Fertility clinics in Britain will soon face a dramatic decline in supplies of sperm.

Fertility clinics in Britain will soon face a dramatic decline in supplies of sperm. There is a trend all over Europe toward permitting children conceived via donated sperm to have access, when they come of age, to the name of the donor who sired them. Britain joins this trend next April, after which anonymous sperm donations will no longer be legal. Understandably, sperm donors mainly prefer anonymity. The prospect of a phone call opening with "Hi, Dad...," out of the blue, 18 years after the donation, is apparently off-putting to many. Thus, donations can be expected to dwindle. The laws of supply and demand are not mocked, though. One bold entrepreneur, Mr. Ole Schou of Denmark, is proposing to anchor "sperm ships" in international waters around the British Isles, supplying services to infertile couples who seek anonymous sperm, or other reproductive technologies. Since shipboard life is governed by the laws of the nation whose flag the ship flies, and Danish law will continue to preserve donor anonymity, all is perfectly legal. Here on the philoprogenitive right, we are happy for all couples who are blessed with conception. We do worry, though, that perhaps the phrase "shipboard romance" will never have quite the same allure.