Posted on 09/30/2011 1:35:15 PM PDT by ReformationFan
A lawyer who donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children.
More than 15 of those have already attempted to contact 33-year-old Ben Seisler.
The donor confessed to his fiancée as part of a new reality show, Sperm Donor, that aired on the Style Network on Tuesday.
Seisler donated sperm for three years while attending law school at George Mason, Virginia. He earned around $150 per donation.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
If the fiances has an ounce of common sense, she would move, change her number and quickly!
Is he liable for support?
Oops, fiancee not fiances (must have been thinking of finances). My bad!
he won
why? did he personally inseminate these chicks??
What a classy way to tell her, Lord Etiquette.
You’re absolutely correct. I’d run as fast as I could.
This should not be allowed.
Better he should have been spaying his way.
I find the IVF industry the most amoral enterprise in the history of human endeavor.
Playing God - not a good idea.
Oh, and another question(for anybody out there: why do they call him a sperm "donor"? Wasn't he a sperm "vendor"?
No government has ever passed a law stating that a sperm donor should be financially responsible for their sires, yet.
It’s all fun and profit right up until the kids contact you, find out you’re a lawyer and go “**** you, pay me”.
No... he simply donated his sperm. That being said, would you want to have children with a man who has already had seventy children or more? Thirty-three have already contacted the man or tried to contact him meaning they obviously want some sort of “relationship” or meeting with him. If she looks into her future family with this man, would her children deal without trauma knowing they have at least 70 half brothers or sisters out there? Also, at some point, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or a dozen don’t try to make a claim to his estate. They may not “win” legally but what type of expenses will be incurred by the “real” children? (I am assuming probably most of the estate). Sometimes in life, one should look down the road a bit before making the ultimate commitment. If that young woman was my daughter or close friend, I’d tell her to go now. He only divulged this little bit of “info” on a reality show (?) and after so many of his children (or children resulting from donation or whatever) tried to contact him.
It certainly sounds like it.
Dear fiancee, run, don't walk. Zot only knows what else he will do for money.
(And lest I be accused of misanthropy, I'd say the same about a woman who sold her eggs for others' use. A person who will sell his/her progeny is not a "keeper."
Geeze. I’m sure the guy never thought he’d
end up as the favorite so many times.
That said, the fiance should still run;
what an effing inconsiderate jerk to put
her through that on TV, unless he told her
ahead and they pretended... oh, never mind, it’s
all a bit sick. Including the whole idea
of a show called ‘Sperm Donor’....
“Why do they call it a sperm bank?”
Because the man is banking on the kids not finding out who he really is... (snicker, snicker)
Since it’s a British situation and related to sperm donation, it reminded me of one of the funniest “jokes” I have read in a long long time. It is a bit long, but very much worth the read.......
The British Governments policy of socialized medicine has recently been broadened to include a service called Proxy Fathers. Under the government plan, any married woman who is unable to become pregnant through the first five years of her marriage may request the service of a proxy father — a government employee who attempts to solve the couples problem by impregnating the wife.
The Smiths, a young couple, have no children and a proxy father is due to arrive. Leaving for work, Mr. Smith says, *I am off. The government man should be here soon.* Moments later a door-to-door baby photographer rings the bell.
Mrs. Smith: Good morning.
Salesman: Good morning, madam. You do not know me, but I have come to...
Mrs. Smith: (Interrupting) No need to explain, I have been expecting you.
Salesman: Really? Well, good. I have made a specialty of babies, specially twins.
Mrs. Smith: That is what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat.
Salesman: (Sitting) Then you do not need to be sold on the idea?
Mrs. Smith: Do not concern yourself. My husband and I both agree this is the right thing to do.
Salesman: Well, perhaps we should get down to it?
Mrs. Smith: (Blushing) Just where do we start?
Salesman: Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch and perhaps a couple on the bed. Sometimes the living room floor allows the subject to really spread out.
Mrs. Smith: Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it has not worked for Harry and me.
