New documentary gives voice to adult children of sperm donors
Flipping channels several weeks ago, I stumbled on a deeply disturbing Style channel special, “Sperm donor: 74 kids and more on the way.”
It told the story of 33-yr-old Ben Seisler, pictured right, whose sperm donations (why do they call them that? he made $150 per deposit) to date have spawned over 70 children – half-siblings unknown to each other and spread all around the country and perhaps the world.
Here is a clip from the program. It shows Ben essentially bragging about his virility to his best friend…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Zh6lf53WA&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
If you haven’t seen enough, here’s another clip of Ben’s fiancée grappling with this twisted reality.
The program was heartbreaking in many ways, foremost because it exploited two of Ben’s young children by showing them meet Ben, fall quickly in love with Ben like little puppy dogs, and then be abandoned by Ben. Compounding the heartbreak was the fact that the little boy and little girl looked just like their sperm donor.
Now, a brand new documentary by The Center for Bioethics and Culture and award-winning “Eggsploitation” director Jennifer Lahl gives voice to adult children of sperm donors.
“Anonymous Father’s Day” shows that the children of sperm donors are not all right, as much as Hollywood would have us believe otherwise.
“Anonymous Father’s Day” was prereleased today. For the next 1-1/2 days you can pay $4 to rent the film and watch it online for 60 days after that.
The 45-minute documentary was so absorbing I watched it twice. It featured compelling interviews with three adult children of sperm donors.
Today 30-60,000 children are conceived annually in the U.S. through sperm donation. There are hundreds of thousands of children of sperm donors around the world.
How does it feel to know one is in part a commodity – bought and sold? Not good. Children of sperm donors carry the same sense of genealogical bewilderment that many adoptees feel, except theirs is a different story. Whereas adopted children are always told how special and wanted they are by their adoptive parents, children of sperm donors know it was only their mother who wanted them.
But children of sperm donors are forbidden to lament, told they can’t question their paternity because they otherwise wouldn’t exist. They should just be grateful.
“But if that were true, then anyone who is the product of rape would have to endorse rape,” said Barry Stevens (pictured above, next to a photo of his biological father), one of those interviewed for the film. “It is quite possible to be grateful for your life and question aspects of your conception.”
And so they search for their fathers… and their half-siblings. The Donor Sibling Registry was established just for that purpose.
One reason: A concern about “accidental incest.”
Stevens thinks he has anywhere from 500-1,000 half-siblings. His biological father was the husband of a pioneering fertility doctor who provided sperm for her patients from the early 1940s into the late 1960s. As Stevens quipped, “There was no sexual act which produced me, except masturbation.”
There is a growing call to regulate the U.S. sperm donor industry, which is currently “the Wild West of the reproductive world,” as one interviewee said.
But the problem is money. Alana from AnonymousUs.org explained in “Anonymous Father’s Day”:
There is a huge monster of money and people desperate for children who don’t want me to make it harder for them to buy and sell children.
It is a $3.3 billion industry, so I have people’s livelihoods that I’m threatening when I try to regulate the industry.
You have gay rights activists who love sperm and egg donation and surrogacy because it’s the cleanest method for them to have children, and you have older couples with money and the fact that they’re willing to spend $100,000 for a kid. Money talks, and I can’t compete with that as well as I thought I could.
So it all goes back to the sexual revolution, the feminist movement (career first, kids later), and homosexuality.
Reformers of the reproductive industry in the U.S. wish for regulations such as in Sweden, where:
- There are no anonymous donations of sperm or eggs.
- There is a central place where children of sperm or egg donors can find out who their mother or father is. The information will never be destroyed.
- One has to be married and in a stable relationship to get sperm or eggs.
- The infertile spouse must sign a letter of consent.
- The maximum number of sperm/egg donations allowed: six
I don’t see that happening on the federal level, but perhaps it can start in the states.
Here’s the trailer for “Anonymous Father’s Day,” a profound documentary…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdjLtQJmMI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
What children of donors lose by their parents’ disregard for history, for roots, for a connection to something larger and more eternal than your own small self, what they lose is incomprehensible. Remember how “Roots” was such a huge deal when it first showed on television? How families gathered around the television to watch, even some who’d been rather racist? How could a generation that saw that, so thoroughly sweep it all away? But I remember me and my friends discussing having children through donation, how convenient we thought it would be. Eek!! What were we thinking?! The answer: we weren’t. We were thinking only of ourselves.
And honestly, I thought more of my gay friends would have had children with each other and created a kind of extended family that way. But none ever did. They either didn’t have children at all, or in the case of two households I know, they went the donor route. In college, my gay and lesbian friends seemed really community centered. But as they got older, I saw that the men would gravitate toward a very gay-man-centered lifestyle where their coworkers and friends were mostly other gay men. And the lesbians also seemed to mostly separate themselves. That’s very interesting now that I think of it, because it’s easy to see that without even a strong friendship with an intelligent person of the opposite sex (much less love), baby-making turned into a business transaction. Pretty sad.
Fortunately, today we can use DNA testing to at least rule out accidental incest. People ought to know their parentage (unless they opt not to). I hope some of these siblings can create nice relationships with each other.
