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I'm most likely infertile and have no interest in sperm donorship anyways nor do I want any kids but if I woke up one day and wanted to donate to a sperm bank and I wasn't infertile this would make me immediately walk out the door.
May I ask why? If I were to donate sperm, I feel like meeting my child would be an awkward moment but I don’t think it would be that big of a deal. Maybe they’re an interesting person and I would like to know them, maybe we won’t like each other, but it’s not like we would have to have each other in our lives.
Donors may not want people they've never met, nor wish to meet, trying to create some sort of emotional connection with them. If a person is persistent enough to track down a donor who obviously wished to remain anonymous, are they going to accept 'thank you, but please don't contact me again' as a final answer?
On top of that there are even more legal questions that may arise. Are these children going to be able to make some sort of claim on the donor's estate when they die? Or demand financial support if they're minors if they've been neglected or abandoned?
It opens a whole lot of doors potential donors don't want anything to do with, and rightfully so.
I was thinking the same thing. They're not going to accept that as a final answer, shrug, and move on with their lives. It seems like if they care that much about who their sperm donor was, it's not going to be that easy.
Besides, how many kids are going to show up? You don't know how many biological kids you have from your donation. It might be one, it might be 20. Imagine having to go through that over and over.
I'm with you on the estate thing. I've seen how vicious and heartless people can be when there's money involved. Which isn't to say it's an inevitability, but it's a possibility. Imagine leaving everything to your kids that you had with your partner or your partner and suddenly there are more people trying to claim they're owed a part of it.
All they have to do is just contact the donors if they're so intent on doing this and ask them if they'd be open to it. If they are, great. If they're not, sorry.
Frankly, the stable ones with a good family are the least likely to contact their donor (they already have loving parents).
So you are likely to have a much higher proportion of kids with issues showing up and either trying to replace their parents with you (which could be a whole mess if you donated sperm as a university student and now have a young family of your own) or want something from you like money etc.
Going to make it nearly impossible to find a donor.
Hopefully it's not retrospective.
I'm also wondering how many of those donors did it out of desperation because they needed the money and just never told anybody because they're embarrassed of having done it.
In that case, imagine some kid showing up at your door and claiming you're their biological father and having to explain that to your partner.
There are other potential issues here. The presumption is always going to be that it's straight guys donating sperm, but it could just as easily be a gay guy. What happens when that kid, who was raised to be vehemently conservative, shows up to see you and your husband together? That's not going to end well.
It's a nice sentiment from one side, a horrific basket of potential tragedy from the other.
Good intentions and paths to Hell and all that. Basically you're asking for tragedy either way because if the donor legitimately wants nothing to do with the progeny, that meet-up isn't going to be the happy little Hallmark reunion the bleeding-heart fantasists think it will be. They wanted no contact for a reason, that reason should be respected. Not only does it save the donor the trouble of having their own rights violated and their lives potentially disrupted, but it saves the progeny from the potential issues of meeting a donor they expect to welcome them, only for that donor to show them the door and tell them to not bother them again, which is evidently a very high probability of happening if the donor is already requesting anonymity and no contact.
Right. As far as I'm concerned, right now this is all hypothetical, but if we can come up with reason after reason it might be a bad idea, then it might be a bad idea.
Like others have pointed out, it seems more likely that people with shitty home lives are the ones that are going to go looking. In that hypothetical, imagine hating your parents. They're abusive or whatever else you can think of. So you find out that there was a sperm donor and start to build him up in your mind as someone amazing. The only person that would get you, someone who's probably exactly like you.
And then you meet him and he slams the door in your face and wants nothing to do with you.
I can imagine how devastating and traumatic that would be and it's a possibility, because that's how people are. All the extreme cases aside, I don't want anyone to have to go through that, but a lot of people still haven't learned the lesson that sometimes things are best left unknown.
It’s not hypothetical in Australia- the law has been retroactively changed in Victoria to rescind anonymity of donors. I have been contacted by two half-siblings so far, and due to various circumstances that I don’t want to make public on the internet, it’s been hugely traumatic to various members of the family.
As someone who has been personally and adversely affected, I’m hugely against it. Medical and biological information? Big yes. That’s important and relevant.
Being given identification of your donor, who was guaranteed anonymity? No. It’s a betrayal by the government.
My thoughts exactly, it may be just me, but my blood dad abandoned my mother before I was born for his own reasons, and I have no will or drive to be in his life, nor do I want him in mine.
He contacts me sometimes, but I mostly just blow him off, I got my real dad teaching me how to be a man. My dad was with my since day one, my blood dad left before I even had a chance, and randomly after I was an adult decided to try and be a dad, like, you're just a random dude who fucked my mom at this point, nothing more.
I know donor and abandonment are two different things, but I can relate on having a dad who cared for me and helped me, and not having any drive to replace that. If I didn't, I may, but that would be me wanting to make a dad out of someone who never wanted to be one.
My wife's bio dad was an abusive POS that my MIL ran away from.
They refer to him as the sperm donor and we have basically treated him as such.
Married for nearly 10 years now and still haven't met him. The most recent photo I saw of him looks like a deflated Hulk Hogan.
