A same-sex couple from Ontario, Canada, recently filed suit against an Augusta, Georgia, sperm bank after they received notice of information they did not have at the time of their sperm collection: their donor has schizophrenia and a criminal record, and had lied about the amount of higher education he had completed.
Typically, couples or individuals who choose to use sperm or egg donors spend a long time researching their options.
They labor over IQ ranges, academic achievements, physical characteristics and medical history.
And then, in the case of Angela Collins and Elizabeth Hanson, they find out through an email thread comprised of others who had used that donor’s sperm that the donor was not as he was portrayed by the sperm bank.
What’s at issue here is not that this couple received sperm from someone who is mentally ill or an ex-criminal or a bender of truth.
The couple has already made it clear they love their son no matter what and do not hold his father’s condition or actions against him.
The problem is that even after researching and deciding on their donor, they were not informed of two critical facts about him.
This is an issue of how the sperm bank, Xytex, did not disseminate potentially important information to their customers.
Because, as weird as it may seem, providing and purchasing sperm is a business, and businesses must maintain a certain level of transparency.
Xytex could be found guilty for false advertising for not providing the whole truth about their donor.
The company claims that it had no idea the donor had any mental conditions or a record.
However, if a group of the donor’s consumers can find out that information about him simply by searching public records, it seems like a sperm bank should be able to acquire it as well.
Then, Xytex is guilty not only of misrepresenting a product they are selling but also of being ignorant about that product.
Neither of which are acceptable when running a business.
When a couple goes through all the trouble of researching a donor and, in this couple’s case, traveling across a country just to acquire their sperm, they deserve to know everything about the “product” they are purchasing.
If they did not care about the details of their donor, they would not have undergone the amount of effort that they did.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
