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| Gamete Donation | Gametes are the reproductive cells of both men and women – are the male sperm and the female eggs (or ova). Semen, banks for donated sperm have been in existence for a number of years, as donated sperm was requested for use in artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization procedures. However the egg donation is a much more recent phenomenon due to the significantly more elaborate techniques required to extract eggs from a woman’s ovaries
Gamete Donation and Parental Responsibility
Contrasting cloning and surrogacy, reproduction via gamete donation is widely assumed to be morally uncomplicated. A number of authors have recently argued that this assumption is mistaken: gamete donors, they claim, have parental responsibilities that they typically treat too lightly. The “parental neglect” case against gamete donation fails. Begin by examining and rejecting the view that gamete donors have parental responsibilities; none of the current accounts of parenthood provides good reason for ascribing parenthood to gamete donors. Even if gamete donors have parental responsibilities for “their “children, it is not clear that they treat these responsibilities too lightly.
The Grounds of Parenthood
A crucial argument in the neglect argument is the claim that gamete donors have parental responsibilities towards the children that result from their donation. With the purpose of assessing the plausibility of responsibility principle (RP) we need to determine what the grounds of parental responsibilities are (“parenthood”).
Notwithstanding a rapidly increasing literature on this topic there is little consensus about the answer to this question in either philosophy or the law. There are four descriptions of parenthood currently dominate the discussion: gestationalism, intentionalism, geneticism and causalism.
Gestationalists assert that parenthood is based on gestation and childbirth; Intentionalists assert that parenthood is based on intentions to rear; Geneticists assert that parenthood is based on the relation of direct genetic derivation; and Causalists dispute parenthood is grounded in the relation of being the cause of a child’s existence. Each point of view may be held in various ways depending on whether the relation in question is said to be sufficient or necessary for parenthood (or both). For illustration, someone could be a pluralist about parenthood and hold that each of these relations is sufficient and none is necessary for parenthood.
As all these four descriptions of parenthood are live options, rejecting RP on the grounds that it doesn’t follow from one of these accounts would be dialectically problematic. The best argumentative strategy would be to show that it isn’t supported by any of these accounts.
Parenthood gestational explanations clearly fail to support RP, for gamete donors (qua gamete donors) don’t stand in a gestational relation to their genetic child. Evidently, gamete donors aren’t the only individuals who fail to stand in a gestational relation to their genetic child: all fathers are in this position. Possibly, the gamete donors might inherit parental responsibilities in much the same way that fathers do? Consequently how in this case do gestationalists account for paternity? Usually, they consider that paternity is acquired indirectly: a man becomes a child’s father by virtue of his relationship with the child’s mother.
No matter what the plausibility of this account of paternity, it clearly doesn’t support RP, for gamete donors will rarely have the kind of relationship with the child’s mother that generates paternity.
Intentional explanations of parenthood also fail to support RP. Intentional methods of parenthood ground parental responsibilities in intentions to procreate and rear. The potential gamete donor has neither of these intentions. She or he has the purpose to help someone procreate by providing the materials necessary for reproduction, but these intentions are importantly different from the intentions to procreate and rear. It is unbelievable to suppose that successfully enabling someone to procreate might generate parental responsibilities, for if they did, then a doctor who provided fertility drugs would thereby acquire parental responsibilities over the resulting child. To facilitate find prima facie plausible defenses of RP we need to turn to genetic and causal accounts of parenthood.
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