Salesman: Well, madam, none of us can guarantee a good one every time, but if we try several locations and I shoot from six or seven angles, I am sure you will be pleased with the results. In fact, my business card says, *I aim to please.*
Mrs. Smith: Pardon me, but this is a little informal, is it not?
Salesman: Madam, in my line of work, a man must be at ease and take his time. I would love to be in and out in five minutes, but you would be disappointed with that.
Mrs. Smith: I know! Have you had much success at this?
Salesman: (Opening his briefcase and finding baby pictures) Just look at this picture. Believe it or not, it was done on top of a bus in downtown London.
Mrs. Smith: Oh, my!!
Salesman: And here are pictures of the prettiest twins in town. They turned out exceptionally well when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.
Mrs. Smith: She was?
Salesman: Yes, I am afraid so. I finally had to take her down to Hyde Park to get the job done right. I have never worked under such impossible conditions. People were crowding around four and five deep, pushing to get a good look.
Mrs. Smith: Four and five deep?
Salesman: Yes and for more than three hours, too. The mother got so excited she started bouncing around, squealing and yelling at the crowd. I could not concentrate. I am afraid I had to ask a couple of men to restrain her. By that time darkness was approaching and I began to rush my shots. When the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment I just packed it all in.
Mrs. Smith: You mean they actually chewed on your, eh.., equipment?
Salesman: That is right, but it is all in a days work. I consider my work a pleasure. I have spent years perfecting my patented technique. Now take this baby, I shot this one in the front window of a big department store.
Mrs. Smith: I just cannot believe it.
Salesman: Well, madam, if you are ready, I will set up my tripod so that we can get to work.
Mrs. Smith: TRIPOD?!?
Salesman: Oh yes, I have to use a tripod to rest my equipment on. It is much too heavy and unwieldy for me to hold while I am shooting. Mrs. Smith?... Mrs. Smith?... My goodness, she has fainted!
Just cannot wrap my mind around this whole concept.
Would like to see the data on how many ‘sperm banks’ exist. How many “egg cartons’ and how many ‘vendors’.
If this ‘practice’ continues - there will be millions of humans who are all half-siblings or cousins. That is chilling.
Children are now ‘livestock’.
Now there’s a professional j@ck0ff if ever there were one. I wonder if his fiance has any Spring Break Girls Gone Wild videos in her closet`
What happens when a couple of kids who live in the sperm bank area grow up and fall in love and marry, then find out they share a daddy?
“... fall in love and marry, then find out they share a daddy?”
Uh? Move to West Virginia?!! (I’m joking freepers from West Virginia!)
We have a term for both of these folks. The word is prostitute.
Directory of sperm banks in the US:
And yes, it is chilling. Google also gives lots of results for “egg cartons.” I assume this is mainly done through assisted-reproduction practices, since the eggs have to be fertilized and implanted individually, not just, er, injected, as sperm might be in a healthy woman.
They’ll start an “incestous rights movement” demanding the government permit marriages between blood relatives. And anyone who disagrees with them will be called “incestophobic”.
“Mrs. Smith: TRIPOD?!?”
Good one! Thanks for the Friday laugh.
Would have made a good Benny Hill sketch.
Better Headline:
“Blind College Student Diagnosed With Rare, Hairy-Palms Disease”
Whoever came up with that photo is a genius. One of the funniest slaps at Bubba ever.
$150 per donation? I could have been a millionaire!!!
I can't believe someone thought this was a good idea for a television show.
I believe it’s already happening...half-siblings producing children. You don’t have to use the WVa. meme to see it either.
Or Kentucky, or...
The welfare system has rewarded baby-producing behavior for decades. Doesn’t matter who the sire is. The factory gets the $$, the effin sire goes scott free.
(unless you count the chains hanging on his conscience...for the most part, they don’t care)
Next reality show in the works.. “I can’t believe I ****** my sister” with maury povich as the host.
Placemark.
What exactly defines playing god? GE crops? Going into space? Organ transplant?
