The fifth of a series of posts:
A ‘donor’ conceived adult responds to Professor Shapiros blog post: "http://julieshapiro.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/anonymous-donors-and-what-to-do-about-them/#comments"
Vicki Reilly:
"I think beyond the biological father that his family is my genetic heritage and I have a right to know about it. He donated the sperm but that sperm goes back to his ancestors and they are my ancestors. I don’t care if it was a one night stand or a sperm bank that sperm got into my mother and produced me. He was a part of it and so were his mother, father, grandmother, grandfather and on and on. Their health, their looks, their cultures are all a part of me. So don’t just call him a donor.”
"The word father matters because that is exactly what the man is or in my case was, as he is most probably now deceased. I had a “Dad”, the man who raised me, but technically speaking he was not my father. Father, in the English language,
denotes one who begets an offspring and the sperm donor was indeed my father.
The word father is important because it is the term that focuses on the heritage
I share with this man and his family."
"I have been giving the words “donor” and “father” a lot of thought and I believe that the person who donated the sperm to my mother was actually her donor. He did not donate the sperm to me. He was not my sperm donor but hers. He became my biological father by donating that sperm. I think the only title you can give him with any degree of legal and moral certainty is “biological father” to the child created by sperm donation."
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