Sperm Donor

On this Fathers' Day, my husband and I are trying to figure out who will be the father of our child. After five years of pain, invasive physical procedures and tens of thousands of dollars of high-tech interventions for infertility, Cary and I are attempting one last time to get me pregnant. We're far along in adopting a baby, too, but we're trying something new. This time, we're using a sperm donor. We're trying to pick the father of our child. It's like dating again, like answering personal ads - only kinkier, the closest Cary and I will ever come to swinging.

"Denise Calls Up" prompts two reactions. You'll laugh, about five minutes into the movie, when you realize someone has figured out a way to make a movie composed entirely of telephone conversations. Then you'll begin to sweat, about an hour into the movie, when it dawns on you that you're watching a movie composed entirely of telephone conversations. It is then you understand why no one has attempted such a gimmick before. Ninety minutes of neurotic people in their New York apartments talking about their humdrum problems over the phone is not a movie.

The hum of animated conversation greets two instructors and a visitor as they enter the room where about 20 young men have gathered for a weekly rap session. They are young, poor and unmarried African-American fathers, here to explore the complexities of their lives. They are part of the Young Unwed Fathers Demonstration Project, now underway in six cities including Philadelphia, through the Philadelphia Children's Network (PCN) and Public/Private Ventures (P/PV), a non-profit corporation dedicated to improving self-sufficiency among poor youth.

About a dozen years ago, a California entrepreneur went into the business of producing or, rather, reproducing whiz kids. He opened a sperm bank for Nobel Prize winners in the hope of propagating a generation of geniuses. He called it the Repository for Germinal Choice and I called it a phallic symbol . . . without the symbolism. The only thing higher than the IQs of the donors were their EQs, ego quotients. They went right off the chart. In retrospect however, they were modest men. Now we have the more bizarre story of Dr. Cecil Jacobson, an infertility specialist in Alexandria, Va. He operated a "sperm bank" that favored one donor: Dr. Jacobson.

An unmarried man has a constitutional right to try to prove that he gave his sperm to a female friend only after being promised that he could help raise their child, according to a ruling made final yesterday by the Supreme Court. Linden Crouch of Ashland, Ore., who says she made no such promise, has refused to let Kevin N. McIntyre participate in rearing their child. Without comment, the justices cleared the way for McIntyre to seek to prove at a trial that he is entitled to participate in the life of a child conceived by the artificial insemination of Crouch.