What? Why is the Korean War Baby concerned with Sperm Donors? Well, just consider the good, bad, and weird things that Science and Medicine has wrought in the couple of generations with In-Vitro Fertilization, Birth Control Pills, ‘Emergency Contraception’, ‘deadbeat birth fathers’, etc.
Look at this article and you get the perspective from a man who thought he was doing a good thing. “Donating Sperm” did not make him rich, at $20 USD per…uh, specimen.
Genetic Lessons From a Prolific Sperm Donor – Newsweek
"You would get a personal phone call from a nurse saying, 'The situation is urgent! We have a woman ovulating this morning. Can you be here in a half hour?' "
"It's a crisp fall day in Northville, Mich., a small suburb of Ann Arbor, and Kirk Maxey, a soft-spoken, graying baby boomer with a classic square jaw, is watching his 12-year-old son chase a soccer ball toward the goal. Maxey is doing what he does every Saturday, along with hundreds of other family men and women across the country, but he's not your average soccer dad. Maxey, 51, happens to be one of the most prolific sperm donors in the country. Between 1980 and 1994, he donated at a Michigan clinic twice a week.
Maxey was a medical student at the University of Michigan, his first wife, a nurse at a fertility clinic, persuaded him to start donating sperm to infertile couples. Maxey became the go-to stud for the clinic because his sperm had a high success rate of making women pregnant, which brought in good money for the clinic. Maxey himself made about $20 a donation, but says he was motivated to donate more out of a strong paternal instinct and sense of altruism.
When he began volunteering, he wasn't asked to take any genetic tests and received no psychological screening or counseling. He merely signed a waiver of anonymity, locked himself in a room with a cup and a sexy magazine, and didn't consider the emotional or genetic consequences for another 30 years. Both his cavalier attitude and the clinic's lax standards, Maxey says, explain why he may have so many offspring. But now a fierce conscience is catching with his robust procreative drive.
Now the confluence of genetic science and an
increased awareness around the consequences of sperm donation is changing the game—and potentially the lives of Maxey's offspring. Today sperm donation is no longer a shadow business, partially because
infertility, single motherhood, and homosexual parenting have become more socially acceptable. (The
California Cryobank alone now sells an average of
30,000 vials of sperm a year.) At the same time, donors and offspring have begun to connect though genetic testing and Web sites like the
Donor Sibling Registry.
In 2007 two of Maxey's offspring, Ashley and Caitlyn Swetland, who are now 21 and 18, used the site to find Maxey, who had been a registered user since 2005. No other children have come forward, but as Maxey's relationship with Ashley and Caitlyn progressed, he began to think about the consequences of his earlier donations.
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Mr. Maxey’s ‘reunion’ with just two of his offspring has been positive, yet it demonstrates the tip of the iceberg. It is good that he ‘began to think about the consequences of his earlier donations’, but how many sperm donors in the past and present feel the same way? Many ‘deadbeat’ birth “Fathers (NOT a father)” are most likely to run the other way when a girlfriend tells them, “I tested positive”. Korean ‘birthfathers’, a real joke of a term, are now immune from prosecution from their own ‘sperm donating’.
In Korea there are NO LAWS to test for Paternity or force the Bio-logical ‘sperm donor’ to even help with medical costs, let alone give child support for the 37% of Unwed Mothers who KEPT their babies in 2008. That represents more than ONE out of THREE babies born that year and from 2000 it was only 8.6%. (See KWDI_May2009ReportIssuesUnwedMothers)
YET some Liberal Socialists Opposition Lawmakers are pushing for a law that would give a biological “father” the right to RE-CLAIM his Paternal Rights if a child is given up for IN-COUNTRY Adoption.
Talk about a Dead-beat law…Uh, WHY? I asked some Korean Women’s Development Institute’s professors if ANY Korean father would even WANT to do that. They had to agree that they knew almost none would do such a thing. There are SOME things that the KWB agrees with some people in the liberal camps, when it comes to women’s rights and rights of the child.
On the same note though, Korean women have the legal and moral right to RELINQUISH their child and 63% DID SO in 2008.
Would that more Bio-logical Sperm Donors/boyfriends/even rapists/just plain jerks WOULD have a change of mind and consider like Mr. Maxey the consequences of their actions. The Korean War Baby DID and at the age of 28 he did the drastic step of having a vasectomy. Years later he and his wife had to try science to produce a child, ending in failure twice. Many do not know that the success rate is about 20% and many eggs are fertilized and frozen. Hard decisions had to be made and moral issues abound. (watch for the book).
For Adoptees NOT knowing both of our biological parents are difficult issues. There are parallels to those who discover that they were ‘produced’ by Medical Science. Whether egg or sperm OR BOTH, they must deal with some of the same issues. In the end we must all help each other and stop just blaming or trying “Knee Jerk Reactions” like thinking that JUST STOP INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTIONS will solve it all. Nothing is simple in This Thing of Ours-Adoption.
Some other articles about the pitfalls of Sperm Donation, IVF, etc.:
The truth about donor 1084
OnlineSpermEggBank
More Moral Dilemmas
What? Why is the Korean War Baby concerned with Sperm Donors? Well, just consider the good, bad, and weird things that Science and Medicine has wrought in the couple of generations with In-Vitro Fertilization, Birth Control Pills, ‘Emergency Contraception’, ‘deadbeat birth fathers’, etc. 
Maxey was a medical student at the University of Michigan, his first wife, a nurse at a fertility clinic, persuaded him to start donating sperm to infertile couples. Maxey became the go-to stud for the clinic because his sperm had a high success rate of making women pregnant, which brought in good money for the clinic. Maxey himself made about $20 a donation, but says he was motivated to donate more out of a strong paternal instinct and sense of altruism.
