Ross Douthat: The birds and the bees (via the fertility clinic)

Ross Douthat writing in the New York Times: “About a million American adults, if not more, are the biological children of sperm donors. Not surprisingly, these Americans have a complicated relationship to the reproductive marketplace that made their existence possible. Their inner lives are the subject of a fascinating study from the Institute for American Values, based on a survey of younger adults, ages 18 to 45, who were conceived through sperm donation. The authors — Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval Glenn and Karen Clark — depict a population that’s at once grateful to the fertility industry and uneasy about the way they were conceived, supportive of assisted fertility but haunted by the feeling of being a bought-and-paid-for child.”