The Swedish Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a 39-year old Swedish man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple has to pay child support for their three children. Three sons were born to the lesbian couple between 1992 and 1996. The man had donated his sperm to the couple on condition that he would play no role in the children’s upbringing and that the two women would be their parents. He had signed a document, however, in which he acknowledged to be the children’s biological father.

When the lesbian couple “divorced” the biological mother demanded that the man pay for his sons’ upbringing. He refused and took the case to court, losing in the district court and the appeals courts and finally before the Supreme Court in Stockholm, which upheld the previous rulings stating that biological parents are required to pay child support for their offspring.

And so the lesbian mothers have it either way. First men are excluded entirely from relationships and family life, and are tolerated only as organisms that produce the raw material for factory-made babies. But when it suits these women they track down the men to hold them responsible for the children in whose lives they have never been allowed to figure and coerce them into paying for their upbringing. For calculating, man-hating feminist mothers, Sweden is the place to be. If there are still men there who are willing to take the risk.

In Sweden, Austria, Australia, Britain and other countries sperm donors are legally required to hand over identifying details with their samples of sperm so that the children they produce can trace their biological fathers if they want to when they grow up. In these countries it is the right of a donor conceived child to know its genetic heritage.

Legislation banning anonymous sperm donation was introduced in Sweden in 1985. It is assumed that many parents who have used donor insemination do not tell their children for fear that they will find their genetic parent.

Not surprising, sperm is in short supply in Sweden, contrary to neighbouring Denmark where sperm donors are allowed to remain anonymous. Danish males donate more sperm than any others. The country is home to Cryos International, a private company that operates the world’s largest sperm bank, shipping “Viking semen” throughout the world.