I am sure that most of us know who our brothers and sisters are if we have them, probably even step brothers and step sisters if our parents remarried. While we may know who our brothers and sisters are for the most part we could probably count all of them on two hands and for the rare exception three hands. There is however a growing group of individuals for whom knowing their brother and sister is a daunting task, some having over a hundred half brothers and half sisters. This is the group that was conceived with the use of a sperm donor. Some sperm donors have been used so many times that the amount of siblings come close to 150. It may be more, but there is no sure fire way of tracking this yet. The only way these numbers have been figured out is through a voluntary registry online where you can track the amount of siblings you have based on your sperm donor number. Along with simply creating an enormous extended family, there are serious issues raised with the continued use of certain sperm donors, regardless of how desirable they may be. Some of these issues are the increased risk of incest due to no knowledge of who exactly comprises your extended family, the possible spread of rare genetic diseases, or simply the fact that these siblings have so many siblings period. (For more information and the original article that this is drawn from, please follow this link.)
The first issue, that of incest and crossing genes so to speak, is a very real problem due to the fact that many siblings from a certain sperm donor can be found within a single geographic area. While the incest may be accidental if it happens, it still raises ethical questions about how a single sperm donor can be used so many times. Some children walk around with their sperm donor number in school just to ensure that they don't get a crush on the wrong boy or girl. What have we come to when it is not simply enough to know who your father is, but to also need to know your sperm donor number, the one that created you, in order to keep from having sex with the wrong person. To me, when a real "father" has been reduced to a number, it has the potential of creating some deep psychological issues down the road. When a child grows up with their mom and dad and is eventually told that their dad is not their "real" dad per se, then how does that affect their childhood and eventually their adulthood? Granted, adopted children go through the extreme when they grow up with a mom and dad who love them but are not their biological parents, but that is a different scenario. When you can't even figure out who your biological father is because he has been reduced to a number, what kind of picture does that paint of the world we live in? How confusing is it for a child to have a biological mother, a loving father who has been around their whole life yet doesn't really look like them, and a biological father who all they have is a number. It sort of takes the humanity out of having children if you ask me.
This issue of increasing numbers of donor siblings is mainly occurring because there is no regulation in the fertility industry. There are no standards that are followed and yet the fertility industry is raking in the money. Its not only the parents of donor children that are getting worried about this, but also the sperm donors themselves. Many did want to "father" so many children. In fact some were told that while doctors did not know how many children the donors may "father", a safe bet would be no more than ten. Yet now there are a number of groups that are over fifty in size. The whole fertility industry, while originally there to help families have children, now seems to be there to also make as much money as possible. At the same time, I find that the fertility industry has also been consistently pushing ethical boundaries with little or no regard for their impact. A while ago, I talked about pregnancy reductions, another facet of the fertility industry, and now it seems we have super extended families that are popping up with no end in sight. I for one, am of the notion that if a couple can not get pregnant, then they were not meant to have children. As crass and unsympathetic as this may sound, maybe it is natures way of informing us of who can have children and who can't, not because of the notion that some may be good parents while others may not, but simply because some people were not meant to have children. If we keep on pushing the boundaries of what is possible in creating life, then eventually we will create a society that will be void of ethical or moral standards and consequently have no basis for which to move forward.
I know I have strong opinions about this whole fertility area, but I feel that it is important for it to be discussed. Simply the fact, going back to sperm donors, that a child may never know who his entire family is, especially his/her biological father, will create issues later on that the child may have trouble dealing with. What happens when a child, who knows that they can never know their biological father visits a traditional family and is asked who their father is. What does child say? "Oh, his number is XXXXX, yet I really don't know him." Seems to me like there will always be something missing from that child's life, regardless of whether they have a non-biological father who loves them and raises them from birth. Sometimes technology is a good thing. Other times, I feel like it leads us in the wrong direction and actually regresses society to a point. If we keep on pushing the envelope with fertility, we will eventually be able to create children who do not need parents, simply a warm incubator to grow them and then hand them off to a family with a mother who doesn't want to deal with pregnancy. In any case, something needs to happen to curb expansion in the realm of fertility. Whether it be legislation or some other means of regulation, we need to do something. But for now, I say if you can't have children naturally, don't have children.
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