George Orwell, in his famous essay “Politics of the English Language,” notes that just as “thought corrupts language,” so “language corrupts thought.” He adds that “A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and know better.”

Language corrupting thought—that’s what’s happening with “donor conception.” As Naomi Cahn pointed out in an earlier post, “Our language does not recognize the mixed motives of gamete providers, and instead cloaks their transactions in the altruistic fantasy of donation.”

We donate blood and kidneys—but we sell sperm and eggs. And a person who sells sperm or eggs is not a donor—he is a father, she is a mother. Let’s recognize “donor conception” for what it is: a convenient euphemism that obscures the basic truth that, as Olivia Pratten noted in an earlier post, biological connection matters.

The human person today labors under an old Gnostic philosophy that separates the body from the spirit, that trivializes the human body as an instrument for the “heart,” or the disembodied mind. Is it not telling that the California Cryobank, a sperm bank, has as one of its core values “Use your heart”?

But the body matters. Sperm matters. It’s an embarrassingly concrete truth to be sure. But a person who sells his sperm is a biological father—which may be easier for the “donor” to forget, but is a truth not lost on many “donor-conceived” people, as evident here and here.

In the same essay, Orwell says that by getting rid of euphemisms and bad language “one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration….” If we thought more clearly about (a) the fact that people are selling (not donating) their sperm and eggs, and (b) the truth that the “donors” are fathers and mothers, then we will have made a good first step in the debate about assisted reproductive technologies.

Categories: Reproductive Technologies

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