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We are told ad nauseum about “Her body, her choice.” Through the Roe v. Wade decision, married and unmarried women have the unilateral right to opt out of parenthood without the input of their husbands or partners. Women routinely employ abortion as de facto birth control that results in 30 % (1.4M) of all children conceived yearly being aborted for pure convenience. Moreover, the American women can, with impunity, engage in maternity fraud (lying about her fertility or use of birth control) and paternity fraud (lying about her child's real father), the ostensible father is just left w/ the lion share of financial responsibilities with few if any cursory rights. Hence, this article struck me as being a fine example of the sort of stock “female chauvinism” in the form of applied double standards endemic to most female punditry. Ms. Sugar & Ms. Mitchell might want to consider a corollary: “His body, his choice.”

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card1ver has a good philosophical point, but we are talking about a woman whose husband has $6,000 in income she didn't know about and told her a story that doesn't seem right. I would be worried if that happened because any illegal act my husband would do would have a negative impact on my opinion of him and how other people perceive my children and myself. I would be afraid for his life and his freedom. In a marriage with three children, his body his choice seems out-of-step. Besides, a lot of children of sperm donors are looking for their biological father. This is a decision that he should have discussed with her. He could go ahead and do whatever he wants, but it is common courtesy to consider the one person you are closest to about a decision that could impact all their lives.

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I would draw your attention to the term "sperm donor". The ethics of this area have been skewed by the terminology. A donor in most medical contexts is someone who gives an organ, part of an organ, or blood and says goodbye to that part of his/her body. You don't expect a kidney, for example, to come back 18 years later and ask about you. There is a growing demographic of children who have been fathered by so-called "sperm donors" and who are seeking their biological fathers for personal reasons such as identity but also for medical background information. These children have embarked on a long and often painful quest to discover their biological father. There are at present unkown legal consequences of such and for that reason, many men do not want to step forward and self-identify. The term "sperm donor" sneakily implies that a male can donate his sperm and have no further responsibility toward the human being that is the result. A more correct term would be "surrogate father" since this is really what they are doing - they are fathering (or siring) children for money. These children grow up and have a right to know who their father is, not simply they were fathered by an anonymous donor. It disgusts me that men who "donate" sperm for money may have hundreds, even thousands of children out there who have their DNA. This all part of the general devaluation of human life and sexual reproduction.