When I caught a repeat of the BIG O today over at SABC3, I was conflicted at the topic and spend a lot of time thinking about its complete perverted nature fully clad in what seems to be a distorted act of humanity. The show was about sperm donor kids who want to meet their donor dads. That is enough to make any person want to watch, but what was perhaps more freighting, was the man who donated hundreds of sperm and subsequently fathered a couple of children. He whoever did not have any certainty to the possibility of being a father to hundreds more, nor could he rule that out.
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He was known as 48QAH and was described as 6'4" with brown hair, green eyes and a pediatrician. His name was Dr. Matthew Niedner who agreed that he donated - several times a month over 4 or 5 years. Whilst the other guy’s name was Dr. Todd Whitehurst and he donated 3 times a week for 4 years to supplement his income while getting his PhD - donating was part of his weekly routine and earned him around $16,000 in 4 years.
Are you good with your mathematics or did you take Arithmetic? Can you imagine or calculate the amount of kids they possibly could have fathered? The terrifying thing is that they don’t even know how many children are out there.
Oprah had for 4 women to the show who had been conceived using sperm donation - Kathleen, Christina, Susan and Katrina.
Kathleen is 26 and has no information on her biological father. She does not have access to medical information or details about her heritage. She shared that sometimes her reflection feels like a stranger.
Christina, 22, was born to a white woman who used African-American sperm so that her children would "match" since her siblings fathers were both black. She expressed the struggle with so many things missing - his education, medical background, heritage and looks.
Susan, at 39, was conceived before the time of sperm banks and was not told of her beginnings until she was 27. She felt like she had been lied to and was shocked at the information.
19 year old
Katrina has always known she was born from sperm donation, but it didn't make it easier on her. She shared that being born this way made her feel like a product from an industry with a de-humanizing view on her birth.
This got me thinking, and the reason why I call it perverted is that a parent decides that they want a child and they go to a donor without any regard to the child and consequences related to being impregnated by a donor sperm. This is not a puppy or fish, it’s a human being who has to live and just like any human they are going to build their own family. Let me ask you one thing, do you think that a child born from sperm donation would dare do the same in order to have their own children? I don’t think so!
What is clear is that these children go through hell, which is only experienced by them, whilst the parent is full of lies, deceit and twists that seem to be perfect as plots for a soap opera. The children continue go through their lives as if they are lost. The inhumane conception of these children seems to be like a product manufacturing process. However, when they meet their fathers they either are more destroyed or find their own ground on this earth. The problem is making them feel like they are not an experiment of “avoiding loneliness” or “childlessness” by going scientific and not all natural.
This other women, argues that the child asked to meet the “hundred sperminator” donor dad; and Oprah asks her (the mother) how she would have felt if sperminator refused to meet with the child.
Devastation alert, anyone! She answered that she is glad he didn’t, but if he did, she would have continued with her life without the donor father. She goes on to explain that meeting the sperminator has enriched their lives and they are now a big family with all the other sperminator off springs. BIG LOVE, I say!
At this point, some of you are probably thinking that there is no difference to an absent father when the woman gets pregnant in this manner. It is more like the stuff that goes on at that family show on SABC1 “Khumbule Khaya” (something like that). Consider the following reality; an absent father probably has two or three other children at the most, in a stable family. Whilst the sperminator situation is more intense, in that the donor might be a father to over 66 children in different homes to a multi-choice of mothers.
After considering that, think of the possibility of a sperminator child meeting, dating and marrying their own half sister. Because they thought whatever connection they had was true whereas in is incest. They are after all using their mother’s genealogy and not their sperm donor father’s. Because these sperm banks are not properly regulated, you might find that half of your suburb or block flats is inhabited by at least four to five siblings of your donor conceived child. Unlike most African families, they tend to be very careful when a child brings a “Mkhize” to the “Mkhize’s” and introduces him as her new boyfriend. So, even if you said this is “Kgosi” they will still ask about his family in order to avoid embarrassment.
One couple in the UK discovered, much to their horror, they were twins, conceived by In Vitro Fertilization, then separated at birth. The privacy of the “anonymous” sperm or egg donor superseded their right to know the circumstances of their birth. The couple discovered that they were twins born after Invitro treatment and then separated at birth.
The Journal of Pediatrics reported that a sperm donor from Michigan, US passed on a rare and potentially deadly genetic disorder to five children. The disorder, called severe congenital neutropenia, affects only one in five million newborns. Those with the disorder lack a certain type of white blood cell, and this leaves them vulnerable to a host of infections and also leukemia. Fortunately medication, albeit at $200 a day, can keep white blood cell counts high. Doctors thought it was more than a coincidence when five kids born to four couples in the Detroit area were discovered with congenital neutropenia. They traced it back to one sperm bank and one man.
A New York Times Magazine article relayed tales of single women shopping for sperm as if it were online dating. And sperm donation questionnaires viewable on the Internet confirm the inane selection criteria. Some women are looking for donors from wealthy families or with an agreeable list of heroes and aspirations, as if that will somehow magically rub off on their child who will never know the biological father. Some are looking for donors of a specific religion, such as Catholics, although anyone masturbating into a cup once a week for a couple of years probably commits a sin or two.
A man of 72 has been reported to donate sperm to try to father his own 'grandchild'. He has been cleared to provide the sperm to his daughter-in-law to allow her to become a mother. Any baby born will be its grandfather's genetic child and a half-brother or half-sister to the man it takes to be its father. Think about the child…. How is he/she going to cope with calling granddad her DAD and her brother, DADDY as well? What’s funny though was that the doctors treating the couple, say that the child's interests were paramount when taking the decision. What child, there is no child, they possibly predict what this child is going to experience in this Frankenstein pregnancy.
A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said donations from family members were legal and relatively common. "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." However, preliminary tests at the clinic suggest that the 72-year-old's sperm is viable. Go figure!
If you are thinking of changing careers, clinical psychology and psychiatry might be a very good bet, because in the next couple of years, we are sure to see a rise in single women going to these banks and ordering their Mr. Right sperm and having babies as well.
To end this massacre of a situation, I would like you to remember one of the most terrifying cases in sperm donation in the history of man kind.
Cecil Jacobson an American fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate his patients, without informing them. He is the man who was known by his notorious nickname 'The Sperminator'. He was a doctor who gave women false hope by using a hormone called hCG which presented bodily changes which mimicked actual pregnancy in his scam. He would do ultrasound exams, identifying a fetus in the grainy image, all in an attempt trick his patients and later in the third month he would report that they lost the baby. AS if it could not get worse, we would use his own sperm in place of his patient’s husband’s sperm.
Kathleen touched my heart the most, when she noted the fact that all she needs is to have information for her medical history. But the other donor dad, who is now a pediatrician, stated that donors like him donated their sperm when they were young and healthy, which means that they have little to no alarming medical history. Whilst 40 year old and older donors, may have medical issues which may be very critical to know!
It was interesting to note that Oprah did not have a boy in her panel of donor children, but she had a lot of girls. I know her audience is predominantly women, but it would have been interesting to see how boys deal with the subject.
Can you imagine being married to a guy only to find out that he is a father to a dozen or so… children. Ladies ask questions, dig deep into your man’s life and prevent disappointment. Who is going to tell you that during their varsity days they spent weekends donating sperm for extra cash and they could be a father to a couple if not hundreds of children.
The Observer's ReviewsStop sperminating without RESTRICTIONS!
Think of the life you are CREATING!
SABC3 start playing the new season ALREADY!
By The Observer
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