The almost sperm donor: an anecdote

First off, this new picture is of me with my darling sister.  This is not my wife (I've had four emails making that false assumption since last night)!  I've added a caption to make it clear.

Russell Fox has a nice post on progressive Christianity up, and he quotes from my post last Friday on the same subject. 

The still-active thread below my Wendy Wasserstein post has turned to the topic of the ethics of donating sperm.  In the absence of an argument, let me share an anecdote.

When I was a 20 year-old undergraduate at Berkeley, I saw an ad for sperm donors in the Daily Cal.  The ad promised $50-100 per week, and I wandered down to a little medical clinic on University Avenue to ask more questions.  I went in to a comfortable, modern little office, and was promptly asked to fill out a long form about my medical and family history, as well as about my academic background and personal appearance.  I was then handed a plastic cup with a lid (like those used to collect urine samples, and directed to a little room.  I "made a deposit" (the phrase used by the woman behind the counter), handed over the cup, and was told to call back later for results.  After all, I needed to find out if my sperm was "fit" enough!

I went back to my co-op, and because my ability to keep secrets at that time was nil, promptly shared my adventure with my housemates.  At dinner that night, I had about a dozen folks, men and women, weighing in on the subject of sperm donation.  Some encouraged me to continue to do it if I was accepted, while others warned me against it.  Some pointed out something in the brochure I hadn't noticed:  regular "donors" were expected to "contribute" two to three times a week, and ought not to have ejaculated for 48 hours prior to the "donation."  (I don't know if this is still the rule, but it was the requirement back in 1987.)  Explaining the math (my weak point then and now), my friends noted that that would put a serious crimp in my private life with my girlfriend!

But it was my housemate "Letty" who changed my mind for good.  Letty was a devout Catholic, and I was -- at this time -- on the cusp of converting.  She had been mentoring me in the faith, and though nothing romantic ever transpired between us, Letty and I were very close.  She gave me reading lists of Catholic books, and took me to mass at the Newman Centre.  Letty didn't join in the teasing at dinner, but after the meal, asked to speak with me alone.  She talked with me about how I would feel in years to come, wandering down the street and looking curiously into children's faces, never knowing if one might be my child.  "I know you, Hugo", Letty said; "That thought will haunt you forever."  She also gave me the standard but compelling spiel about the real meaning of conception.  Contrary to what I wrote in my Wasserstein post, Letty convinced me that each conceived child ought to be conceived in an act of marital love, with the promise that two loving parents would raise that which they created together.  She was so winsome and compelling, she had me nearly in tears.  And she changed my mind.  I never called the sperm bank to find out if they wanted me to be a regular donor.

Yes, the fear of not being able to have a regular sex life scared me.  But even though I was not living according to the Catholic ideal of premarital chastity, I still was moved by Letty's thoughtful defense of church teaching about conception.  I was moved, too, by the very real fear of having children whose names I would never know, and whose strange yet familiar faces I might gaze at on the street with a mixture of dread and eagerness.

I haven't worked out a coherent set of beliefs about artificial insemination.  But I am so glad I didn't become a regular donor back in 1987.  Had I done so, some of my current frosh might literally be my children, a thought too strange and terrifying to contemplate for long.

Comments

[Past tense]

Do you know if they used the sperm you did give them?

[Hugo]

I have no idea. I suspect not -- my understanding is that they only use sperm donations from regular donors.

[evil_fizz]

Your post reminds me of this article. (The author describes his adventures with sperm donation last year.)

I looked into egg donation in college. (Which is *a lot* more lucrative for women then it is for men. If I had wanted to be an egg donor for a private fertility clinic, I could have made $15,000 without too much trouble.* The base price for egg donation tends to be between $1,000 and $3,000 given the fact that it involves high doses of hormones and a needle aspiration, rather than 5 minutes alone with a Playboy.)

I have to admit, I found the process depressing and dehumanizing. At first, it seemed wonderful to help someone else have a baby, but the prospect of hyperovulatory drugs and needle aspirations for money seemed, well, wrong.

*I have the good fortune to be white, well-educated, tall, and have a very clean family health history. I've seen ads offering up to $50,000 if you meet some damn stict criteria, including athleticism, hip-waist-bust measurements, height, skin color, eye color, hair color, 1500+ SAT score, and perfect vision. Sadly, I'm not joking.

[Breadfish]

I have to admit, I found the process depressing and dehumanizing. At first, it seemed wonderful to help someone else have a baby, but the prospect of hyperovulatory drugs and needle aspirations for money seemed, well, wrong.

Seems painful and scary as well. Ouch! 0.o

[Arwen]

I also think they're investigating links between ovulatory-stim hormones and ovarian cancer...

[evil_fizz]

They are. Nothing's definitive yet, and it's rather hard to study. Most women only take hyperovulatory drugs for short periods of time and many of those have some kind of underlying medical problem to begin with. (They're seeking fertility treatments for a reason.) The effects of such drugs would have to pretty strong before you'd see changes in the epidemiological pattern. The current thinking is that hormones which get the ovaries to operate normally, so to speak- like the pill- help reduce your risk of ovarian cancer. Otherwise, there's not much consensus and rather limited data.

[Stentor]

Hugo: Did they actually give you a Playboy? You always hear people mention it when they talk about sperm donation, but it seems inconsistent with the whole clean and sterile image of the medical profession. (Either way -- as an actual practice or as a widespread rhetorical flourish -- it could make an interesting post.)

[Hugo]

Stentor, they had back issues of Penthouse (I remember vividly.)

[kate.d.]

my boyfriend also considered sperm donation briefly in grad school (we were pretty broke!). though he has absolutely no religious or spiritual convictions around conception, in the end, it was a little too weird even for him. he couldn't put his finger on why, but he just wasn't comfortable doing it. there are certainly strange, very ephemeral emotions stirred up by the possibility of parenthood, however remote and removed it might be!

oh, and evil fizz, i also considered egg donation (my eyes bugged out at the compensation, too), but honestly i'm just too lazy! what a process. even for $15,000, i wasn't willing to give up 6 months of my life, be a slave to doctor's appointments, and get stuck with all kinds of needles.

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

I thought of egg donation when I was younger, not for the money, but because we ourselves were infertile, and I had reason to suspect that the problem was elsewhere than in my eggs. I thought, if I can't have a child myself, maybe at least I can help someone else have one.

What deterred me was the fear that the process would ultimately involve general anesthetic; I had a miserable (though necessary) childhood operation which has left me with a terror of general anesthetic.

[Barbara]

Most women who go through with egg donation do it for reasons similar to Lynn's: empathy for or experience with infertile couples. A surprising number of both egg and sperm donors have provisionally decided that they aren't themselves going to have children and don't want their genetic material to go to waste. A little strange but true. Many work or live around health care professionals and don't get turned off by needles. Also, Lynn, general anesthesia is the exception -- most egg retrievals involve the use of twilight sedation where you're not really under but you don't remember anything.

It's definitely a "don't do it if you don't want to" situation. One reason clinics make the screening process so rigorous is to discourage the unmotivated.

[Dan]

"I still was moved by Letty's thoughtful defense of church teaching about conception."

This is an interesting turn of phrase. Are you implying that, just because her beliefs were similiar to the teachings of the church, they were not still her own beliefs she was sharing?

[Hugo]

My bad, Dan, if that was what was implied -- Letty was a very faithful Catholic in every respect. Her views were shaped and informed by Holy Mother Church, but they were also fundamentally her own.