The Meaning of Fatherhood

What rights does a person have at the moment of conception? According to US law, none. No rights are accorded to a human person until some unspecified "other" time, and various rights accrue throughout a person's life. A baby just born has the right to life; a child slightly older has the right to an education. A late teen acquires the right to vote. But at conception -- nothing.

We (our society, myself included) tend to think about this lack of rights in terms of the children who do not survive until birth. However, I recently read an article that made me consider how our conceptions of pregnancy, pre-born children, and parenthood affect children once they are born and have grown into adults.

According to modern thought, the decision to have a child is one made by a man and a woman that affects a man and a woman. The decision to carry through with a pregnancy is one made by a woman and is her own private decision. Other people, of course, can express their loving care and concern, but ultimately, it is her decision, free from coercion.

These lines of thought forget one other key player in the scenario : the child being conceived. Most Americans know at least the basics of how this debate goes if we are talking about abortion. But, as Jared Yee brings up in the above-linked article, we're only starting to consider what this means if the child is born and grows up.

When woman uses a sperm bank, according to Yee, she and the donor enter a contractual relationship. As in an adoption, the man can keep his identity anonymous or allow for some sort of contact at a later date. This contract insures the conception of a human person... who, years later, may decide that she really wants to know who her father is. Now, she is caught by two effects of our modern ideas of conception: her rights as a pre-born child, at the moment of conception, and the definition and role of a father.

Her "father" is a man who entered a contractual relationship with her mother (likely without ever meeting her). Now, not only are we dealing with who has control over whose rights, but also what constitutes fatherhood. Is a man who donated sperm a father?

Biologically, he is. Half her DNA comes from him. Her never having met him doesn't necessarily preclude his fatherhood. If a person's father dies before her birth, that man might still be considered father. Does his lack of relationship with her mother influence his fatherhood? A divorced father can still retain fatherhood, despite severing ties to his child's mother. Or is it his decision to have nothing to do with the child? Is that where fatherhood ends? Do we consider the child "his" child? What about if a father abandoned his child -- do we consider that child his?

I am posing many questions to which I have very few answers. It all tangles up with our changing ideas of family, gender, personhood, and responsibility, and I am trying very hard, and failing very soundly, to sort it all out. It's all a tangled mess right now, which might, in the end, be the truth of the matter.