Gosh, I hate to send my congratulations to the Washington Post, but I must. I am exceedingly grateful for the fresh insights they have provided by publishing the first such commentary I have ever read.
The column the Post published, My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor, provides tremendous insight into the wisdom of Catholic teaching which opposes artificially assisted human reproduction.
The ache in this young woman's heart is all too real, and her story presents society with an accurate accounting of how painful it can be to grow up never really comprehending the reason why you cannot know your father.
For this young woman, however, her persistence did finally pay off and she now communicates with her "father" via e-mail. Telling the reader that for a time she was angry about the way in which she came into being, she writes
When she was 32, my mother — single, and worried that she might never marry and have a family — allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus sot hat she could have a baby. I am the result: a donor-conceived child.
But perhaps the most painful lines in her story are the closing lines:
As relief about my own situation has come to me, I've talked freely and regularly about being donor-conceived, in public and in private. In the beginning, I also talked about it a lot with my biological father. After a bit, though, I noticed that his enthusiasm for our developing relationship seemed to be waning. When I told him of my suspicion, he confirmed that he was tired of "this whole sperm-donor thing." The irony stings me more each time I think of him saying that. The very thing that brought us together was pushing us in opposite directions.