Its a stupid term, humanity survives buy defying the natural world
The line is drawn, I would argue, with the manipulation of other human beings in ways that are de-personalized or de-humanized. I'm not talking about genuinely therapeutic medical interventions,since this is all legitimately orietnted toward restoring the human being to normal healthy function: curing diseases, correcting disorders, healing injuries, etc.
When I'm speaking of "manipulation," I'm talking about interventions that do not restore the normal healthy function, but tend toward redefining what it is to be human (as if we were nothing but malleable "material.")
To give an example which distinguishes the one from the other: say a couple suffers from infertility because the wife's fallopian tubes are blocked, and the husband's hormone profile is out of whack. Surgery to unblock the fallopian tube, and hormonal therapy to get the guy's hormonenumbers up where they should be---resulting in their ability to achieve pregnancy in the normal way ---would be absolutely legitimate.
But artificial reproduction technologies which do not repair sexual intercourse, but replace it ---say, laboratory-based baby-making--- would not be legitimate.
Why? Because such techniques do nothing to heal their sexual reproductive function, but replace it in a way that does not restore their marital sexual wholeness.
That' s not "playing God", exactly. That's more like failing to play human.
“Why? Because such techniques do nothing to heal their sexual reproductive function, but replace it in a way that does not restore their marital sexual wholeness.”
And getting an artificial leg doesn’t restore the leg’s function but replaces it in a why that does not restore the body’s wholeness.
Still not getting you. First of all, there’s nothing here that suggests there was anything more complicated then using frozen sperm and a turkey baster. Even if there was so what? We’re not talking about genetic enhancement or any other sort of manipulation. The children born are as normal as any other.
I just don’t see how the only ‘humanizing’ way to conceive is by bumping uglies.
You were very right about man’s mastery over the world, and ourselves. But like the issue with the leg I can come up with a thousand different ways man alters himself/environment to make it suit him and I don’t see why out of all of those, reproduction is somehow different.
A very thoughtful response - thank you.
What a hilarious bunch of children. What a bunch of stories the teacher will get when all the children have to write about why I like my father.
The first thing to determine, is whether we agree on one big point: that if a "medical" intervention preserves/restores our person-ness, our human-ness, this is good; but if a "medical" intervention destroys / impairs/ redefines our humanness, this is not-good.
And this is a judgment to be made carefuly, based on the widest and deepest human experience, not solely on your or my instant sense of "cool" or "not cool."
So: your thoughts, in principle, about restoring humanity vs replacing/ redefining humanity? Do you agree, at least, that there could be a difference, and an important one?
Example: the difference between treating a brain aneurysm by removing and replacing a faulty section of cerebral artery, vs. treating a difficult personality by removing your brain. An extreme analogy... but it illustrates the sifference between healing /restoring, VERSUS fundamentally re-visioning, what is MOST personal to us.
"And getting an artificial leg doesn’t restore the leg’s function but replaces it in a why that does not restore the body’s wholeness [?]"
In this case, the purpose of even an artificial leg is to restore personal mobility in an integral, personal manner. If the function of an injured leg can't be restored, the replacementof an artificial knee joint, or even the use of an artificial leg, would be very reasonable as it does not interfere with the meaning of a leg per se.
However, if a person wanted to replace their legs with a half a dozen gas-powered piston-driven mechanical legs on wheels, it would surely enhance their mobility, but not their human-ness per se. It would be absurd for that person to then enter a competitive marathon race, because that's one instance in which having one's real legs means something. Going faster than all the other runners on his six-legged gas-powered wheels, would fundamentally alter and degrade the meaning of "being a runner" or "winning the race" or even having much fellowship with other athletes, who are still recognizably human in their capacities.
(Got that?) =:oO Just trying to show how just achieving some wanted function, does not necessarily enhance your humanness --and may even detract from it.
"Still not getting you...I just don’t see how the only ‘humanizing’ way to conceive is by bumping uglies."
It depends on what species we're talking about. There's no way to "humanize" apes, for instance, by insisting that they pledge love, loyalty and unity of life, before they mate and breed. They have no transcendant "meaning" in ape mating, and thus would not be "demeaned" even by artificial reproduction.
