Keep in mind that the sperm donor signed an agreement waiving all of his parental rights and responsibilities when he volunteered his sperm to the couple. However, Kansas law specifically waives parental responsibility for sperm donors ONLY when the artificial insemination is done through a licensed physician.
This is a messy case and I've heard other messy cases like it throughout my life. These types of cases are partly why I chose adoptive parenting over surrogacy and why I would never go out of my way to donate sperm to anyone. I understand the desire of the women to informally seek sperm. But the ramification of doing it on their own really backfired on all four people involved in this situation.
And what we’re doing now, Todd, as a result of the sexual revolution and all its fruits, is that we are in full-on retreat from human relationship between a man and a woman in order to create that child. So going online to buy sperm from a stranger is about as far as you can possibly get from the participation in divine love and divine creation. The fact that these two women want to have sex with each other has no bearing whatsoever on whether this should be permitted or not. You know, buying sperm on Craigslist should be abolished. Buying sperm at all should be abolished. And furthermore, these people should be in jail, I’m afraid.This isn't a heterosexual versus homosexual issue. I mean, it is to Dr. Morse and the rest of NOM. But Dr. Morse's words -- carried to their logical extreme -- addresses anyone who didn't create their family through plain old penile/vaginal sexual intercourse. Think Progress rightly observes that Dr. Morse is minimizing and insulting families who haven't been raised by biological parents -- including families brought together through adoption, foster care, surrogacy, sperm donation, or fertility treatments.
I mean, you know, honestly, I just can’t even imagine where people think this is going to lead. You know, because the child is no longer a gift from God and a fruit of human love participating in God’s love. The child is now a product, manufactured by adults, and therefore the child cannot be fully the equal of its parent. The object cannot be the equal of its producer or its maker, you know. And so the further we go down this path, the further away we are going from the true ideal of equality before God, of equality before one another, of treating one another with dignity. And the child becomes a kind of chattel. So the legal complications and the sort of ick factor of all of this, it’s important to sort all that out and look at it, but let’s not take our eye off that ball, which is that we have defaced the creator’s plan and intention here by this behavior.
There are lots of great families who have come together and rallied together in all sorts of ways. The problem with Dr. Morse and with NOM is that they are so busy rallying around a principle that they refuse to consider the people that their words affect. How will the three-year-old daughter in this family be positively impacted by the imprisonment of her mothers? How will society benefit from the imprisonment of these women?
You can listen to Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse's interview here: