Career Women and the Sperm Bank

A recent article explores the conveniences of sperm banks for the professional woman. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8284173/ For some reason, as I read the article a chill ran down my spine. It had always been a non-issue for me. But the sight of the two "sperm bank" children in the arms of their busy mom made me pause. Where was the "daddy" in all of this? The morality of sperm banks, along with other methods of conception such as in-vitro fertilization, is an open question.

The existence of sperm banks present decisions made about laws, social policies, societal mores, that we as a people accept about them. They are surely legal, and the procedures used to impregnate the mother are standardized and safe. What more could we hope to ask about the morality of sperm banks?

In the first place, there are the children. And, of these children, we must ask whether we do not owe them something for having produced them in this way? Another way of asking the question is whether or not it is natural and right for them to have a sperm donor father--anonymous, but possibly recorded and researchable? Can we make up for the loss of the father to them. How will we pay them this natural debt?

It is a sad day when our society can no longer live according to a natural order through which human civilization has long been nourished. That is the freedom and responsibility of women to be mothers and men to be fathers. It is sad that our women are so overworked in the ratrace of business and career that they cannot, without great damage to their careers, have children. It makes it difficult for them to retain men. This balancing act between career and family is for a busy executive, often, more than impossible.

And then, when it is entirely natural and fitting for them to do so, by the prompting of their own natural needs and desires, they elect to have children, alas, there are no men to want to be around them and have children with them. Or worse, they are uprooted by distance and cannot sustain a livelihood together.

That having been said, it is not natural and fitting that the woman should thereby have a right to become pregnant via a sperm bank. She ought not to take matters into her own hands and have herself impregnated. The reason is that she thereby contradicts the natural law and runs afoul of a reasonable political theory of justice.

What right has she to place herself above the natural law?

What right have we to so force her to take such measures?

What right do we have to deprive children of their natural fathers?

I am using the language of natural law to frame this issue. It is hopeful that such an approach may show directly what is wrong with the morality of sperm banks. In another moral vernacular, say Kantian deontology, or Millian hedonism, the same conclusion could be drawn. I think that a reasonable political philosophy will need to give the balance in favor of the moral view.

The only framework--or rather set of frameworks--in which this practice would be considered acceptable is a minimal state form allowing a radical freedom of individual liberty that did not count children as citizens--a kind of rowdy individualism. Additional support may come from other varieties of relativism, unitarianism, etc.

But such a downsized form of public reasonableness goes too far. Instead, one must evaluate the decision with an eye both to what the balance of reasonable comprehensive moral views have to say on the topic in light of the political values of law and civility proper to a democratic society.
Here, the balance of political values can be decided along the lines of a political conception of justice. Which liberties will enjoy priority? In this case, the family at is the heart of the basic structure of society, and the liberal state has typically been silent on the inner structure of families. But this question asks how political values are to be justly distributed across the family. Certain toleration is made for variations in parenting, punishment, schooling, etc. within the bounds of the liberty of citizens in their capacities as parents. And where there are deep liberties at stake, things "without which a person would be at a considerable disadvantage", public reason must prevail. The capacity to deprive basic rights to a child--and it is already true to say that one of those natural rights is to enjoy the participation in a natural family (one with a father and a mother, the most basic social unity)--is not within the ambit of a reasonable political conception of justice. In fact, justice requires that a limit be drawn here.

"Liberty" is often construed as the principal value of democratic societies. Such as in "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." But that liberty has been understood to be constrained by something like the harm principle: liberty for all up to the point at which we do another harm. And indeed it is the political value of Life which is serially prior to Liberty that sets this constraint. And so, as for the argument for the liberty of mothers to have sperm-bank children on demand as it is in their liberty to do so is concerned, we can see that indeed that liberty is constrained by what would harm the children--harm their liberty. Thus, there can be no liberty to take from others--even children one wants for oneself really badly --the fundamental right to be born and raised (at least in principle) by one's own natural parents. While there are counterexamples to this right of natural parentage such as in divorce, adoption, or the death of a parent, etc., these counterexamples can each be explained ceteris paribus to not violate this right. With regards mothers and fathers who wish to raise spermbank children as a family unit the case is more complicated and it may be permissable. But there are clear cases of infringement that must be curtailed through law. And, in this case, the balance of political values must rule in favor of the lifelong liberty interest of the child.

The United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child states that children have rights to natural parentage and the obligational matrix that that entails. Article 8, section1:"States Parties undertake to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference." By denying the child access to one half his genealogy, there is a decisive truncation of identity there. These children will have half legs to stand upon as they move into the world, thus putting them in a vulnerable position. A second, and perhaps more relevant "right" may be found in Article 9, section 3: "States Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child's interests." Well, with regards career women who want to have spermbank children on their own--without even the possibility of knowing and living with their fathers, there can be no right to such an option. To do so is to deprive children ab initio of their root in the most fundamental human unit, the natural human family. The dignity of having a family, contact with that family, a shared ancestry, a name, a complete identity cannot be overemphasized.

While there can be a well-justified policy against spermbanking-on-demand, it is not so easy to eradicate through fiat the troubling circumstances that make spermbanking appear a viable option for many career women. The absurdity of spermbanking reveals a deep contradiction in the social roles of professional women. That is a systemic problem that requires considerable compromise, understanding, and compassion to overcome.

In the first place, we might recognize the goodness of women and thank them for the many gifts they bring the human family. Women are the kernel, the hearth, the source of the life of families. And they are rational beings with selves in need of fulfillment. The tension between the role of Mother and Worker could never be stronger than for our corporate ladies. Only by a public recognition of the contradictions in this system can viable solutions emerge. But we will start with the first principle that women--and their rights to have children--hold a central place in the reproduction and creation of society.

Nevertheless, as women, they cannot be permitted do this to our common human family. There are outer limits to what human nature will permit. The derogation of the family to but one of several possible breeding arrangements allowed in a liberal society has gone too far. The utilization of husbandry techniques was also deployed in the desperate narrows of the third Reich in which the SS Stud Farms got going. The stories of those children are deeply riven by tragedy, alienation, and isolation having been whisked away and left without identity. Where the human family is uprooted the solution is to reroot the family, not to abolish the rights of children, "future citizens" for the convenience of an unnatural person in an unnatural time.