Humans are a species set apart. We have a strong innate desire to know (and be raised by) our genetic parents. And this desire does not cease when we can take care of ourselves. It extends well into adulthood.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the adult children of anonymous sperm donors who are desperate to discover who they are and where they came from. The fertility industry has no desire to help them because the industry’s focus is on what the parents want(ed) and not on the emotional or physical well-being of the resulting children.
Anonymous Father’s Day is a film about adults of anonymous sperm donors and their perspective which is the one we most need to hear. Here is the official trailer:
My favorite quote is from the gentleman who said, “It is quite possible to be grateful for your life and question aspects of your conception.” So very true. It is beyond time to question the use of third party gametes in creating children. Children who may be desperate to know their genetic parents and may never get the answers they deserve.
The heartbreak in the voices of these adults reminds me of the often maligned but so wise Church teaching that a child has a right to be conceived by and born to his or her parents. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ “right to become a father and a mother only through each other.”
LifeNews.com Note: Rebecca Taylor is a clinical laboratory specialist in molecular biology, and a practicing pro-life Catholic who writes at the bioethics blog Mary Meets Dolly. She has been writing and speaking about Catholicism and biotechnology for five years and has been interviewed on EWTN radio on topics from stem cell research and cloning to voting pro-life. Taylor has a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of San Francisco with a national certification in clinical Molecular Biology MB (ASCP).
