Ethical?

Would you sell one of your children, knowing that you would probably never see him or know what happened to him or know anything about the family he lives with? How about three or four of your children? How about a dozen? How about 150?

That's the ethical question of the day. As children of sperm donors try to find out about their pasts, they are discovering they have dozens of half brothers and sisters. Those who conceive by anonymous donors have only a father's code number to give to their children . Many of these children have reached adulthood and have a natural curiosity about where they came from. In their searches, they are encountering many other people with the same code numbers. In one case, 150 children have this family connection. There may be many others -- when a woman has conceived through donor sperm, she doesn't have to report it. In fact, it's estimated that only 20% to 40% volunteer the information.

Which raises all sorts of other questions. What if two of these children, not realizing they are brother and sister, meet and fall in love? It's not beyond the realm of possibility -- many children of the same donor live in the same general area. What if the sperm donor has some sort of quirky or defective gene that has been passed along to all these children? Will we see strange epidemics begin to crop up?

One donor says that it is "unfair and reprehensible" that labs are allowed to use sperm from a single donor so freely. I don't know that I find it any more reprehensible than selling one's potential children to the lab in the first place.

"From one sperm donor, 150 children." The Dallas Morning News; October 2, 2011; p. 7A.