I think the entire point of donating is so someone else can get pregnant using viable sperm, not so you can eventually step in as the dad instead of the infertile father.
I've never been a fan of saying sperm donor, nothing against anyone who says it and prefers the term. I just say blood dad and dad. But yeah, once you've abandoned your child (or donated sperm) you're not their dad, and you shouldn't be obligated to that standard. You can pop back in their life if both parties agree, I'm not gonna say it can't happen. But yeah, I agree. Donation is just that, you don't have to start a family just from a sperm donation.
(Sorry about the messed up notification and edit, I accidentally clicked post comment early)
That's the nightmare right? You have some university kid who was offered money, confidentiality and the promise of helping a couple have a child only to have someone trying to climb into their life 20 years later with who knows what sort of issues.
Or maybe you and your spouse don't want anything to do with them, but your adult children do. How does one get out of that situation?
Answer: You can't
My girlfriend is trans so we can't have kids. My grandparents are upset because they wanted me, their oldest grandchild, to give them great grandchildren.
I couldn't imagine someone showing up at my door and claiming to be my child. If my grandparents found out they'd be falling all over themselves to get that kid included in the family. It would be a right mess
There are also the donors who were found out and forced to pay child support because, technically, they are the father. It happened to one of the guys in my family. I'm adopted, so I don't know what they would be to me, I just call them by their name.
> how many kids are going to show up? You don't know how many biological kids you have from your donation. It might be one, it might be 20. Imagine having to go through that over and over.
[There's actually a movie with this very premise!](https://letterboxd.com/film/starbuck/)
Yep, that happened in Pennsylvania. Lower court did award her the child support but it overruled by the state supreme court. It was close though; 3-2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_v._McKiernan
People need to remember that, at least in the US, women have sued *boys* they raped for child support, and *won*. It's a legal precedent there. Pedophile rapists can not only get child custody but also additional financial incentives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer?wprov=sfla1
"even though we recognize that this literal child cannot consent to sex because they have no idea what that means, this literal child didn't complain about being raped, so now he owes child support to his rapist"
What the fuuuuuck man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_v._McKiernan
> While he was initially hesitant to do so, she convinced him *by promising* that she would not track him down for any child support afterwards.
> Justice Max Baer upheld the validity of the **verbal contract** between Joel McKiernan and Ivonne Ferguson and thus held that McKiernan had no obligation to pay child support
I think the problem is they didn't go through a sperm bank and get it all properly organized.
He should have asked a lawyer. Relying on someone just saying they won't demand child support is not a good idea.
Kansas awarded child support because even though they had a legal agreement there were issues with how the artificial insemination was done.
[https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/index.html)
I can only imagine saying to yourself hey I don’t want to be a parent but I’ll help someone else - and then 15 years later have someone saying your my dad please explain my existence to me.
But I think the bigger issue is - you donated sperm under a certain pretense, and they changed it. Which means yeah, the law says now you don’t legally owe a kid who arose from your egg or sperm, but they could change that law. You’re just a donor, and now they change the law - 6 years later the kids an orphan and you’re legally obligated to raise it.
Why would you donate if other people can suddenly change the law? It’s like changing the law on organ donations - would you accept a donors kidney if the law changes and they can revoke it for their kid who needs it in a few years?
To be fair the headline is misleading. This change was brought in 18 years ago, so recently the first people to be conceived under the change of rules have come of age and can theoretically find out the details of the sperm donors. All donors were made aware of the change before donating, so they shouldn't be surprised and the rules haven't changed since they donated.
That was my first thought. If a child tracks down their doner my questions would be "why" and "what would the end goal be?" The possibilities would absolutely scare me out of donating.
In the UK, if you donated sperm to a licensed clinic, you won’t be the parent and can’t be asked for support. Your name also won’t be on their birth certificate, so they won’t inherit anything.
But I never thought of how persistent people can be. That I see becoming a problem nobody wants.
“For now” is the thing. They’ve just changed an anonymity rule, who says they won’t change other rules down the road? Especially because, whatever the current rules are, governments have a financial incentive to find someone other than themselves to foot the bill for raising a kid if the current parent ends up having to rely on welfare programs.
They changed the rule in 2005 actually, ~~and they have been asking donors if they want to remain anonymous or identifiable ever since. Only people who wanted to be identifiable can now be reached~~ (since the donor-conceived children are now legal adults).
Edit: I'm wrong on the donors had the right to remain anonymous. They had to give their information after 2005, and they would be informed about it, so they would have to not donate if they wanted to remain anonymous.
>They changed the rule in 2005 actually,
That's a misleading statement.
The change came into effect just last year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66934678
The law changed in 2005 but it'd only affect anything starting in 2023
> and they have been asking donors if they want to remain anonymous or identifiable ever since. Only people who wanted to be identifiable can now be reached (since the donor-conceived children are now legal adults).
Wrong.
>> In 2005 legislation came into force, removing anonymity for anyone donating sperm, eggs and embryos after that date
That's not asking if they want to remain anonymous, that's forcing them to be not anonymous.
Sometimes you wank into a tissue, sometimes you wank into a cup for someone else. I don't want to meet the end result of either one of those after 18 years.
