Porn in a sperm bank. Is this a bad thing?

From today's Good Feed blog:

Presumably, the August centerfold photo of Hustler has made a lot of men happy. But should it help give birth to children? A British think tank thinks not.

202health.org, a grassroots health and technology organization, has lashed out against British fertility clinics for offering porn to their clients. Their latest report states that, for one thing, porn scars the women working in clinics because “pornography strips women of full human status and reduces them to sex objects. It gives permission to its consumers to treat women as they’re treated in porn. And the reality of porn today is that it increasingly uses younger girls and is more violent and extreme.”

Porn certainly objectifies women, but it’s not as if the clinics force the receptionists and nurses to flip through Playboy, nor do they screen porn on their waiting room TVs (though I’ve yet to attend a fertility clinic, so maybe they do?).

Beyond the employees, porn apparently also warps the clients who use the porn to test their fertility. The report reads, “To do this at a time when men are particularly vulnerable, already facing the emotional and physical pressures of infertility, is inexcusable.” However, it’s probably the most effective way of helping a man determine if he can start a family of his own. Testing fertility may be the most practical, even moral, application of pornography.

The only problem I can see with porn in a fertility clinic is six years later, when the child asks, “Where do I come from?” The dad might have to reach for his Hustler.

And my response:

This is another side to this issue. Having "provided" a sperm sample for a fertility clinic in the past, I can appreciate porn, in this situation, because a man needs all the encouragement he can get. I don’t think a woman can imagine what is like to come into a sperm bank and be led into a small and cold donation room, be given a cup for your “specimen,” expected to become aroused on cue, ejaculate all of it into that tiny cup, and do all this quietly -- in a sterile, medical environment. To the good folks at 202health.org, have some compassion for the male sexual psyche and functioning. We are NOT just sperm-producing robots! LOL/Joe