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Anonymous Father's Day

Documentary 2011 / 44 min Rating: 7/10 It begins with a moving testimony from a woman describing how she felt when she discovered that she was conceived through a sperm donor, and that she had no idea who her actual father really was. She quickly discovered “donor-conceived persons” number in the hundreds of thousands, and thirty to sixty thousand new human beings are conceived using donor sperm every year. This is now $3.3 billion industry, with very few regulations. However, in their desperate quest for children, many adults have forgotten the impact their decisions will have on children who now realize that one-half of their family tree is a question mark. “My daddy’s name is donor,” reads one slogan. “I am the child of a stranger,” reads another. “Nobody stops to think,” muses the documentarian Barry Stevens, himself conceived using a sperm donor, “that the babies grow up.” Is it so hard to understand, Stevens asks, that donor-conceived persons just want to know the basic facts surrounding their origin? Interviewee after interviewee describes an inexplicable sense of loss, and recount whole childhoods spent creating memories and imaginary fathers. “I look in the mirror,” one said, “and I don’t know who I look like.” Surprisingly, there has been quite a backlash against donor-conceived persons who choose to tell their stories. From infertile couples to radical gay rights activists who see these reproductive technologies as a path to parenthood, those advocating the regulation of what they call “an industry to design, produce, and sell babies” are often told to keep their mouths shut. This is in spite of the fact that the murky origins of donor-conceived persons are leading to problems that border on the bizarre – including what one called “accidental incest,” in which there is increasingly a real possibility (and real examples) of biological half-brothers and half-sisters getting married. This is not just about the ethics surrounding reproductive technologies and scientists manipulating the beginning of new human lives. It is also about young men and women staring in the mirror and wondering whose eyes and hair and smile they have, and whether or not the strangers they pass on their way to work are actually their half-siblings, cousins, relatives. Anonymous Father’s Day is about family and its centrality and importance. It may be beginning a conversation nobody wants to have, but it is certainly a conversation that needs to happen. You can watch it for free on YouTube here, and check out the trailer below.