Monday, March 20, 2006

R.I.P Fatherhood

Quite apart from the total disregard of fatherhood exhibited by this article in the NY Times about single mothers who use(*) sperm donors, perhaps what I find freakiest is that these mothers select the fathers of their children on the basis of the kinds of things you would learn from a first date, and nothing else. One young woman's distress when her donor's history and photograph were water damaged is painfully ironic. After all, that's all she's got of him...

The language is bizarre: "she inseminated", "he sired", "the donor was out of stock". People as farm animals...? The whole thing reads like something that could have been written by Aldous Huxley. Fer Crissakes, pass the soma.

* There's no doubting it, these mothers use men.

1 comment:

John Doe said...

Hi Breakbreaker,

Yes, I was aware of the Swedish case, but I see it as a bit of an anomoly. That sort of question will become resolved as a simple result of market forces. If the cost of sperm donation is high, men won't donate. If men don't donate, the inseminators will have to relax their demands or look elsewhere. I believe they're already looking in other jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the societal cost of a nation of fatherless children must be borne somehow.

JD

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