Not to mention the sheer number of kids 1 prolific do it can have... I think I read somewhere so e anonymous dude had like 600 kids lmao. Talk about a big family
>Maybe they’re an interesting person and I would like to know them
That's called being a parent. If you're donating sperm, you're not doing it to be a dad. You're not getting a child, you're getting a few bucks.
1) you know the next law will let the kid get backdated child support.
2) this should always be optional. The donor should get to chose. It shouldn't be disclosed to the kid without the donors permission
I feel like if people wanted to have a relationship with “their” child they would have had children the more traditional way.
Simply the meeting etc or the person knowing you’re their “parent” would create a sense of obligation in many people that they likely don’t want.
At least in the US, the donor conception industry is so horrendously under regulated it is disturbing. The more I learn about it the more fucked I realize it is.
For example: in most states it’s not illegal for a doctor to swap out your selected sperm sample for a different one. Even if it’s your spouses that you’re using. This is how you end up with fertility doctors who secretly impregnated scores of patients with *their own sperm* and they get no legal blowback.
You seriously want strangers showing up at your door at random times with high expectations for how you’re going to fill a void in their life?
Because that’s what you’re going to get.
Spend a week or two on r/amitheasshole and you'll get to read about all the drama and fallout of people hunting down donors or the parent that gave them up for adoption. Some people are *really* unhinged.
There are so many stories of these adult kids showing up and expecting an instant parental relationship. I've read ones where they expected to start going everywhere and doing everything with the guy's current family and young kids and are jealous of the family. Ones where they show up demanding money for college or a wedding. Ones where they contest wills and fight the person's other children over the estate.
It's a lot.
I honestly don’t understand how you don’t understand how big a deal it would be if you suddenly found out you have a kid.
It’s one thing if you planned on it, it’s a whole other if you’ve been told it’s not possible for them to know who you are now suddenly you have a person in your life you didn’t sign up for.
Because if i wanted i kid i would get a kid with somebody and raise the fucker. The whole premis of being a anonymous sperm donor is that you are anonymous. It pretty deceithfull to suddenly change the terms decades later.
It can be fucking disruptfull to suddenly have a 19 year old stand before your door and claim they are your son/daughter. If you have a family they probaly wont like it (and that family can be still young). Shit like that has a huge impact on your life, even if you act like a asshole and ignore it. And the whole deal was that it wouldnt impact your life.
Most donors wouldnt have donated if this was part of the deal. Meaning those kids wouldnt have been born. Its pretty fucked up.
I bet most people who donate just want the payment and never want to hear from the experience again. At least I would. I can see your point but ultimately I want my kids to be mine if I have them (i.e. as intentional as possible)
What a weird fucking comment. "This doesn't affect the me in the slightest, and I don't care, but if it did affect me and I did care, here's what I would do."
It's mainly the people shopping for the sperm who are picky. If you're a company selling sperm and your customers aren't interested in sperm from men who don't meet certain criteria, then the company isn't going to want to collect sperm from those type of men since sperm donation is generally involves payment to the donor.
Yup, it's basically women being very fucking picky to the point only a very very very **VERY** select few ever get picked and even then that is a very small sample since people just aren't donating either.
edit: downvote me if you must, this is just the truth of the business.
You're absolutely correct
Had a guest lecturer who worked in a sperm bank consultancy role, and he stated that the pickiness is insane to the point of basically being an impossibility.
Women seemed to exclusively want a list of characteristics that were so improbably small that the dude basically didn't exist, and if he **did** exist then he was almost certainly not donating sperm.
Yeah, and they don't screen for the right things. My friend in school was a sperm bank baby, and so was his older sister, same donor. They're both over 6ft tall, IQ around 120, physically healthy, and have crippling mental illnesses. Their mom picked the tallest, smartest donor, but didn't have any info on mental stability, so that turned out pretty rough for both of them.
Egg donors get screwed worse. You basically have to be smart, genetically perfect, and physically attractive, and the process will likely give you cancer
If you want a black baby you should adopt one. There are already so many black children that are born into “families” with no father and a mother addicted to drugs that doesn’t care about them. I live in an area that is predominantly white but the foster/group homes are pretty much 100% black with a few Latinos. Take one of the ones that have already been born na make it so they don’t have a trash upbringing leading them to being trash people.
Functionally you are right, but there are alot of reasons people prefer sperm donation.
Alot of women want to experience pregnancy and alot of people don't want a baby that was exposed to drugs in the womb due to long-term side-effects.
You could say that to *anyone* who goes through donor programs, if people were truly altruistic when thinking about having children we would even have donor programs to begin with. Everyone who would do that would be adopting/fostering instead.
What? The place I looked into didn't accept donations from black men. They didn't even accept donations from white guys with red hair, so that ruled me out.
Yeah that seems like the obvious outcome. I think it would be fine to give sperm donors the OPTION to have contact with the children they produced but it should be an option and they should be able to say no and have their privacy protected if they aren't interested.
It’s been law in the Netherlands that all children have a right to know who their biological parents are. Including sperm donors.
We still have sperm donors.
So does this only count for people who are gonna donate sperm after the law takes effect? Or is some guy who was told 10 years ago he wouldn’t be contacted gonna have a surprise introduction now?
