AFAIK most people who come in for sperm are couples who can't have kids together.
My opinion on the law is that it's stupid.
Fight smart, not fair.I'm all for sperm donation. I think that forcing the donors to be contactable is probably a mistake for the market, but it means that sperm has a higher premium, so for those guys who want to go to a spank bank and get compensated more for it, if they're willing to get calls from the kid when he's 18, by all means.
"But I ultimately decided that doing a great service to a women would be doing a great disservice to a child conceived in such a manner. Giving a single woman a kid means robbing a child of their father, and I don't bide with that." - joeyjojo
... so why exactly does a child need a father here?
That said, I wouldn't donate sperm because I have type 1 diabetes and am afraid to even risk passing on my type 1 diabetic genes. I feel I should leave reproduction to the genetically healthier... and yet, I have yet to get a vasectomy. o.o
No love then for all the Gene Hunting bastards and their quest to find their lost kin?
edited 2nd Jan '11 7:53:24 AM by joeyjojo
hashtagsarestupidWell, I also think that it's kind of messing up your priorities. One's father is the one who raises one. Zero one one. Err-you know what I mean.
Genetics is good for knowing whether you're likely to go bald and everything, but I find it kind of odd to seek emotional attachment to someone you've never met. And the attitude that encourages it makes adoption and sperm donation wrought with peril. And when you have a law that reinforces that attitude, it's just a bad policy in my mind.
Not exactly a huge hot-button issue and, like I said, it has the potential to make those willing to put up with it marginally richer people.
edited 2nd Jan '11 8:08:14 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
Donating sperm enables people who otherwise couldn't have children to ... well, to have children.
Oh, wait...
This just in:
edited 2nd Jan '11 8:16:04 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.it has the potential to make those willing to put up with it marginally richer people.
It's very marginal in Oz. There are strictly laws forbidding the trade of living tissue. similar to adoption they can only legally pay the donor for his time and expenses. So you never get the quadruple digits for sperm that you see in the US. There is a up shot but that any donated sperm is legally property of the donor till it enters the recipient's body and he is free to place any vetoes he's see as appropriate.
edited 2nd Jan '11 8:43:51 AM by joeyjojo
hashtagsarestupidQuadruple digits might be an exaggeration for what, from what I know, is essentially masturbation for a good cause.
Also: that is a really stupid law. If I decide to donate sperm, I do not want someone who I will, as likely as not, detest coming around to my house and presuming that I'd want to have anything to do with him-or-her.
It's not for your benefit. It's to keep your medical history after the time of the donation from becoming a blank spot for them. The donation place will have it available up to the time you donated, but what about things that may show up after that — The argument is that things like Huntington's Chorea don't generally show up until middle age, and most sperm donors are younger than that, so it probably won't be in the medical history the kid got, and they have a right to know it's in the family medical background.
They could just make a law to have sperm donors update thier medical history with the sperm bank so they can pass it on with the name removed.
Now if you excuse me, Starfleet is about to award the Christopher Pike Medal to my dick. — SF DebrisIt doesn't necessarily mean that the child would be raised by a single mother. The mother could be a lesbian, a woman planning to raise the child with a man she is not sexually/romantically involved with, or have a husband who is sterile for whatever reason.
Because two parents are better than one? Because Boys Need Role Models?
"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

Thanks to recent laws that donors have to be contactable once the child they have helped to conceive turns 18, there has been a massive shortage of sperm in australia
. The Colbert Report even did a riff on it
.
So what are your views on sperm donation? Being a clivic minded individual who has been blessed with obscenely good health the thought of 'giving the greatest gift' to the childless did appeal to me. But I ultimately decided that doing a great service to a women would be doing a great disservice to a child conceived in such a manner. Giving a single woman a kid means robbing a child of their father, and I don't bide with that.
But what is your opinion?
edited 2nd Jan '11 6:28:32 AM by joeyjojo
hashtagsarestupid