(If scientists want to propagate rare apes by artificial insemination or even laboratory cloning, the apes would not be "depersonalized". They are not personal to begin with.)
However, our species is made up of "persons". Persons discern deep and intrinsic meanings from their sexual union. The outlines of this meaning have been understood by every human culture, on every continent, in every stage of human history. We admire and consider our best models, those whose sexual relations are full of meaning, and when that meaning comprises some degree of sacredness. We do not admire those who copulate like dumb beasts, without mindfulness and without honor.
"I don’t see why out of all of those, reproduction is somehow different."
It is different because human procreatiuon is more than animal reproduction. It procreates rational beings who have very deep and wide capacities for meaning. Of all human functions, the experience of embodied interpersonal union touches transcendance even on a natural level. It binds hearts and minds as well as bodies, gives rise to families, extended kinship, tribes, nations and civilizations, linking the two sexual genders and the 10,000 generations, and even providing a brush with Divine love and grace.
This is the only fitting way to bring into existence something so valuable and dignified as human life. Only sacred fertile union is a sufficiently dignified act to beget embodied-spiritual persons.
(As opposed to breeding apes or manufacturing machines, which is how your produce specimens, livestock, experimental subjects, commodities, products, or property.)
That is why every religion, from the most rudimentary to the most elaborated, recognizes and concerns itself with the meaning of marriage. Even atheists find themselves wanting the signs and ceremonies that say "our love is precious, our love makes life." Even gays, with their dead-end sex, still long for some fragment of meaning, want some parody of marriage.
There are people who lack even this level of meaning, who think sex is nothing more than bumping uglies. But even that proves the point: they are already substantially dehumanized. They have fallen far.
“The first thing to determine, is whether we agree on one big point: that if a “medical” intervention preserves/restores our person-ness, our human-ness, this is good; but if a “medical” intervention destroys / impairs/ redefines our humanness, this is not-good.”
Nope. I base my morality on the rights of the individual. It is not immoral for me to take any action that’s doesn’t violate the individual rights of any other human being. I can defend such a position very easily and with pretty damn good logic. On the other hand, you would have to define this ‘humanness’ thing and why it’s so important to keep the same.
But really that’s beside the point. Your mechanical legs point doesn’t really apply since there is no enhancement per se going on. While I’m perfectly willing to defend genetic and/or biomechanical enhancement, it’s simply not taking place here. This isn’t even in vitro fertilization…what’s happening in the body is all natural.
I think the problem is that you’re trying to apply a moral judgment on the process rather than the result. At a minimum this process involves three consenting adults (mother, doctor, donor) voluntarily engaging in a minor medical procedure. I don’t see a presumption of any violated rights of the resulting child so I just don’t see any immorality here.
And keep in mind that that the way you outlined it, it’s somehow more moral for a woman to go out and get a one night stand with a total stranger then to use AI, I’m at a loss there.
Great response.
If anyone cannot differentiate between the miracle of human life at conception and repairing a severed limb - I can’t help them;)
That IS what I'm doing. But it's not a problem. Processes are means. Ends are results. Both means and ends have to be moral for an act to be moral.
Otherwise you could not criticize any crime (means) as immoral as long as the intended ultimate result was good. And every offender thinks he had a good enough reason, had a good enough end in mind, to do what he or she did.
The "right of the individual" are a good thing, but they are not the only good thing. It's like saying blue is the only color. Other virtues are needed for human flourishing; and among the most important virtues are those which uphold the sanctity of sex, marriage, and family, which are the natural sources of all human flourishing.
BTW, if ---as I would argue--- means and ends must both be blameless for an action to be blameless, then a woman having a one-night stand with a stranger in order to get pregnant, would not be acting blamelessly. This is either fornication or adultery, and both of these undermine the integrity in the person, and disrespect the sanctity of marriage.
But wouldn't she be blameless according to your philosophy?Whose individual right did she violate?
Yet I would not call her blameless, because of her lack of a due integrity and a due respect.
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