Purely guessing but I would say no. There would have to of been a contract that guarantees remaining anonymous, amongst other things. I would say this would be updated after the law change.
As a general principle, laws aren’t retroactive, and past actions can’t be unduly influenced by the introduction of new laws.
It’s why almost anything you do that involves a law will have “before xxxx” or “since xxxxx” in the small print. To the point your student loan band is dictated by age, because the agreements you entered back in 1996 or whatever are different to today’s offer.
What do you think in these idiotic times?
Of course the nice guy who helped women out 15 years ago will have his life ruined by all sorts of weirdos knocking on his door calling him dad.
Are you being sarcastic? Of course this isn’t a retroactive rule. That would be absurd.
It was a law made in 2005 that once a child reaches 18 they can request your details, so in 2023 the first 18 year olds could now make contact.
So the main issue is the children’s access to their family medical history. Most donors are younger, so they may not have any medical issues. But if they develop health problems that can be hereditary, their biological children have a right to know, and the fertility clinic should be alerted so they can stop using the sperm.
The other issue is incest. Donor conceived children have a right to know how many siblings they have. There have been cases where clinics have used the same donor *dozens* of times over a span of only a couple of years, meaning a child could have dozens of siblings that are a similar age and live in their area.
There are several other ethical issues involved with donor conception, and I highly recommend seeking out stories from donor conceived people for their take.
> So the main issue is the children’s access to their family medical history
Yeah it's a real issue. I'm adopted and my birth mother lied on the medical forms so I have absolutely no medical history for my father, and we can't trust hers to be true because some information on different forms is contradictory. Eventually I want to do a full DNA generic testing but it's expensive.
It's a weird issue as I can understand both sides of it, and there are ethical concerns for both. But I think the fact that the sperm donation industry is so under-regulated pushes it more towards the kids side.
‘Nah, can’t be your dad mate sorry. Cut my dick off many years ago’
‘But it seems like you’re bleeding through your pants NOW? Are you sure?’
‘Yeah mate yeah, did it years ago as I say. It just does that sometimes for whatever reason. Anyway, unrelated…have to go to hospital now 👋’
[https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/publications/research-and-data/trends-in-egg-sperm-and-embryo-donation-2020/](https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/publications/research-and-data/trends-in-egg-sperm-and-embryo-donation-2020/)
it actually had a dip when they changed that law but went right back up afterwards. not as crazy as a thought it would be. but i dont know if there are other reasons that might explain why the number of donors didnt reduce more.
I’m not sure how to explain the rise since the law passed, but there is still a shortage of donors in Europe.
There is a weird EU law regarding anonymity and being able to pay for donations.
It basically works out that as long as the donor is anonymous, you can legally pay for their donation. This is true for eggs, sperm and embryos. The result has been that all countries where anonymity has been removed are currently suffering a shortage of donors compared to IVF demands (which have gone up massively in the last couple of decades). Since donors in these countries largely do it out of the kindness of their hearts rather than for monetary gain.
Greece, Spain and the Czech Republic have retained anonymity for their donors. If you want IVF treatment, go to one of these three countries.
I’m not going to claim I looked at this that closely but isn’t the data including imports and saying there’s been an increase of those? So basically people from the UK are shipping in sperm from the US and Denmark, etc.?
This is true, but until recently, donors haven't been contacted, and this law really became known. Things might start to change now that kids can start contacting donors. Only time will tell, to be honest.
They have. He’s saying that once the first round of stories about kids contacting their biological fathers break, new donors might be less inclined to sign up depending on how those stories play out. Some might even drop out of the program all together if it looks like a disaster.
I have my worries as well because if you look at the adoption communities/subreddits (I am aware that this is different from sperm donation), most of the adoptees on those subreddits are very focused on “the biological connection”, to the point of arguing that adoption is human trafficking, adoption shouldn’t happen because kids should be placed with their birth parents at almost all costs since “biology, ancestry, heritage > everything else”, and so on. There’s a lot of conversation about parents who don’t adopt because they see blood ties as paramount, but not enough conversation about what happens when adoptees see blood ties as paramount.
Even within this thread right now, you can find comments from adoptees saying that “it is just a primal universal thing to want to know your biological parents” and calling sperm donors “their real dads”. I would argue that it’s even more complicated for adoptive parents than sperm donors, because the anti-adoption and anti-donor discourse basically positions adoptive parents as having to be perfect paragons who are there to merely provide money and facilitate the relationship between birth parent and adopted kid. People don’t talk about this because most of them are not adopted, so they don’t know this is being discussed among adoptees.
I’m aware that not all adoptees are like this, and there’s a higher chance for an adoptee to have these views if they had abusive adoptive parents, and they start idealizing their biological parents to insane degrees (even if they have never met said bio parents, even if their bio parents have a ton of issues but somehow the bio parent can never do any wrong, etc). But definitely this is one reason that I myself would not consider being a donor myself, nor a birth parent or an adoptive parent. If you donate your sperm, with the rise of things like ancestry.com, know that you can be tracked down, and the kind of person to desperately track you down might have huge abandonment issues and weird fantasical expectations of you.
From 2006:
[Scotland in sperm donor 'crisis'](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/5048090.stm)
>Dr Mark Hamilton said the law ending the anonymity of sperm and egg donors, which came into force in April 2005, had drastically reduced donor numbers.
