The Center for Bioethics and Culture continues its crusade against artificial reproduction; this time the target is sperm donation. Its recent film Anonymous Father’s Day argues that using a sperm donor to conceive causes serious emotional impact on children of sperm donors from not knowing anything about their biological fathers” It is described as a “secret” akin to a time bomb waiting to go off. They bemoan that a British scientist may have fathered over 600 children via his fertility clinic. Ironically, the CBC folks don’t decry adoption, which results in the same lack of knowledge about biological parents, nor do they denounce adopting embryos to prevent them from being incinerated. Why is sperm donation so exceptional and problematic? Other than, of course, that it involves biotechnology?

I await an answer.

Summer Johnson McGee, PhD