“What children of donors lose by their parents’ disregard for history, for roots, for a connection to something larger and more eternal than your own small self, what they lose is incomprehensible. Remember how “Roots” was such a huge deal when it first showed on television? How families gathered around the television to watch, even some who’d been rather racist? How could a generation that saw that, so thoroughly sweep it all away? But I remember me and my friends discussing having children through donation, how convenient we thought it would be. Eek!! What were we thinking?! The answer: we weren’t. We were thinking only of ourselves. ”
I don’t see how this cannot easily be applied to adoption, honestly.
What I don’t understand is, if it is almost the same thing as adopting children…why not adopt children?
It’s about time the adoption system was reformed instead of building needless industries on work-arounds that don’t really benefit anyone.
Jack, while I can easily see your point on this, the main difference with adoption (to me, anyway) is that many adoptions are open these days. Kids don’t have to wonder about who their birth parents are, since that information is far more easily accessible.
Xalisae, the ones I don’t get are the women who get pregnant using donor eggs and donor sperm. Why harm your body and go through needless fertility treatment at that point? The genetic connection isn’t there either way.
What this tells me is that we ALL, deep down, long to be part of a two parent family, begotten of two parents who love one another, live together, and stay together until one of them dies. There is no fancy way to get around this inherent yearning.
I can see this when the child is raised by one parent and wonders about the absent parent figure. I don’t like the comparison to adoption. Most adoptions are semi open or open today and few choose closed adoption. The point is not who sired me but who raised me. The root of the problem is fatherlessness. Children who enter the family by adoption typically have a mom and dad raising them and they are the true parents.
Most of these situations seem to be single mothers who for whatever reason did not marry and want children so they go to the sperm bank. The blank space is caused by fatherlessness in their lives and this goes for the girls as well as the boys.
This is horrifying. The fertility industry is far more regulated in Europe, why not in America? This is a huge human rights issue. I would even say it is a form of slavery–buying and selling human beings.
Seems like it would strain the relationship with the mother knowing that she did this to the child on purpose. In the case of an adoption, the adopting parents are trying help the child who has been orphaned for whatever reason. It is not like adoption. Even a child who was adopted as an embryo can feel that his adopting parents didn’t cause his orphaned status but were giving him a family. The child of sperm donation was intentionally denied his parentage by the very mother who wanted him. I can see how he could feel very conflicted. Humans are by nature social and events that disrupt their social bonds are extremely stressful. The parental bond is the foundational bond. If the father abandons his child, then the child can feel grateful to the mother who did not. However, in this case the two conspired to deprive him of his father. Can’t see how a child could feel too grateful for that action.
Kate said: “the ones I don’t get are the women who get pregnant using donor eggs and donor sperm. Why harm your body and go through needless fertility treatment at that point? The genetic connection isn’t there either way.”
Probably for the same reason my husband at least would want us to go this way if my fertility is ever compromised: it’s not a genetic connection, it’s a heart connection. When I was pregnant with my son, my husband was entranced by the fact that our son was listening to *my* heartbeat, and was growing in *my* womb. I honestly think he would raise, and love a child as his own that was not biologically his if that child grew in me, but he has also said he does not think he would have that connection to an adopted child. Many women may feel the same way.
Hi Ben,
Why?
Glad you can laugh over beer with your bud. Good times.
“Whereas adopted children are always told how special and wanted they are ”
you are living in a fantasy land if you think that is true.
It’s very difficult for a married couple to adopt, so I would imagine it would be that much more difficult for a single woman. There just aren’t a lot of babies placed for adoption.
Of course in 21st century America, children are treated like commodities. Adults are in charge, their needs/wants must be met first and foremost and too bad for children. They’ll be adults someday, too, and they can (and many will) exploit others. Sad but true, but what else can we expect from a culture that believes in bodily autonomy to the point of killing one’s own offspring. Lord have mercy on us and give us hearts of flesh instead of the stony, calculating ones we have now. ;-(
Jack, my son knows who his biological parents are. Unfortunately, his father is incarcerated, but his mother lives somewhere in Philadelphia. She said that he can contact her after he turns 18, and I hope they are reunited some day, especially since she has a grandson now.
Jill, it sounds to me that you don’t like sperm donors just because they allow feminists and gay people to have children. What about married couples where the husband doesn’t have viable sperm but the wife still wants to experience pregnancy / have a biological connection? I think adoption is beautiful, but so are ALL children – not matter how they’re conceived, right? Right? I thought that was the point of being pro-life.
Can you not be feminist and pro-life? Gay and pro-life? I like the idea of a loving Christianity – not a hate-spewing, judgmental flock.
They use the term “sperm donor” because “sperm seller” conjures up the idea of this as a sort of prostitution. Prostitution remains stigmatized and people don’t want that connotation.
Nicole says:
November 22, 2011 at 5:54 pm
It’s very difficult for a married couple to adopt, so I would imagine it would be that much more difficult for a single woman. There just aren’t a lot of babies placed for adoption.
(Denise) Both of these connect with the truth that pregnancy and childbirth are extremely intense and life-changing experiences for a female. Even a girl or woman PLANNING to place a baby for adoption may change her mind and want to raise it after carrying the full 9 months and giving birth.
Similarly, some women may want the special connection formed with a child by carrying and giving birth rather than have a baby another has carried and birthed. Also, there are women who actively enjoy being pregnant. The notorious Mary Kay Letourneau enjoyed being pregnant. Other people around her thought she looked even prettier than usual when she was pregnant. Michelle Duggar certainly seems to have a thing for pregnancy. Those are unusual cases but they reinforce the point that pregnancy itself may be wanted and, if experienced whether wanted or not, has a great impact.