I was volunteering at the Singapore General Hospital today when
I came across this place -- the Centre for Assisted Reproduction,
or CARE. When I offered to make a sperm donation, two nurses
escorted me to a private room for some pre-donation
"consultation".
To cut the long story short, I discovered that there exists a legal
policy of anonymity between the donor and recipient, i.e. the donor
knows absolutely nothing about his recipient, and more
surprisingly, vice-versa.
You don't even get to know whose semen you're putting in your
wife's uterus! Imagine giving birth to some baby of some other race
nine months later.
Later I also realised that there was a serious shortage of egg and
sperm donors; since 1989, only two women had made successful egg
donations!
The ratio of recipients:donors, by the way, is atrocious; you
wouldn't want to know the statistics. So many couples are extremely
desperate for a child, despite the confidentiality involved...
