So we should keep an eye ot for people who come from Albequerque and look like a younger version of you, but are considerably better-dressed and drive flash cars?
The statues governing sperm (& egg) donation via licences clinics tend to nullify the legal consequences that normally result from a parent-child relationship. For starters there is no legal parent-child relationship that results from sperm/egg donation. The donor is not liable for any support, has no legal rights over the child, the child has no claim on the donor’s estate, and the donor has no legal right to know the child’s indentity (or even that a child exists). The donor is not a parentin the legal, social, or moral sense of the word.
You’re assuming that their are “statutes governing sperm and egg donation”. Whether there are statutes, and exactly what they provide, depends on the jurisdiction in which astro’s hypothetical transacction would occur. He’d need to check that. He might find, for instance, that the various protection you mention, or something like them, are avaiable if a licensed clinic is used, but not in his suggested freelance arrangement.
The other think he needs to bear in mind is the (admittedly unquantifiable, hopefully small, but certainly real) risk that the laws might be altered in the future - much as adoption laws were in some jurisdictions. You say that the donor “is not a parent . . . in the moral sense of the word” and of course I take your point, but socially-accepted moral views, and moral consensuses, can and do change over time and, if there is such a shift, then a change in the law could well follow, recognising a right on the part of the child that we currently do not recognise, or do not accord much weight to.
Wasn’t there a doctor about 20 years ago who was supposed to use sperm bank sources for artificial insemination of his patients, instead provided his own home-made product? IIRC they figure he accounted for almost 60 kids. I think he was charged with fraud because he billed his patients for sperm-bank fees. The article never mentioned paternity obligations.
Our egg donor went through a licensed agency, and as part of that she signed a contract saying she was relinquishing all rights and responsibilities of parenthood. I can live with the infinitesimal risk that such contracts will not prove valid sometime in the future AND that our particular donor will want to invalidate it.
And presumably this was done in a jurisdiction in which such a contract is enforceable, and the contract conformed to whatever conditions it had to conform to in that jurisdiction. And, like you, the donor considered the risk that the laws might change, and that you might want to revisit the arrangement, or that your child, when he or she is old enough, might not regard themselves as bound by the arrangement.
The point is, these are real issues. They need to be acknowledged, and they need to be addressed. You did that. Fine. Astro would need to do that too, is all I’m saying.
Maybe I missed it, but I’m surprised that this thread has gone this long without a mention of the Repository for Germinal Choice, commonly (if misleadingly) known as the “Nobel laureate sperm bank”. It operated from about 1980 until 1997. In 2001, Slate published a long series of articles on the subject, which make for some pretty good reading.
