A good piece in Sunday’s WaPo opens a new perspective on the complex of ethical issues surrounding sperm donors: the point of view of the children so conceived.   Katrina Clark is one such person and she does a good job expanding the discussion.

     First, let me reiterate the position I have been developing in a couple of earlier posts.  From the outset, we should not automatically refer to sperm donors as "fathers," because "father" is a social role that must be fulfilled on a daily basis; it is not simply a biological fact.  Indeed, I have been arguing that the biology of it all matters much less than the performative aspects of fatherhood, a Confucian-esque perspective.  This is not to say that sperm donors cannot  become fathers; they can, if they perform the duties that the role entails.  If they simply contribute some DNA and then disappear, they are not "fathers."  If they involve themselves significantly in their offspring’s lives, they can be fathers. 

     (I recognize the corollary here: that not all those who we conventionally think of as "fathers" – in both biological and social terms – live up to the title.  And I would agree that those men who fail in their duties toward their children are not, in fact, fathers, but something else for which a new term needs to be invented)

     Clark’s personal experience of not knowing the man who donated the sperm for her conception and the anxieties this caused her as she grew up, casts a new light on the discussion.  She asks if we think that everyone is happy with "donor conception?

Not so. The children born of these transactions are people, too.
Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies —
conceived in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when sperm banks became
more common and donor insemination began to flourish — are coming of
age, and we have something to say.

I’m here to tell you that
emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn’t ask to be born
into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It’s
hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that
biological roots won’t matter to the "products" of the cryobanks’
service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings
customers to the banks in the first place.

     I think this is important because the ethical debate about sperm donation tends to focus on the adults, not the children (at least that is what I have sensed.).   I would push back, however, against one of  Clark’s assertions.  I think that what is going on here (and I mention this with all due respect for the real difficulties Clark has experienced) is not a primarily a longing for "biological roots" but for social context.  Let me explain.

     There is obviously an important biological aspect to sperm donation: children need to know if there are genetically transmitted diseases or conditions they may have to deal with.  But beyond that issue, I think that what Clark is feeling is the absence of a social father as much as, if not more so, than a biological father.   She suggests as much later on in the piece:

When my mother eventually got married [Clark was then a teenager], I didn’t get along with her
husband. For so long, it had been just the two of us, my mom and I, and
now I felt like the odd girl out. When she and I quarreled, this new
man in our lives took to interjecting his opinion, and I didn’t like
that. One day, I lost my composure and screamed that he had no
authority over me, that he wasn’t my father — because I didn’t have
one.

That was when the emptiness came over me. I realized that I
am, in a sense, a freak. I really, truly would never have a dad. I
finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.

    Not having a "dad" here implies to me a social dad, a person who performs the social duties of a "father."  Sadly it seems to me that it is now too late.  She is an adult and will never have a childhood dad.  Knowing her biological sperm donor will not change that.  And, indeed, when she does find the sperm donor, he pulls back from playing the dad"

As relief about my own situation has come to me, I’ve talked freely
and regularly about being donor-conceived, in public and in private. In
the beginning, I also talked about it a lot with my biological father.
After a bit, though, I noticed that his enthusiasm for our developing
relationship seemed to be waning. When I told him of my suspicion, he
confirmed that he was tired of "this whole sperm-donor thing." The
irony stings me more each time I think of him saying that. The very
thing that brought us together was pushing us in opposite directions.

Even
though I’ve only recently come into contact with him, I wouldn’t be
able to just suck it up if he stopped communicating with me. There’s
still so much I want to know. I want to know him. I want to know his
family. I’m certain he has no idea how big a role he has played in my
life despite his absence — or because of his absence. If I can’t be
too attached to him as my father, I’ll still always be attached to the
feeling I now have of having a father.

       She wants to have – or, perhaps more grammatically correct, to have had – a father.  But a father cannot simply say he is tired of this "whole sperm donor thing."  He is not being a father in saying that.  A father’s duties are forever, they cannot be switched on and off at whim.  He is not, therefore, a father, but merely a sperm donor.

      It is clear that the system has let Clark down.  She longs for a social context that has not existed for her.  I am not going to invoke here the argument that this somehow proves that all children must have a "traditional" one mother, one father family.  Obviously, that happy image has a certain power, and it seems to be what Clark desires.  It seems to me, however, that happy, loving contexts can be created in untraditional families.  But Clark’s pain suggests to us that care must be taken in conceiving of such families and in nurturing the children within them. 

     The bottom line: in working through the ethics of sperm donation and parenthood, more attention must be paid to the interests and feelings of the children born into such situations.