Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Sperm Donors Beware!

Well, there is a difference between being a dad and being a father after all! Anyone can become a father in 20 seconds. It takes a lifetime to be a dad. On Good Morning America they ran a story about a young man, son of a sperm donor and his mother, who is joining the ranks of some 30,000 others who are searching for their biological sperm-donor fathers. Poor record keeping in the sperm banks and occasional slanting of the truth has produced some rather surprising and unexpected results. One man is recorded as having around 125 children, 70 of those children are under the age of 7. Can you imagine when all of those become teenagers and the girls start wanting him to tell them their prom dress is pretty? Then you get the specter of unexpected incest should some of these children fall in love and want to marry….

By and large these kids' mothers have married and they have a "dad" who is not related to them biologically. But the curiosity about their biology, the other half of their DNA, spurs them to discover some truth about themselves. That could be important information for medical reasons. Fatherhood is more, it seems, than merely 20 seconds after all. DNA lasts a lifetime as well, with or without the emotional part.

Perhaps we should rethink this sperm-donor thing. Guys, should we really sell what the Bible calls our "seed" so glibly? The law aside, just think of all those kids out there who are part you…and you don't even know it!

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