Tag Archives: Sperm donor

Sperm and Egg Donation: Should the children know their origins before choosing a mate?

Yes, because there are a few donors who are increasingly selected and are quite popular. Which means that a child born from such a donor might very well be meeting a half-sibling often and not know it at all. Now, normally that would not be a major issue. How often do we realize that we do not enjoy the company of our relatives?  We cannot choose our relatives. This situation is truly magnified in a child born from a popular donor sperm. The mothers may very well be from the same town and the children may even be in the same classroom. Yet, the donor himself might have been flown in from a different state for a few hours. This way the donor is not morally or emotionally connected to the results of his donation. This impending tsunami of children born to same sex unions or infertile couples is waiting to happen in twenty years when they grow up and form their own unions. Many of the donor’s childrens’ parents are single men/women, gay or lesbian couples or infertile couples.

“Are you my sibling?” Will that be the first question after “hello”?

Hilarious situations can arise when if in a hypothetical high school classroom a dozen students discover they are half-siblings through a donor. Now imagine the number of happy reunions in which the same sex couples choose to have a donor. Add to this the following scenario: a check list of donors. Why? is that very important? See this chart of rising number of same sex unions. If each union uses a donor and more than one uses the same popular donor do you see what might happen? How do we help a teen be sure that good looking teen is not a sibling from the same anonymous donor? Should we legislate an anonymous number system for those donors who wish to remain anonymous?

How many eggs can a woman donate?
A woman can donate only so many eggs and yet a woman may choose to be a popular donor. Even her most enthusiastic attempts cannot match that of an inspired male sperm donor. Department of Health admits that donors are not well informed. A Columbia university student asks anonymously questions about donating eggs on reading an advertisement on a Columbia Health site, where “Go Ask Alice” addresses her fears and concerns. On this Huffington Post site a woman donor explains how she does not want to be a mother and yet, donating her eggs to a couple who want to have children made her feel less guilty.

How many sperms can a man donate
A man has the potential to donate an unlimited number of sperms. Fortunately, ethical sperm banks will allow the donator to have a maximum of ten children. The sperm donor goes through a stringent selection process as described in this Stanford University list for a sperm donor. Intelligent, virile young men are much in demand as sperm donors to father a child. Not surprisingly, such men are found in universities and so, many such sperm clinics are near universities.

More than a dozen siblings from a sperm donor?
A documentary film “Donor Unknown” documents the search for Donor 150 who is the anonymous donor of more than a dozen children in a small beach community, who discover each other on a web site set up for such descendants. There is an interesting article on Boston.com about this young father who sired more than 70 children through donating his sperm in college. His fiance was a little miffed on finding out about his offsprings on a reality TV show, during which he was introduced to two of his biological children.

A typical male sperm donor description


The quote above is from a real sperm bank that has a several locations. Yet, what if several women selected the same donor at the same location? Well, many children would be born in the same town not knowing they are siblings, unless they had a way to know that.

Donors donate for financial or emotional reasons or both. Legislators need to plan for this impending tsunami of children born to same sex unions or infertile couples who in twenty years will want to be certain they are not dating their sibling, from an anonymous donor.

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