Commodifying The Personal: Again

But there's more here: 

Exactly how many donor children Mr. Meijer has around the world is impossible to say. But Ties van der Meer, the director of the Dutch Donor Child Foundation, and his colleagues have calculated that if Mr. Meijer’s known pattern of clinic and private donation was any indicator, the number could run to several hundred, even 1,000.

In an email, Mr. Meijer dismissed that conclusion. “I have approximately 250 children,” he said. “Assumptions of 1,000 are ridiculous. I am disappointed by the obsession of the numbers.

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Interesting piece from the NYT here. The headline says it all: "The Sperm Kings Have a Problem." Elaborating: "Many people want a pandemic baby, but some sperm banks are running low. So women are joining unregulated Facebook groups to find willing donors, no middleman required."

Compensation for sperm donors is prohibited but they may be reimbursed for expenses (typically travel). The cost to prospective donees, however, is high, up to $1100 per vial for the best sperm. ("Best" being from donors who are good-looking, highly-educated, and successful.) With the pandemic, sperm donations to regulated banks are down so, as the article notes, some women are turning to the grey market.

All of which invites some non-market observations. As noted in my posts on the work of Adeline Allen on surrogacy contracts (here and here), there should be more than satisfaction of a personal good when evaluating the ethical; I hope no one takes rule-based utilitarianism (e.g., law and economics) as an adequate moral philosophy. With respect to surrogacy contracts, I believe that Allen successfully argues that the undeniable good of having a child to whom one is genetically related is outweighed by the negative good ("bads") that surrogacy entails. Pregnancy via sperm donation, however, presents the opposite biological scenario; the male, not a female, is the surrogate.

Is this distinction sufficient to render sperm donation licit? Although I think the answer is no, reasonable minds might differ. And even if we conclude that such contributions to human life are unethical, (how) should the law (of, e.g., contracts) incorporate such a moral judgment?

No clear answers from me but certainly questions worth pondering.