Just think about it. Like ships in the night, two people meet. They kiss. They make love. They part. Then one asks the other for a memento of the grand occasion, a sperm donation.
In the brave new world, is fatherhood optional? Once a male has donated his sperm, is the presence of a father about as necessary as a drone’s in a bee colony? Could be. Judges in Pennsylvania think business concerns and a would-be mother’s prerogatives must override any concerns over the need of a child for a father.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a woman who promised a sperm donor he would not have to pay child support cannot renege on the deal.
The 3-2 decision overturns lower court rulings under which Joel L. McKiernan had been paying up to $1,500 a month to support twin boys born in August 1994 to Ivonne V. Ferguson, his former girlfriend and co-worker. (from here)
What rights does a child have in such a transaction? Isn’t law about protecting the rights of the weak. “Commonsense,” it appears, dictates otherwise.
Ferguson’s argument in Ferguson v. McKiernan unsuccessfully relied on the principle that the oral contract was unenforceable because it violated Pennsylvania’s policy to disallow parents to barter their children’s right to support, Baer said. Ferguson’s argument also analogized unsuccessfully that this sperm donor situation was similar to the support responsibilities for children conceived before a divorce or between unmarried parents, Baer said.
“This analogy, however, is unsustainable in the face of the evolving role played by alternative reproductive technologies in contemporary American society,” Baer said. “It derives no authority from apposite Pennsylvania law, and it violates the commonsense distinction between reproduction via sexual intercourse and the nonsexual clinical options for conception that are increasingly common in the modern reproductive environment. The inescapable reality is that all manner of arrangements involving the donation of sperm or eggs abound in contemporary society, many of them couched in contracts or agreements of varying degrees of formality.”
The court agreed with McKiernan’s argument that a decision in line with the lower courts would undermine the legal status of sperm donors, including anonymous donors at sperm banks, and would force women to seek sperm via sperm bank rather than from men in their acquaintanceship that they admire. (from here)
Commonsense. Yes…commonsense. Commonsense explains an “anonymous” sperm donation.
McKiernan and Ferguson were romantically involved between November 1991 and 1993, and they stayed in regular contact following the end of their sexual relationship, Baer said.
At Ferguson’s request, McKiernan agreed to donate his sperm to Ferguson with the contingencies that it would be done via in vitro fertilization in a clinical setting, McKiernan’s role would be anonymous, he would not have to provide support and he would not seek visitation, Baer said.
McKiernan did attend the birth of the twins, Baer said, because Ferguson called him in a panic and had no one else to turn to during the birth. Ferguson named her husband as the father on the birth certificates of the twins, according to court papers. (from here)
Ferguson was married at the time she gave birth to the twins.
According to court documents, Ferguson was married when she and McKiernan met while working together at Pennsylvania Blue Shield in Harrisburg. They conducted their on-again off-again affair beginning in 1991 and continuing for approximately two years.
The two had a sexual relationship that waned before Ferguson persuaded him to donate sperm for her.
Her former husband is named as the twin boys’ father on the birth certificates. (from here)
Some on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found the decision “unreasonable.”
Justice J. Michael Eakin, in a dissent, said a parent cannot bargain away a child’s right to support. “The children point and say, ‘That is our father. He should support us,”‘ Eakin wrote. “What are we to reply? ‘No! He made a contract to conceive you through a clinic, so your father need not support you.’ I find this unreasonable at best.” (from here)
