The Church warned us if we separated procreation from the physical act of love between a husband and wife, children would become commodities, man-made objects to be ordered from a menu to satisfy the whim of the parents. As William E. May so eloquently wrote:
“When a child is begotten through the conjugal act, he comes to be as a gift from God, a gift crowning the spouse’s mutual gift of themsleves to each other. When a child is ‘produced’ it comes to be, not as a gift from God, which in truth it is, but as a product of human control.”
And here is yet another in a long line of “services” the fertility industry is willing to provide to make children even more a product to order to specifications. A company called Fame Daddy is poised to provide women with sperm from famous men at a premium price. From The Telegraph:
Fame Daddy will offer would-be-mothers “top quality celebrity surrogate fathers” when it launches next February, according to Dan Richards, its chief executive.
Prices will start at £15,000 for a premium sperm service from the clinic.
The company’s website, which launched last week, claims that women can pick from a range of celebrated high-achievers when picking a prospective father for their offspring. The identities of each high-flying father will kept secret as the donors have been guaranteed anonymity. The men will also be required to sign a legal waiver of their rights to access to the child.
However would-be mothers using the Fame Daddy clinic will be able to identify their area of achievement and other personal attributes.
They can choose from donor dads who have excelled in a range of fields including sport, entertainment and business. The website lists a range of “sample profiles” of typical sperm donors, including an Oscar-winning actor, a member of the House of Lords and an ex-Premiership footballer.
Now Fame Daddy is not exactly up an running yet, so here is hoping this venture never gets off the ground. I am not normally one to hope that an entrepreneur fails, but when they say something like this, I can’t help myself:
“To be able to harvest potential from the global gene pool, rather than from the more limited selection of the men she comes into direct contact with, is a major evolutionary leap for women.”
Evolutionary leap for women? Seriously? Ordering famous sperm from some celebrity chaser and raising a child to never know his or her father? I call that a step backward, not forward, for both her AND the child. And what happens when the child is not a rock star or star footballer or billionaire banker? Does mom get to sue for a “defective product”? Evolutionary leap indeed.
