The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's soon-to-be-implemented guidelines about anonymous sperm donors present a reproductive-rights issue for both gay men and lesbians. When a government can't directly stop "undesirable" people from reproducing, it simply makes it more difficult for them - in this case, by instituting a policy that is more politically motivated than it is rooted in science.
The FDA's new guidelines – set to take effect on May 25 – recommend as "ineligible" for sperm donation any man who has had sex with another man in the previous five years, even if he's in a monogamous relationship or routinely practices safer sex. They further restrict donations from men who have had sex in the previous 12 months with anyone "known or suspected to have HIV infection." (The "suspected to" part is particularly creepy.)
This policy – which has no basis in the science of HIV – actually got its start six years ago, during the Clinton administration, at the FDA's spooky-sounding "Human Tissue Seminar." At that time, the agency announced its intention to make it illegal for all gay men to become anonymous sperm donors because of their supposed across-the-board risk for HIV. Despite the growth of HIV infection in the heterosexual population, straight men with multiple sexual partners would have faced no similar restriction.
A flood of protest ensued, primarily from sperm banks, which rightly saw it as invasive regulation of an industry that already employed necessary safeguards against HIV. Indeed, there were on record only a few cases of HIV transmission through infected donor sperm. (And today, there is no recorded increase of such transmission.) Happily, activists were successful at staving off the discriminatory change, but under Bush, the FDA began revisiting the idea in earnest.
Let's face it – the underlying premise of the FDA guidelines is that gay men should not father children, although the agency doesn't come right out and say that. It conveniently circumvents the charges of antigay discrimination by noting that the guidelines don't have the force of law, and that the agency's official regulations – which do carry legal force – never use the words "gay" or "homosexual." Yet, as one sperm-bank director admitted to gay blogger Michael Petrelis, "A lot of clinics will use the guidelines as an intimidation document and refuse gay donors."
What's more, the new guidelines also have a direct impact on lesbian reproductive choice. Many lesbian couples prefer gay sperm donors. Indeed, they may have chosen a sperm bank where donors agree to have their identity revealed at some point in the future – usually when the child comes of age – and want that donor to be "family" in more ways than one.
If you think that I'm sounding a false alarm, that our government doesn't get involved in who can and can't reproduce, think again. In fact, the U.S. government has often tried to prevent or discourage certain people from having children – especially poor women, women of color, and people with mental or physical disabilities. It has accomplished this through sterilization programs disguised as "contraception" – perhaps most heinously, in a campaign of the 1970s that succeeded in sterilizing a fourth of all Native American women living on government reservations. Individual abuses are still being documented, especially in cities with high immigrant and people-of-color populations.
The other significant means by which the government restricts the reproductive rights of specific people is through punitive economic policies that make it impossible for them to raise their own children. For example, the 1996 "welfare reform" bill instituted a "family cap" that limits payments to women if they become pregnant while accepting government assistance.
Understand that, at the same time, our government tries to make it more difficult for white, middle-class women to opt out of motherhood, by chiseling away at their right to choose. And although abortion is still technically legal in the United States, fewer and fewer medical schools now teach the procedure, and the number of doctors performing abortions has therefore been drastically reduced since the historic Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Of course, the new FDA guidelines for sperm donors may seem benign compared to egregious examples from the women's reproductive-rights movement. But the lesbian and gay community shouldn't fool itself into complacency. The guidelines are ultimately all about who is and isn't "fit" to parent – who is, in effect, "mommy material," a phrase I coined a few years back. Now the FDA is poised to include gay men – based on their sexual identity, not on the realities of their sexual behavior – under the rubric of those who aren't "daddy material."
Paula Martinac is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author of seven books and editor in chief of Q Syndicate.
One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything
