Raekha Prasad
Body Language
It is accepted practice when gathering honey to dodge the sting of the bee. So, too, women have chosen to take the seminal fluid and ditch the man. For a woman wanting a child who isn’t looking for or can’t find father material, variations on the turkey baster and one-night stand offer a solution. But growing calls for the rights of fathers have stirred a backlash: the sperm is starting to turn.
So Kellie Smith is finding as she faces Peter Wallis in a courtroom in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Wallis has accused Smith of stealing his sperm. He claims that she promised to take the Pill, but deliberately stopped in order to have a baby – making him a father without his knowledge or consent.
Smith’s lawyer argues that she could not have “stolen” Wallis’s sperm because he “surrendered any right of possession … when he transferred it … during voluntary sexual intercourse”.
Artificial insemination by a donor or sleeping with a man with the sole purpose of getting pregnant are neither new nor uncommon. When it comes to parenting, many women are happy to go it alone.
Jodie Foster is rumoured to have chosen a sperm donor for the promise of physical prowess and intelligence; Madonna chose her Latino personal trainer to plant the seed that became Lourdes; after a short-lived liaison, Joanna Lumley did not tell the father about their son’s existence.
Maureen (38) conceived her daughter, Marie, now four, during a brief affair. She decided not to use contraception in the hope that she would become pregnant. “I didn’t consider it a deceitful act,” she says. “He never asked me if I was using the Pill. Like many men, I suspect he presumed.”
The affair ended before she knew she was pregnant; she has had no contact with Marie’s father since. “He has no redress as far as I’m concerned. He didn’t wear a condom or take measures to stop the spill.”
Wallis claims that Smith is guilty of “intentionally acquiring and misusing” his sperm. He is seeking unspecified damages to reimburse him for the “economic injury” of helping to support the child over the next 18 years, even though Smith has not asked for child support.
The donation of sperm is now within the law. But to avoid any question of the role and responsibility of the donor, he must remain anonymous. As modern medicine has placed the male seed in the language of the market – sperm “bank” and “donor” – it is little wonder men are arguing that semen is property and women that ejaculation is a freebie.
What’s more, demand is outstripping supply. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility treatment in Britain, is considering allowing bulk imports of sperm from Denmark to address the acute shortage in the quality and quantity provided by British men for artificial insemination.
Luke (25) is single but says it has never occurred to him that a woman might be sleeping with him to get pregnant. “I’ve never thought of my sperm as valuable. Most of it goes to waste and there’s plenty more where it came from,” he says.
But a fertile man’s easy come, easy go relationship to his sperm is waning. Whereas comeback for undiscussed pregnancy used to be that hapless men were tricked into parenthood, now the objection centres around loss of control. First women stole men’s jobs, then their earning power, now their body fluid.
Much was made over President Bill Clinton’s semen stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress. Why didn’t she take it to the cleaners at once instead of holding on to it? She has, it was implied, deviously misused the president’s sperm.
With a biological father liable for child support, the cry of theft can be a foil for a deadbeat dad trying to dodge his obligations.
Jim Parton, chair of Families Need Fathers, believes the advent of the Child Support Agency should make both men and women think harder before they have sex.
“If a mother claims benefit, she is obliged to identify the father,” he points out. “It ain’t cricket to get pregnant without discussing it. Previously we could have shrugged our shoulders. Now the mother does have responsibility to the father.”
To men at risk of “entrapment”, he adds: “We say, use a condom.”