Oprah Show on Sperm Donors Misses the Positive View
The February 8, 2008 broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show aired a segment on sperm donation. The show included as guests three sperm donors who had agreed to be identified to now grown children who had been conceived using sperm that these men had donated to sperm banks many years ago. The show also included children conceived through sperm donation who wanted to find the identity and to establish relationships with the donors who had provided half of their genetic makeup. The show also included a film of two adult half siblings, brother and sister, who met for the first time and who later joined the show live. The program did not include any representatives from sperm banks or lawyers representing the rights of anonymous donors. Obviously the show did not include any of the many former donors who wished to remain anonymous, or any donor recipients or donor offspring who wanted their donor to remain anonymous.
The show presented a skewed view of the varied interests involved in this issue and therefore conveyed a one sided picture of this topic, failing to present that the rights of donors, recipients, and offspring are all legitimate and must be acknowledged. The implication of the program was that the right of the offspring to know his/her donor supersede the rights of all others involved in the use of donated sperm. The show seemed to indicate that all Donor Insemination (DI) recipients and offspring want to meet their donor, yet there are many who want the donor they used to remain anonymous forever. It is important not to breach donor anonymity just because someone wants to know their donor. To do so would violate representations and contracts made by the sperm bank to its anonymous donors and parents who used an anonymous donor on condition of anonymity of the donors. In response to the desire of some to know the identity of their donors, most major cryobanks have a class of donors who have agreed in advance to have their identities and contact information released when donor-conceived children reach age eighteen. It is interesting that when donors willing to have their identities released are made available, these donors are not selected disproportionately to anonymous donors, indicating that there is not an unusual demand to know donor identities.. Also in countries such as the United Kingdom that now require that all donors be identified, there is now a severe shortage of sperm donors. Breaching anonymity would have a negative impact on those women who wish to use this approach to parenting now or in the future.
The program also left the impression that sperm donation is unregulated and that recipients are blind as to the medical histories of the donors. Most sperm banks, however, provide more information on their anonymous sperm donors than any person could reasonably obtain about their spouse. Medical histories go back three generations. Medical tests include a battery of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), genetic diseases and physical exams looking specifically for infections, viruses, and genetic diseases that can be passed to a recipient or child. The FDA regulates a huge part of this process, as it does for blood donation and organ donation, and the standards are very high. Most sperm banks make availabledonor childhood pictures, (some even have adult pictures of a donor), detailed interests of the donor, audio interviews, personality tests, and the list goes on and on. The only information missing is the donor’s identifying information and the opportunity to make a physical connection with him. The donor’s medical and family information are available in detail. Parents have the freedom to share or not share this information with their children; from the nature of their child’s conception to the details of their donor’s history. Society assigns to the parents the right to control what information to pass on to their son or daughter.
To expose donor identities is not appropriate nor is it reasonable to encourage children from donor insemination to find a ‘daddy’ as they look for their donor. This was clearly the case in several situations on this show. Donors are only offering donor sperm and most certainly do not want to be active partners in the parenting process. The law does not and society should not treat them as if they were. As one donor said on the show, when he donated sperm he saw no difference between that and donating blood. At the time all these children on the show were conceived, sperm donors were available to offer women the means to have these very much wanted children. Oprah did little to celebrate this reality as every child on that show would not have existed except for the availability of sperm donation. If donors were required to reveal their identities, many women and couples would not be able to experience the joy of a child, since the availability and diverse selection of sperm donors would be significantly curtailed.
The show presented a skewed view of the varied interests involved in this issue and therefore conveyed a one sided picture of this topic, failing to present that the rights of donors, recipients, and offspring are all legitimate and must be acknowledged. The implication of the program was that the right of the offspring to know his/her donor supersede the rights of all others involved in the use of donated sperm. The show seemed to indicate that all Donor Insemination (DI) recipients and offspring want to meet their donor, yet there are many who want the donor they used to remain anonymous forever. It is important not to breach donor anonymity just because someone wants to know their donor. To do so would violate representations and contracts made by the sperm bank to its anonymous donors and parents who used an anonymous donor on condition of anonymity of the donors. In response to the desire of some to know the identity of their donors, most major cryobanks have a class of donors who have agreed in advance to have their identities and contact information released when donor-conceived children reach age eighteen. It is interesting that when donors willing to have their identities released are made available, these donors are not selected disproportionately to anonymous donors, indicating that there is not an unusual demand to know donor identities.. Also in countries such as the United Kingdom that now require that all donors be identified, there is now a severe shortage of sperm donors. Breaching anonymity would have a negative impact on those women who wish to use this approach to parenting now or in the future.
The program also left the impression that sperm donation is unregulated and that recipients are blind as to the medical histories of the donors. Most sperm banks, however, provide more information on their anonymous sperm donors than any person could reasonably obtain about their spouse. Medical histories go back three generations. Medical tests include a battery of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), genetic diseases and physical exams looking specifically for infections, viruses, and genetic diseases that can be passed to a recipient or child. The FDA regulates a huge part of this process, as it does for blood donation and organ donation, and the standards are very high. Most sperm banks make availabledonor childhood pictures, (some even have adult pictures of a donor), detailed interests of the donor, audio interviews, personality tests, and the list goes on and on. The only information missing is the donor’s identifying information and the opportunity to make a physical connection with him. The donor’s medical and family information are available in detail. Parents have the freedom to share or not share this information with their children; from the nature of their child’s conception to the details of their donor’s history. Society assigns to the parents the right to control what information to pass on to their son or daughter.
To expose donor identities is not appropriate nor is it reasonable to encourage children from donor insemination to find a ‘daddy’ as they look for their donor. This was clearly the case in several situations on this show. Donors are only offering donor sperm and most certainly do not want to be active partners in the parenting process. The law does not and society should not treat them as if they were. As one donor said on the show, when he donated sperm he saw no difference between that and donating blood. At the time all these children on the show were conceived, sperm donors were available to offer women the means to have these very much wanted children. Oprah did little to celebrate this reality as every child on that show would not have existed except for the availability of sperm donation. If donors were required to reveal their identities, many women and couples would not be able to experience the joy of a child, since the availability and diverse selection of sperm donors would be significantly curtailed.
posted by Kathleen, Contributing Editor at
5:01 PM
1 Comments:
This is why I say "Oprah sucks, sometimes." Given my history of infertility and now my search for a gestational surrogate, I was appalled at how this show skewed everything. So, yes, Oprah sucks, sometimes.
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