Jerking Off Into a Cup Doesn't Make You Daddy

by Alex DiBranco · 2009-12-30 16:46:00 UTC
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Sperm donors and recipients beware: Ireland's Supreme Court ruled this month that the man who provided a cupful of DNA to a lesbian couple reserves rights to the child.

According to a Huffington Post article, the donor had been buddies with the couple, but when the friendship went south, he decided to assert fathering rights over the toddler. This sends serious shock waves through the foundation of families who happen to have used artificial insemination -- the donor could pop up and any moment and decide he wants to be "Daddy." Even worse, Justice Susan Denham insults the legitimacy of same-sex parenting with her justification for the ruling: "There is a benefit to a child, in general, to have the society of his father."

There is a benefit to a child, in general, to not having the composition of their family insulted and undermined by judges who ignore the fact that they already have loving parents -- the people who have been raising them. What if the parenting couple in question had been a man and a woman, but they used a donor because he was sterile? Would the judge still have argued that they should make it a ménage à trois and include a second DNA-driven father in the mix?

In the United States, judges have luckily upheld the rights of the true parents, deeming the donors' efforts to insert themselves after birth harmful to the children and their sense of family. Seems to me like donating sperm should be a pretty straightforward issue: if you're not comfortable with a kid running about with half your DNA, don't give away your semen. And if you're wondering why I said "beware" to sperm donors, too, it's because men who play by the rules of sperm donation could end up discovering the meaning of "no good deed goes unpunished."

If you start saying that sperm donors have the rights of a parent, logically they have the responsibilities of a parent as well. Men who provide sperm and expect to help another family get started while they go on their merry way could get hit with thousands of dollars child support payments or college tuition bills later.

That's enough to make any donation-minded men keep sending the juice from his special alone time safely into a sock.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.
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