Who's Your Sperm Donor Daddy?
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Who's Your Sperm Donor Daddy?

Date: March 25, 2009
By: Rebecca Layne
State Capitol Bureau
Links: HB 355

Intro: Children of sperm or egg donors would be able to find out who their biological parents are if a bill heard in the Health Care Policy Committee makes it onto the legislative calendar.  RunTime:1:12
OutCue: SOC

The name of sperm and egg donors would be put on a child's birth certificate, which would then be sealed until there was a request to open it. 

Bill sponsor Republican Representative Cynthia Davis says horses and dogs have a pedigree, so why don't all children.

 

Actuality:  DAVIS2.WAV
Run Time: 00:21
Description: Even people who breed race horses don't let this happen in a manner where you cant tell what the lineage is of that horse. Dogs, when they're put in shows, have to have papers. We are treating human beings with less respect than how we treat some of our animals.

 

On the same Health Care Policy Committee member as Davis is Republican Rob Schaaf, who worries the bill would take away the rights of donors.

Actuality:  SCHAAF.WAV
Run Time: 00:14
Description: I think that we might be deterring people from donating if we make the potential liability significant by giving away their anonymity of which they have now. 

Because the bill was heard so late in the session, opponents can breathe a sigh of relief knowing chances are slim that there will be enough time for it to pass.

Reporting from Jefferson City, I'm Rebecca Layne ...KSMU.

Intro: Sperm or egg donors would lose anonymity with a bill sponsored by Republican Representative Cynthia Davis. RunTime:0:55
OutCue: SOC

Davis says egg and sperm donors should have their names on the birth certificate mainly because of health reasons. 

 

Actuality:  DAVIS.WAV
Run Time: 00:20
Description: It's an adoption done through biological methods. But you are adopting somebody else's DNA, somebody else's genes, somebody else's biology. And what you're getting in that package with that child is somebody else's propensity to heart conditions, to diabetes, to stroke, to cancer.

Davis got support from Barbara Quigley of The Center for Bioethics and Culture, who says it is the child's right to know their biological parents.

Actuality:  QUIGLEY.WAV
Run Time: 00:10
Description: So I support the bill on that ground that it recognizes by law and puts in a permanent record that relationship between the biological parent and the offspring that is created.

With such a late committee hearing, the bill faces an uphill climb to be passed in the current session.

Reporting from Jefferson City, I'm Rebecca Layne ... KSMU.