The summer issue of The New Atlantis is now online. As always, there are some terrific articles, including Rita Koganzon’s foray into the world of Second Life and James Bowman look at the “dumbest generation.”
Your humble blogger also has an article in the issue–it’s on donor-conceived children and the rise of open-donor programs. Many, many thanks are in order to DI-Dad blogger Eric Schwartzman and Circle Surrogacy’s John Weltman for sharing their stories. Joanna Scheib and Elizabeth Marquardt were both incredibly helpful and generous with their time and knowledge.
An excerpt:
When Eric Schwartzman went in for a medical exam six months before his wedding, he didn’t expect to hear he was infertile. After the examination, the doctor suggested Schwartzman have a sperm-count test. Schwartzman thought nothing of it. Then the results came in. He was diagnosed with azoospermia, a condition in which the man produces virtually no sperm. “Don’t plan on having kids naturally,” his doctor told him. “You can just adopt.”
Schwartzman and his wife were devastated. He offered to call off the wedding, but she refused. Instead, they went to a fertility clinic, where Schwartzman underwent two testicular biopsies to retrieve sperm for in vitro fertilization (IVF). As a backup, his doctor suggested the couple select a sperm donor, and they agreed without really taking the possibility seriously. But when two IVF cycles failed, he and his wife reconsidered.
Schwartzman is now the father of two “half-adopted” children, as he calls them, both conceived through donor insemination. Most of the time, he says, he focuses on day-to-day life–“getting them potty trained” and the like. But he sometimes wonders what effect their unusual beginnings will have on them.