WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN

When women gain the right to control their reproduction or sexuality, repressive societies get scared. The response may be that of Islamic theocracies, where the government sanctions killing or gang-raping women as punishment for their, or their family members' infidelity.

In the United States, Christian theocrats seem to admire the Ayatollahs who dictate law and policy in countries like Iran. They are frightened to death of the fact that lesbians are creating healthy families without the participation of male parents.

In Kansas, a male friend agreed to donate sperm to a woman who wanted to have children as a single parent. They signed no contract giving him any rights whatsoever. His donation was made in a medical clinic. After the woman's twins were born, the man decided he wanted joint custody!

Below is my response to the article, entitled "What About the Children?"

"What about the children? The children have the right to an intact family of the parent(s) who chose to have them, NOT the confusion and chaos of shared custody with someone who happens to share their genes but is not a member of their family. With your logic, all parents who give their kids up for adoption should share custody with the adoptive parents. That is utterly wrong.

Infertile couples and their children created with the help of anonymous sperm donors have the legal right not to have a stranger interfere with their families.

You are suggesting that a family with an infertile husband who chose a sperm donor be forced to endure 18 years of interference by the "real" father.

Likewise, women who choose to have children without a male partner don't sign up for decades of "marriage" to a sperm donor either.

Oh, you only care if the parents are women. If you hate lesbians that much, don't pretend your concern is that the children have a "dad". The children's parents are the couple who is raising them, not a stranger who signed away his legal rights.

I donated my embryos left over from IVF to an infertile couple. My family does not expect the right to make decisions for those children or have legal visitation rights just because we helped another family have children. No donor has, or should have, that expectation. If the real parents who are raising the children wish to allow the donor and child to meet -- and most do -- that is their choice, not our right.

Children know their families are "real" whether or not their parents had help cretaing them. Why don't you know that?"

WHO GETS THE EMBRYOS?

When I started the embryo donation process, I was certain that the most crucial trait of my recipients would be Jewish heritage, for reasons discussed below. I initially phrased my donation listing to make it clear that either Jewish heterosexuals or Jewish lesbians would be considered.


We were contacted by lots of straight couples, but not a single one of them had even one Jewish partner. It was rather annoying that none of these couples had really read my listing and chosen not to respect my criteria. I found this arrogant. Straight couples expect to get pregnant to have their kids. When these couples could not, they felt in some way entitled to ask for these embryos despite the fact that I had made the importance of different recipients so clear.

These inappropriate inquiries got me thinking. Straight couples can adopt together, unlike lesbian couples who must go through two adoptions per child due to bigoted laws. Straight couples can adopt from foreign countries, whereas lesbians must lie to do so. There are thousands of adoptable children in the United States who can only go to straight couples and who are available immediately, as long as the couple in question can open their heart to a child who is Black, Hispanic, biracial or disabled. Lesbian couples do not have this option in most states.

It became clear to me that embryo donation was an opportunity for me to do my little part to help redress these wrongs. In limiting my donation only to lesbian couples I could level the playing field a tiny bit and help women become moms who otherwise would have very limited ability to do so. My wife and I revised our listing. Now we would consider only lesbian couples, preferably Jewish ones. But were there any infertile Jewish lesbian couples out there? We waited to find out.