Hi everyone-
When I was a playwright, I was commissioned to write a play with the Williamstown Theater Festival and the director, with whom I was meant to collaborate, was older than me by a good few years and was contemplating single motherhood by choice. I was married, in my very early thirties, and had not yet become a mom myself, but I knew full well that I didn't want to intentionally raise a child without their father.
The idea was that the play was supposed to be a comedy, and there were elements of comedy in it, but what mostly struck me during the writing process was how selfish it is to intentionally raise a child without one of their parents. The story ended up being about a child who was conceived using a sperm donor and who goes on to discover that he's just one of hundreds of children who were conceived using that donor's sperm. He ends up feeling like he's just extra, an afterthought, unloved.
I ended up coming to the opinion that human beings must take responsibility for their reproductive material. I know there are tons of sperm donors. The Telegram founder alone has hundreds of children who were conceived using his donated sperm. Elon Musk has this thing about populating the world with his genetic issue. And I get all that too, who doesn't want to leave a living legacy?
But mostly, I think of growing up without knowing where you came from. I know that's hard for adopted kids, and it's got to be just as hard for kids who were created for someone else's enjoyment. I think of what Katy Faust said: children have a right to know their parents. Surrogacy, egg and sperm donation take that right away; Would-be moms don't have to fall in love or choose a partner with whom to start a family, they can create a spreadsheet and select for preferred characteristics.
But now, we have this thing where in vitro fertilization has created what NPR calls a record number of single moms in their 40s. Women who have no husband or partner take out their checkbooks and buy a vial of carefully selected sperm, create an embryo, implant it, and voila, they become mothers and children are born without fathers. "The number of unmarried women in their 40s who are having babies has grown by 250% in the last 30 years," NPR writes, citing government data.
The women who undertake this are extremely well educated and they have to have means—IVF can cost over $30,000 depending on how many inseminations are necessary. The Trump administration is all for it, the more babies the merrier, and the admin has said insurance should cover it. I get that, too, after all we're a bit libertarian as a nation. But the thing is that while we're undertaking this reproductive free-for-all, killing some babies, spending $30,000 to conceive others, we're losing something about our humanity. We don't quite know what it is yet but rest assured that by the time we do, it will be lost for good.
Libby