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By: Claudia Orozco
Have you watched the movie: "Plan B" ? I have always thought that the pieces of art (such as music, pictures or movies) reflect what the society is and cares for. Interesting, but real.
In the announcements of the movie, one can read a list that is slightly changed from "falling in love, getting married, having a child" to "having a child, falling in love, getting married". This is very real in nowadays relationships. At first I thought the movie was about this couple who had sexual relationships before getting married, got pregnant and had to get married. So real for so many young couples.
Nevertheless, the plot of the movie ended up being different. The main character of the movie is a woman who has the bad habit of not letting people get into her life. She has lived a tough life and she is used to pushing men who care for her away. Years pass and she feels this natural desire of being a mother, BUT she has not found "the father". So she decides to have a sperm donor for a father, she goes for artificial insemination. Following the movie mood, just after her first trial on artificial insemination, she meets the "man of her life". The plot goes as how they fall in love and how she tells him that she is already pregnant. I won't tell you the end of the story just in case you want to watch it (but I'm sure you already know it).
I want to focus in the ethical issues of the story. To say, the legal, social, and moral issues of artificial insemination.
In the legal aspect: paternity, legitimacy, and inheritance is rather ambiguos. There is this funny scene where the main character, after getting artificial insemination, says to the doctor "oh, we better hug or something, we have just created a child" (not literaly the words, but something like that). Whose the father of that baby? The unknown sperm donor (whose healthy or unhealthy genetic charge is in his chromosomes)? The doctor who actually made the insemination possible? At least this fathery issue would be solved IF the sperms where those ones of a husband, that kind of insemination is called Homologous Insemination (AIH), but the movie is talking about Heterologus Insemination (AID) using donor's semen.
Now, where are the rights of the child? To say "every child has the right to a safe, supportive, and stable family structure" what kind of family structure is being built up for him in this case where no father is present? Who guarantees there will be a father afterwards? Who will cover that father role for the child? Who will be willing to help the mother with this life-long task of bearing, teaching, and protecting a child? In the case, there IS a father, will he be able to accept a child whom he knows to be another man's? (I am talking about the uncounscious hostility he may raise for the new born). Would the child, when grown up, like to meet his/her donor father?
Yes, these questions are dealing with the social aspects as well, as to what is going to happen with the life of that baby. What kind of future has a baby whose beginning deals the practice of eugenics? If the baby turns out to be not as perfect as the mother would like to? would the doctor and the mother both would give him a try? It is a matter of asking whether a child is a right of a mother or a gift of life. If it is the former well - then artificial insemination is morally correct: helping a mother having a child is (in this hypothesis) the most kindhearted thing to do. Nonetheless, we are talking about a life, a human person, a subject, not an object.
Finally, I know that talking about Assisted Human Reproduction (and artificial insemination) is a delicate issue, since we need to analize each case separatedly. It is hard to please everyone in this topic. This is why I strongly recommend eaach case is analized integrally: from the legal, to the social, healthy, and moral aspects. It is important to analize all of these from different perspectives: mother's view, child's, and father's.
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