News item: When two Canadian lesbians broke up in 2006, they divided all their assets, but forgot about the 13 tubes of sperm they had stored in a sperm bank. Later one of the women re-partnered and asked to use the leftover sperm, but her ex wanted it destroyed.
The first woman went to court to fight for sperm ownership, and recently a judge ruled the women should divide the sperm, just as they had everything else.
Let’s listen in as two figures directly involved in the case react to the decision.
Ernie: Finally.
Harold: Yes, all this waiting around was getting me down. I think I was even losing my will to swim.
Ernie: Don’t worry, boy. Soon as they unfreeze us, you’ll be off like a shot.
Harold: I do hope so. I hope my tail feathers remember which way to go.
Ernie: They will, but I gotta tell you, once we’re let loose, it’s every gamete for himself. I’m on a mission.
Harold: Roger that, Rambo. Isn’t it amazing, Ernie, the path we’ve traveled? Why, we were brought into this world during the last millennium!
Ernie: By a guy with a dirty magazine.
Harold: Oh, I don’t like to think of it that way. A nice, sterile environment. A good cause.
Ernie: A decent check for him.
Harold: Well, it beat landing on his sheets. Death by Clorox.
Ernie: Yeah.
Harold: We were transported in regal style, moved from the U.S. to Canada. We’re world travelers, Ernie!
Ernie: I suppose.
Harold: Set up in lovely Vancouver. Then the moment of truth. Our brethren got one of those women pregnant. Two years later, her partner was pregnant, too. We’re small, but mighty. And then …
Ernie: They forgot us. That’s gratitude for you. Left us here to freeze our flagella off.
Harold: It is kind of hard to figure out how they forgot about 13 tubes of us. But the whole drama brought us before — metaphorically speaking — a British Columbia Supreme Court justice, so I feel pretty special.
Ernie: You won’t feel special if we wind up with the gal who wants to flush us down the john.
Harold: I choose to believe we’re going with the other woman, the one who wants to get pregnant again. And for her I promise to swim like Mark Spitz.
Ernie: She sure as heck went through a lot to get us back. You know why, don’t you?
Harold: Because we make children who are smart, beautiful and not allergic to peanuts?
Ernie: Because she wants the biological connection to her other child, and our guy isn’t making any more donations.
Harold: He’s retired?
Ernie: If I know him, his hand won’t stop ’til his heart does, but he’s not doing it for pay anymore.
Harold: Wow. We really are special. The last in a glorious line. At the very least, a fertile one.
Ernie: Some people, you know, say the judge is whacky to think of us as property and divide us. They say there’s a moral issue. I say I don’t freaking care. Just get me out of this sperm bank! Get me unfrozen! I have places to go and people to impregnate!
Harold: Right, Ernie! Absolutely! Get us out of this vial and into a turkey baster like nature intended!
Leslie Robinson lives in Seattle. Email her at [email protected], and visit her blog at www.generalgayety.com for more LGBT humor.