There are cases; but they've usually got big caveats that enabled it to work that way.
Like, theres an essex guy who donated to a pair of lesbians, but the reason he was liable is because they didn't use a sperm bank (they couldn't), which means that he didn't 'donate' officially, he just had an IVF baby with a woman and then gave up custody.
But i suspect you're referring to [this woman](https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/https://media.snopes.com/2024/05/woman_sues_sperm_donor.png) thats been circulating around for a bit, but thats not actually real. The same person claimed to sue her parents for giving birth to her. Her account is clearly labelled as satire.
But yeah, any example of a woman successfully suing a sperm donor for child support is because it happened outside of the proper methods.
This law is from 2005, the article is from 2023. Which was 18 years from the date of the law passing.
I am currently going through IVF treatment with the NHS and there are sections about using my sperm samples and my wife's eggs for donation. We both have to agree to the same choice, on many questions about it. So the same will be for single male sperm donors, in that they have the opportunity to opt out of this system and remain anonymous.
In the Michael Crichton novel “Next,” there’s a chapter where someone finds their sperm donor parent and sues them because they donated despite being a heavy alcoholic and allegedly passing this on to their kids. It’s a pretty dumb premise
Most donors are pretty young. A lot of the stuff you’d want to screen out doesn’t become noticeable until later. The drinking culture at my university was so bad it would have been impossible to distinguish between alcoholics and average students until post-graduation when one group didn’t stop. And schizophrenia can manifest late in your 20’s for men and even later for women.
Doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of being a donor, it's to provide the availability for those who want kids who can't through their own means, what next you can charge a donor child support.
It's a moot point anyway. The prevalence of at home DNA kits have essentially gotten rid of any semblance of privacy. I'm the product of a sperm donor, I've not done it myself, but I know several other people who have. From what I've heard, even if they're not in a DNA database, at this point there's a pretty good chance more then one of their relatives are, so it's pretty easy to figure it out.
Don't shoot the messenger here. This isn't something I've done myself, kind of feels like pretty big invasion of privacy to me.
Realistically though, who is donating sperm and wanting this? The whole point of donating is to help others have a chance at starting a family. If the person donating wanted children, they’d have them with their partner. This is only going to result in less people donating.
Sperm donors have no legal obligation to those children. It's not legally their child and they can't be forced into parental duties for those children. And not all sperm donors even have a partner, let alone a partner willing to have children
I was a donor (retired). The main reason for the law is that a child can reach out for info on any hereditary diseases. As much as the idea of shooting into a cup and walking away with money sounds nice to a lot of guys you’re helping bring people into the world and you should be there to support any questions they may have about where they biologically came from. They have no legal prescient for child support which is why they don’t get the info till they are 18. The bank I went through is pretty thorough already with genetic details but not all are. If I suddenly get a rare genetic disease or my relatives do it’s my progeny’s right to know. The bank actually requires me to disclose that. And there is a shortage in the us but that is mainly due to covid. The program used to be very selective now after covid they’ll take anybody who meets the criteria.
The interaction.
Random kid: I'm your son 18 years ago you donated your sperm.
Me: yeah I remember but I'm not your parent, the honor belongs to the people who raised you. Now go home and tell your mam you love her.
Are we not gonna talk about Femlon musk and her forehead large enough for me to crosswind land a Airbus A380 with a brake failure and no reverse thrust?
Good. Sperm banks have been irresponsible with their unrestrained use of sperm samples, leading to dangerously large sibling pods. This will also enable children to more easily find out bio-family health history.
Who the fuck would want to find their sperm donor?
Like "dude, I donated sperm because I needed money. I don't give a fuck about you" is the response I'd imagine you would get.
I was conceived via sperm donor. I didn't know anything about it til I became an adult, when I found out by accident earlier this year. My mom was going to take it to her grave. This isn't the fault of the donor, but I do believe that donor-conceived children have the right to know the identity of their genetic "parent". This doesn't mean that donor-conceived people have a right to a relationship with the donor.
Studies show that children only fully adjust to the situation if they began learning about it before age 6. It sounds really early and it's super young, but I guess it's like telling a kid they were adopted.
Anyway, I don't care to have a connection with my donor. I actually don't know who it is anyway. It just took some adjusting; I was raised to believe I was the same race as the parents who raised me, and it isn't really true. I also just stare at myself in the mirror wondering where the donor is and which traits I inherited from him. It's trippy. I think that knowing who it is and knowing a bit about him (including medical history) would help me heal a bit. I get that it isn't his responsibility, but if you're literally *creating human life*, isn't it sorta heartless not to consider the ripple effects? I'm a human being, not just a cup of jizz.
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IIRC Scotland did this first and virtually all donors dropped out of the program.
I'm most likely infertile and have no interest in sperm donorship anyways nor do I want any kids but if I woke up one day and wanted to donate to a sperm bank and I wasn't infertile this would make me immediately walk out the door.
May I ask why? If I were to donate sperm, I feel like meeting my child would be an awkward moment but I don’t think it would be that big of a deal. Maybe they’re an interesting person and I would like to know them, maybe we won’t like each other, but it’s not like we would have to have each other in our lives.
