other through the website. Which seemed to be working well for them, but I can't help but think it wouldn't always turn out to be a good situation. Sometimes we just need to leave well enough alone. I think sperm donation is great and can be a good avenue for families looking to have children that can't through their own means, but as we all know sharing DNA doesn't really make someone family.
I know this is a weird topic, but what are your thoughts? Do you know anyone that has been a donor? Do you know someone that has had a child using donor sperm? Or would you ever use donor sperm to have a child?
I think this is a really touchy subject. It's really hard to speak on behalf of those children who would want to meet their biological dad because that's understandable but I also understand the dad who might have his own family and maybe not want or be able to meet 70 of his children. I don't know...it's really tough to pick one side. There was a CSI episode on this subject which was really interesting.
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Whoa - 70!? That seems like a whole lot. I'm nowhere near educated enough to make a coherent comment on the subject. I think for myself, I would not, as I would choose adoption over sperm donation. But that's really as far as I'll go. But if you need some Jerseylicious comments, I'm your girl!
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