If you’re in the market for quality sperm, there’s now an app for that. London Sperm Bank Donors has just launched a mobile app that allows would-be parents to search for the sperm donor of their dreams on-the-go, with filters for medical history, looks, occupation, highest educational degree, height, nationality, religion, and race. Each profile even has a lovingly written description of the donor’s personality — it’s like a dating app, but with fewer photos, to ensure anonymity (pen sketches of some donors are available), more information, and a guarantee that the profiles are actually accurate: Since every donor has been vetted within an inch of their life, no one gets to add fake inches to their height, unlike your last Tinder date. You can also create a "wish-list" of ideal donor characteristics and get notifications on your phone when a donor who matches them joins the registry. Sperm-shopping has never been so convenient.
Of course, doomsayers are already heralding the app, which London Sperm Bank Donors says is the first of its kind in the world, as the end of society as we know it. “How much further can we go in the trivialization of parenthood?" Josephine Quintavalle, co-founder of pro-life organization Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told British newspaper The Times. "This is the ultimate denigration of fatherhood.” It’s not as if people weren’t already selecting their own sperm donors, though. They just couldn’t do it on their phones, but now, people can search for a baby daddy as easily as they order Thai, and I’m so into it. If I’m looking for a Dutch atheist with a PhD in neuroscience to provide half of my future child’s genome, I can find him within seconds. I’d still have to come up with the £950 or $1,221 required to have his sperm delivered to my local fertility clinic, but since window-shopping is free, here are three donors whose sperm I would happily introduce to my eggs.
The Chemical Engineering PhD
An "impressively toned physique" contrasted with "delicate facial features" bodes well for my future child with this six-foot-tall chemical engineering PhD. This child will come out of the womb with a lust for adventure already twinkling in his hazel eyes, and by the time he is seven he will be rolling these eyes at his technologically incompetent mother as he explains to her yet again how to store her data in the cloud.
The Confident Actor/Model
My daughter with this six-foot-four actor and model will have far more elegant cheek bones than I, which will bring me great joy. More importantly, her genetic enthusiasm for life will make her a natural leader on the playground as she organizes her friends for raucous games of dodgeball and zombie tag.
The Diamond Driller/Music Producer
So "diamond driller" doesn’t necessarily mean "someone who drills for diamonds," which is a thing I just learned, but this sperm donor’s ability to extract zinc or lead or whatever he’s getting out of the ground suggests ruggedness, while his hard work on his very own music album implies creativity and drive. I guess he’s multilingual too, which is cool. Our child would be both outdoorsy and musical.
(This is how biological fatherhood works, right?)