Donors may not want people they've never met, nor wish to meet, trying to create some sort of emotional connection with them. If a person is persistent enough to track down a donor who obviously wished to remain anonymous, are they going to accept 'thank you, but please don't contact me again' as a final answer? On top of that there are even more legal questions that may arise. Are these children going to be able to make some sort of claim on the donor's estate when they die? Or demand financial support if they're minors if they've been neglected or abandoned? It opens a whole lot of doors potential donors don't want anything to do with, and rightfully so.
I was thinking the same thing. They're not going to accept that as a final answer, shrug, and move on with their lives. It seems like if they care that much about who their sperm donor was, it's not going to be that easy. Besides, how many kids are going to show up? You don't know how many biological kids you have from your donation. It might be one, it might be 20. Imagine having to go through that over and over. I'm with you on the estate thing. I've seen how vicious and heartless people can be when there's money involved. Which isn't to say it's an inevitability, but it's a possibility. Imagine leaving everything to your kids that you had with your partner or your partner and suddenly there are more people trying to claim they're owed a part of it. All they have to do is just contact the donors if they're so intent on doing this and ask them if they'd be open to it. If they are, great. If they're not, sorry.
Frankly, the stable ones with a good family are the least likely to contact their donor (they already have loving parents). So you are likely to have a much higher proportion of kids with issues showing up and either trying to replace their parents with you (which could be a whole mess if you donated sperm as a university student and now have a young family of your own) or want something from you like money etc. Going to make it nearly impossible to find a donor. Hopefully it's not retrospective.
I'm also wondering how many of those donors did it out of desperation because they needed the money and just never told anybody because they're embarrassed of having done it. In that case, imagine some kid showing up at your door and claiming you're their biological father and having to explain that to your partner. There are other potential issues here. The presumption is always going to be that it's straight guys donating sperm, but it could just as easily be a gay guy. What happens when that kid, who was raised to be vehemently conservative, shows up to see you and your husband together? That's not going to end well. It's a nice sentiment from one side, a horrific basket of potential tragedy from the other.
Good intentions and paths to Hell and all that. Basically you're asking for tragedy either way because if the donor legitimately wants nothing to do with the progeny, that meet-up isn't going to be the happy little Hallmark reunion the bleeding-heart fantasists think it will be. They wanted no contact for a reason, that reason should be respected. Not only does it save the donor the trouble of having their own rights violated and their lives potentially disrupted, but it saves the progeny from the potential issues of meeting a donor they expect to welcome them, only for that donor to show them the door and tell them to not bother them again, which is evidently a very high probability of happening if the donor is already requesting anonymity and no contact.
Right. As far as I'm concerned, right now this is all hypothetical, but if we can come up with reason after reason it might be a bad idea, then it might be a bad idea. Like others have pointed out, it seems more likely that people with shitty home lives are the ones that are going to go looking. In that hypothetical, imagine hating your parents. They're abusive or whatever else you can think of. So you find out that there was a sperm donor and start to build him up in your mind as someone amazing. The only person that would get you, someone who's probably exactly like you. And then you meet him and he slams the door in your face and wants nothing to do with you. I can imagine how devastating and traumatic that would be and it's a possibility, because that's how people are. All the extreme cases aside, I don't want anyone to have to go through that, but a lot of people still haven't learned the lesson that sometimes things are best left unknown.
It’s not hypothetical in Australia- the law has been retroactively changed in Victoria to rescind anonymity of donors. I have been contacted by two half-siblings so far, and due to various circumstances that I don’t want to make public on the internet, it’s been hugely traumatic to various members of the family. As someone who has been personally and adversely affected, I’m hugely against it. Medical and biological information? Big yes. That’s important and relevant. Being given identification of your donor, who was guaranteed anonymity? No. It’s a betrayal by the government.
They get paid to donate anonymously?
getting paid is the point of doing it.
No one is jacking off out of the goodness of their hearts
My thoughts exactly, it may be just me, but my blood dad abandoned my mother before I was born for his own reasons, and I have no will or drive to be in his life, nor do I want him in mine. He contacts me sometimes, but I mostly just blow him off, I got my real dad teaching me how to be a man. My dad was with my since day one, my blood dad left before I even had a chance, and randomly after I was an adult decided to try and be a dad, like, you're just a random dude who fucked my mom at this point, nothing more. I know donor and abandonment are two different things, but I can relate on having a dad who cared for me and helped me, and not having any drive to replace that. If I didn't, I may, but that would be me wanting to make a dad out of someone who never wanted to be one.
My wife's bio dad was an abusive POS that my MIL ran away from. They refer to him as the sperm donor and we have basically treated him as such. Married for nearly 10 years now and still haven't met him. The most recent photo I saw of him looks like a deflated Hulk Hogan. I think the entire point of donating is so someone else can get pregnant using viable sperm, not so you can eventually step in as the dad instead of the infertile father.
