There it was on the front cover of the nation's most "prestigious" Sunday magazine. Once more, matters in America -- starting in New York -- had reached a new extreme.

It was one of the most distressing developments since the Schiavo case (about which more in a couple days). What the article in The New York Times Magazine described was how thousands of single women -- females who couldn't find a husband, or simply didn't want one -- were going online to purchase canisters of male reproductive fluid. They were finding sperm donors as if it were computer dating.

"Choice" now had a new meaning.

For these are "single women by choice." And the newspaper -- which for several decades now has sought, along with other members of the media, to normalize reproductive wickedness -- fairly glowed upon revealing the cosmopolitan new trend. "Looking For Mr. Good Sperm" was the crude title of the story.

And on the cover was a very smart-looking woman who appeared to be the model of sophistication and nothing like the lonely women who would be described in the actual piece.

It was the ultimate -- or penultimate -- example of selfishness (abortion, of course, still had it beat). But it was bad enough. The chic new thing for a woman, The Times was saying, is to renounce not only the conventional family and not only conventional sexuality -- not only heterosexual union -- but men altogether, at least as normal biological fathers.

After buying sperm for $3,100 (including six months of storage), these woman, in increasing numbers, are trooping to their doctors for fertilization, container in hand.

Brave new world -- or just an increasingly evil one?

Let's not be Pollyanna here. Sanger would be proud. So would Hitler.

"Sperm donors, like online daters, answer myriad questions about heroes, hobbies, and favorite things," intoned The Times, profiling various women. "Karyn read her donor's profile and liked what she saw."

He had worked as a chef. He was very "educated." He had "proven fertility." And in a burst of humanity, he agreed to be an "identity-release" or "open" donor -- meaning that the child would be allowed to contact him once that poor kid reached the age of 18 (and no doubt would be wondering who and where "daddy" was).

The only problem in the case of Karyn, reported The Times, was that the donor she wanted was so popular that his supply tended to run out.

One donor was responsible for 21 kids. Their parents (including four lesbian couples) were planning a family vacation together.

Another woman chose a man with thick hair because she dislikes baldness and also because "he's Catholic, which I would like obviously, because I am."

Chinese? Peruvian? Italian?

How about a mix?

That seemed popular with at least one of those featured in the article.

"You know how mixed dogs are always the nicest and friendliest and the healthiest?" remarked a woman named Daniela. "Mutts are always the friendly ones, the intelligent ones, the ones who don't bark and have a good character. I want a mutt."

Meanwhile, said the writer, "a 40-year-old African-American woman I spoke with wanted a Latino donor so that her child would have lighter skin and non-kinky hair."

As recently as the early 1960s, a "respectable" woman needed to be married just to have sex, crowed The Times; now, marriage was not only unnecessary -- but so was any true semblance of a man.

"I won't have to deal with the father," explained Daniela.

And added the writer, "At times, the relationships can become even more enmeshed. One mother I spoke with, whose twin sons were conceived using both donor eggs and donor sperm, gave her leftover frozen embryos to a friend who was having fertility problems. The friend is now pregnant with a child who will be this mother's own sons' full sibling."

These are people who need prayer. This is a newspaper that needs deliverance (and not the home-delivery kind). How can we but feel sorry for women who traipse out of sperm banks with 18-pound white canisters that are labeled "Biohazard"?

Perhaps "chastisement hazard" would be more fitting.

"Do you believe in signs?" asked Karyn at one point during the time the reporter was studying her case. "Sit down, ready for this one? I arrived home from work again at 11:30 last night to be greeted by my doormen telling me how very sorry they were -- a steam pipe explosion blew right through my apartment with a flood... My apartment is destroyed and needs to be gutted... I am taking all of the events as a sign that this is not the right month to get pregnant."

Not the right month?

Seeing that her computer was destroyed -- along specifically with all the paperwork to do with donors -- one might interpret that "sign" a bit differently.

03/30/06