and for their trouble they can live the rest of their life expecting a knock on the door and public exposure and (almost universally negative) discussion by anyone and everyone involved. I'm shocked they have 208.

I'm an adoptee, and as I get older, I find it more frustrating to have no medical history. (People usually just think of mothers when it comes to medical history, but paternal history is just as important.) Just about every month, some medical story talks about the importance of knowing your family medical history - this month, it was MRI's in addition to mammograms if you have a "family medical history" of breat cancer. I try not to be paranoid, but every time I hear a story like this, I think about my family medical history form, which says "UNKNOWN" in answer to every question.

I can understand the reluctance of sperm donors to come forward (especially since the law is murky in this area) but I think it's only fair to provide updated medical histories for the children involved.

There are other intangibles too - I've often wondered what my ethnic background was, or whether I got my nose or my premature grey hair from some relative - things people who aren't adopted take for granted - but it's the medical questions that concern me as I approach my 40's and 50's.

I'm an adoptee, and as I get older, I find it more frustrating to have no medical history. (People usually just think of mothers when it comes to medical history, but paternal history is just as important.) Just about every month, some medical story talks about the importance of knowing your family medical history - this month, it was MRI's in addition to mammograms if you have a "family medical history" of breat cancer. I try not to be paranoid, but every time I hear a story like this, I think about my family medical history form, which says "UNKNOWN" in answer to every question.

I can understand the reluctance of sperm donors to come forward (especially since the law is murky in this area) but I think it's only fair to provide updated medical histories for the children involved.

There are other intangibles too - I've often wondered what my ethnic background was, or whether I got my nose or my premature grey hair from some relative - things people who aren't adopted take for granted - but it's the medical questions that concern me as I approach my 40's and 50's.

There is nothing stopping a requirement for donors to provide a comprehensive medical history, yet still remain anonymous.

Parents who give their children up for adoption are protected by laws preventing them for being responsible for those children in the future, but sperm and egg donors are not allowed such protections. Why is that? Giving up sperm or eggs to create a child that is then raised by a stranger is, for all ethical intents, exactly the same as adoption, yet it is treated differently by the law.

I too am amazed that there are even 208 donors in Britian. I certainally wouldn't be one (had I sperm to donate...) These men are put in a totally disadvantagous situation, in order to help a total stranger acheive their dream of giving birth to their own child.

Children from these arrangements should realise that they still have one biological parent who they know and grow up with, which is more than adopted children. They should also realise that having an 'absent' biological father, or having a step-father, is pretty normal these days. Why should they have the right to contact a stranger who was simply doing their mother a favour by donating his genetic material?

Neither sperm donors, nor egg donors, nor parents who give up their children up for adoption should have the right to remain anonymous. They should be guaranteed a complete severance of financial responsibility, but not to have their identities kept secret.

Maybe some people would just as soon the whole process not happen at all. Weird as it sounds a lot of women seem to feel in some reptilian recess of the brain that the men involved are getting away with something, as though NOT having to be financially responsible was some sort of favor. I'm genuinely curious to know whether the people who advocate an open system actually expect it to work, I'd also be curious about how the women who use this service would feel knowing that the open process severly constrained the choice and quality of the material available to them compared to what would have been avialable otherwise.

It is vitally important that sperm donors not get away with child abandonment.

I think society must be able to hunt down these philanderers and get them to pay for their unwanted offspring.

They had a choice not to have sex, but not only did they have sex, but they received payment for it making them whores.

Sperm donors should should be forced to register as sex workers or sex offenders and should have their wages garnished to pay for the children they breed and abandon.

Can anyone honestly tell me there is a woman that would willingly place the vile living spawn devil sperm of an unknown rapist into the holy temple inner sanctum of her goddess flesh?

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=67776

System Overload: Father pays child support, still jailed

Every day, the state of Ohio processes more than 50,000 child support payments.

Has that volume led to unfair treatment of parents who are paying?

Derrick Adams is a deadbeat dad. Or so says the State of Ohio.

Deputies arrested him not once, but twice, even though the father of three boys is making child support payments.

At the time of his divorce, Derrick's monthly child support payment was $2,000.

But last year, Derrick hit hard times, taking a forty percent pay cut at his job with a Cleveland bank.

At Derrick's new pay level, the state could only garnish $1,500 a month.

Leaving him just $750 to live on.

Derrick says, because he couldn't pay the full amount he was labeled a deadbeat, thrown in jail and his drivers license was suspended. "It's been tough but I've been trying to work through it. Of course when they take your license away from you, it's hard to work when most of your time is in the car traveling from customer to customer."

But Cleveland juvenile judge, Joseph Russo says the system is doing "the best it can." Russo sets child support payments everyday, and says parents like Derrick do have rights.

"If a father does lose their job, they may have a basis to halt, or suspend, or decrease their child support."

But Derrick and other parents who've contacted Channel 3 say their pleas are often brushed aside by a system concerned more with consistency than compassion.

"It should be fair. If there was some kind of income equalization I think that would be the fairest way. But taking the kids out of the equation from the beginning of the divorce proceedings is probably the right way to go."

Derrick has since had his license reinstated and continues to pay as much as he can, but falls behind every month.

He hopes to get another hearing soon to plead his case and to stop being labeled a deadbeat.