We recently noted that would-be grandparents in Britain are paying for their grown-up children’s IVF treatments. Now we learn that Canadian women whose daughters -- and sons -- have donated gametes to other couples are pining for their unknown grandchildren. The grand-parenting urge is apparently very strong, especially when you know that the grandchildren are out there somewhere, and artificial begetting brings mixed blessings.

It's estimated that about one million donor offspring worldwide have been born, most of them through anonymous donations. In some cases grandparents and donor grandchildren do meet; in others not. A man who donated sperm for almost 10 years says he now sees that grandparents ought to be considered. "His own parents were delighted when two teenage donor daughters surfaced a few years ago." Imagine how many more there could be…

A bioethicist plugs for the grandparents. She says it’s not just a personal decision:

“The practice has grown up in a consumer context,” says Juliet Guichon, a bioethicist at the University of Calgary. “You think you're purchasing a factor of reproduction, but you're not – you're receiving the genetic heritage of a family.”

And again:

“Grandparents are vulnerable, on the sidelines, waiting to be invited in,” Dr. Guichon says. But she also turns the issue around: A recipient couple, she believes, has a moral obligation to consider whether a child would benefit from knowing their grandparents. It could be important to their identity, she says.

Funnily enough, one had got the impression that anything to do with “reproduction” was simply a matter of a woman’s -- and/or a man’s -- choice. But here is an expert saying that both donors and recipients ought to think about other issues: the family DNA; the emotional needs of grandparents; and finally, the good of the child, whose “identity” might be at stake, if nothing else.

Having got that far, people could then think about more fundamental things, like whether it’s compatible with human dignity to concoct a child in this way at all.