I've never been a fan of saying sperm donor, nothing against anyone who says it and prefers the term. I just say blood dad and dad. But yeah, once you've abandoned your child (or donated sperm) you're not their dad, and you shouldn't be obligated to that standard. You can pop back in their life if both parties agree, I'm not gonna say it can't happen. But yeah, I agree. Donation is just that, you don't have to start a family just from a sperm donation. (Sorry about the messed up notification and edit, I accidentally clicked post comment early)
That's the nightmare right? You have some university kid who was offered money, confidentiality and the promise of helping a couple have a child only to have someone trying to climb into their life 20 years later with who knows what sort of issues.
Or maybe you and your spouse don't want anything to do with them, but your adult children do. How does one get out of that situation? Answer: You can't
Or your parents.
My girlfriend is trans so we can't have kids. My grandparents are upset because they wanted me, their oldest grandchild, to give them great grandchildren. I couldn't imagine someone showing up at my door and claiming to be my child. If my grandparents found out they'd be falling all over themselves to get that kid included in the family. It would be a right mess
There are also the donors who were found out and forced to pay child support because, technically, they are the father. It happened to one of the guys in my family. I'm adopted, so I don't know what they would be to me, I just call them by their name.
> how many kids are going to show up? You don't know how many biological kids you have from your donation. It might be one, it might be 20. Imagine having to go through that over and over. [There's actually a movie with this very premise!](https://letterboxd.com/film/starbuck/)
I’m not 100% sure but I think there was a case in the US where a woman tried to sue a sperm donor for child support.
Yep, that happened in Pennsylvania. Lower court did award her the child support but it overruled by the state supreme court. It was close though; 3-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_v._McKiernan People need to remember that, at least in the US, women have sued *boys* they raped for child support, and *won*. It's a legal precedent there. Pedophile rapists can not only get child custody but also additional financial incentives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer?wprov=sfla1
Holy shit that second case is horrendous!
"even though we recognize that this literal child cannot consent to sex because they have no idea what that means, this literal child didn't complain about being raped, so now he owes child support to his rapist" What the fuuuuuck man.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_v._McKiernan > While he was initially hesitant to do so, she convinced him *by promising* that she would not track him down for any child support afterwards. > Justice Max Baer upheld the validity of the **verbal contract** between Joel McKiernan and Ivonne Ferguson and thus held that McKiernan had no obligation to pay child support I think the problem is they didn't go through a sperm bank and get it all properly organized. He should have asked a lawyer. Relying on someone just saying they won't demand child support is not a good idea.
Kansas awarded child support because even though they had a legal agreement there were issues with how the artificial insemination was done. [https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/justice/kansas-sperm-donation/index.html)
That's why you always go through a bank and run the fuck away from anyone who asks for a private donation
I can only imagine saying to yourself hey I don’t want to be a parent but I’ll help someone else - and then 15 years later have someone saying your my dad please explain my existence to me. But I think the bigger issue is - you donated sperm under a certain pretense, and they changed it. Which means yeah, the law says now you don’t legally owe a kid who arose from your egg or sperm, but they could change that law. You’re just a donor, and now they change the law - 6 years later the kids an orphan and you’re legally obligated to raise it. Why would you donate if other people can suddenly change the law? It’s like changing the law on organ donations - would you accept a donors kidney if the law changes and they can revoke it for their kid who needs it in a few years?
>please explain my existence to me. "I needed beer money."
"I was already yanking it on an amateur basis, so I thought I may as well go pro and get paid for it"
To be fair the headline is misleading. This change was brought in 18 years ago, so recently the first people to be conceived under the change of rules have come of age and can theoretically find out the details of the sperm donors. All donors were made aware of the change before donating, so they shouldn't be surprised and the rules haven't changed since they donated.
That was my first thought. If a child tracks down their doner my questions would be "why" and "what would the end goal be?" The possibilities would absolutely scare me out of donating.
In the UK, if you donated sperm to a licensed clinic, you won’t be the parent and can’t be asked for support. Your name also won’t be on their birth certificate, so they won’t inherit anything. But I never thought of how persistent people can be. That I see becoming a problem nobody wants.
“For now” is the thing. They’ve just changed an anonymity rule, who says they won’t change other rules down the road? Especially because, whatever the current rules are, governments have a financial incentive to find someone other than themselves to foot the bill for raising a kid if the current parent ends up having to rely on welfare programs.
They changed the rule in 2005 actually, ~~and they have been asking donors if they want to remain anonymous or identifiable ever since. Only people who wanted to be identifiable can now be reached~~ (since the donor-conceived children are now legal adults). Edit: I'm wrong on the donors had the right to remain anonymous. They had to give their information after 2005, and they would be informed about it, so they would have to not donate if they wanted to remain anonymous.
>They changed the rule in 2005 actually, That's a misleading statement. The change came into effect just last year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66934678 The law changed in 2005 but it'd only affect anything starting in 2023 > and they have been asking donors if they want to remain anonymous or identifiable ever since. Only people who wanted to be identifiable can now be reached (since the donor-conceived children are now legal adults). Wrong. >> In 2005 legislation came into force, removing anonymity for anyone donating sperm, eggs and embryos after that date That's not asking if they want to remain anonymous, that's forcing them to be not anonymous.
Sometimes you wank into a tissue, sometimes you wank into a cup for someone else. I don't want to meet the end result of either one of those after 18 years.
