No matter how repulsive the thought may be, you may be dating or married to a sibling. When I was young I often heard my parents question my elder sibling’s dates. They would ask about parents and home, where they were from and who their people were. These were just a few of the many questions. I thought they were snooping and quite frankly felt it was insulting to my siblings and their dates. Later as I began to date, I realized the reason for all the questions was to try and guarantee the person in question was not related to our family or the relationship was so far along the blood line there could be no genetic issues.
As far as I could tell, their perception was that if the relationship was distant, it might be okay to date or even marry, but they even discouraged that. My parents were old school and did not want us to date a relative; distant or not. They felt if there was no genetic association; fine. However, if there was even a smidgen of blood connected between the two of us, the dating was out and a relationship was taboo.
Today we are in a world where more and more women choose to have children devoid of a male body. They select a person via a sperm bank. The perfect male is chosen from a series of photos, backgrounds, races, so forth and so on. Finally with the injection and successful connection of sperm and egg, nine months later a baby is born. That’s all well and good, if there are no other issues involved. Say for instance, the sperm donor decides to donate habitually. Sperm banks work on an earning potential basis, so limiting the number of donations of a popular donor is not an option and really as far as they are concerned ‘unthinkable.’
In some countries: Great Britain, France and Sweden, sperm donors are limited in the number of children they can father. However, in the US, no such restrictions are in place. A sperm donor who is healthy and decides to disperse his manly communications whenever he so desires, can father as many children as he chooses. Void of morals or conscience, in some instances, the donor has no idea he has even fathered these offspring. He simply disperses sperm and allows the powers that be to have it or have at it. As long as he gets paid, his part of the contractual agreement has been accomplished.
So is the case in Washington DC. A social worker, Cynthia Daily, decided to find her son’s siblings. In so doing, she has so far discovered 150 and the list is growing. Her story has caused concern with other’s who may be in the same situation. You can read more about Cynthia’s story here: 150 Siblings.
So far, no one has a solution. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, there are guidelines in place, however, those guidelines are not being legislated. There is no law on the books are statutes restricting the number of times a sperm donor can donate or the number of times a sperm bank can use donations to father a child.