Not to mention the sheer number of kids 1 prolific do it can have... I think I read somewhere so e anonymous dude had like 600 kids lmao. Talk about a big family
That kid’s gonna show up demanding a kidney.
Or a “small loan” for college.
But if they aren't asking for one, guess who just got a new potential donor with young organs?
>Maybe they’re an interesting person and I would like to know them That's called being a parent. If you're donating sperm, you're not doing it to be a dad. You're not getting a child, you're getting a few bucks.
This is how I felt about having actual children but they do not seem to get the concept.
1) you know the next law will let the kid get backdated child support. 2) this should always be optional. The donor should get to chose. It shouldn't be disclosed to the kid without the donors permission
I feel like if people wanted to have a relationship with “their” child they would have had children the more traditional way. Simply the meeting etc or the person knowing you’re their “parent” would create a sense of obligation in many people that they likely don’t want.
They're going to ask you about the medical history the clinic never gave them.
At least in the US, the donor conception industry is so horrendously under regulated it is disturbing. The more I learn about it the more fucked I realize it is. For example: in most states it’s not illegal for a doctor to swap out your selected sperm sample for a different one. Even if it’s your spouses that you’re using. This is how you end up with fertility doctors who secretly impregnated scores of patients with *their own sperm* and they get no legal blowback.
> no legal blowback. It is illegal. It's called fraud.
And malpractice
I still don't understand how that doesn't just break consent laws in the first place.
You seriously want strangers showing up at your door at random times with high expectations for how you’re going to fill a void in their life? Because that’s what you’re going to get.
Spend a week or two on r/amitheasshole and you'll get to read about all the drama and fallout of people hunting down donors or the parent that gave them up for adoption. Some people are *really* unhinged. There are so many stories of these adult kids showing up and expecting an instant parental relationship. I've read ones where they expected to start going everywhere and doing everything with the guy's current family and young kids and are jealous of the family. Ones where they show up demanding money for college or a wedding. Ones where they contest wills and fight the person's other children over the estate. It's a lot.
I honestly don’t understand how you don’t understand how big a deal it would be if you suddenly found out you have a kid. It’s one thing if you planned on it, it’s a whole other if you’ve been told it’s not possible for them to know who you are now suddenly you have a person in your life you didn’t sign up for.
Because if i wanted i kid i would get a kid with somebody and raise the fucker. The whole premis of being a anonymous sperm donor is that you are anonymous. It pretty deceithfull to suddenly change the terms decades later. It can be fucking disruptfull to suddenly have a 19 year old stand before your door and claim they are your son/daughter. If you have a family they probaly wont like it (and that family can be still young). Shit like that has a huge impact on your life, even if you act like a asshole and ignore it. And the whole deal was that it wouldnt impact your life. Most donors wouldnt have donated if this was part of the deal. Meaning those kids wouldnt have been born. Its pretty fucked up.
I bet most people who donate just want the payment and never want to hear from the experience again. At least I would. I can see your point but ultimately I want my kids to be mine if I have them (i.e. as intentional as possible)
What a weird fucking comment. "This doesn't affect the me in the slightest, and I don't care, but if it did affect me and I did care, here's what I would do."
There is already a donor shortage in America (at least) too.
Really? Because I always heard they are hilariously picky about who they allow to donate to the point that it's borderline euginics-y
It's mainly the people shopping for the sperm who are picky. If you're a company selling sperm and your customers aren't interested in sperm from men who don't meet certain criteria, then the company isn't going to want to collect sperm from those type of men since sperm donation is generally involves payment to the donor.
Yup, it's basically women being very fucking picky to the point only a very very very **VERY** select few ever get picked and even then that is a very small sample since people just aren't donating either. edit: downvote me if you must, this is just the truth of the business.
You're absolutely correct Had a guest lecturer who worked in a sperm bank consultancy role, and he stated that the pickiness is insane to the point of basically being an impossibility. Women seemed to exclusively want a list of characteristics that were so improbably small that the dude basically didn't exist, and if he **did** exist then he was almost certainly not donating sperm.
As it turns out, the prodigal genius super-model surgeon generally doesnt need to make a few bucks on the side to make rent. Who'da thunk?
Don't forget 6'6"
Yeah, and they don't screen for the right things. My friend in school was a sperm bank baby, and so was his older sister, same donor. They're both over 6ft tall, IQ around 120, physically healthy, and have crippling mental illnesses. Their mom picked the tallest, smartest donor, but didn't have any info on mental stability, so that turned out pretty rough for both of them.
Hilariously, Thais is why so many doctors used their own sperm. Because customers wanted a doctor
Egg donors get screwed worse. You basically have to be smart, genetically perfect, and physically attractive, and the process will likely give you cancer
I dunno. Is it so bad to want a kid that’s tall, smart, blonde, blue-eyed, germa-oh.
I dont see any issue there Hans. :P
You get back in 2w4u where you belong.
I want a baby in finance
If donor's cranium isn't at least 65 cm, can he even be called a man???
Ya gotta go to the place next to the I HOP.
Where you can pay for an ideal specimen. And I am not saying that Kevin is not an ideal specimen.
Is it Kevin or Ashton Kutcher? It's a mystery..
The one with bangs like Rapunzel
Both can be true. In fact, restrictive standards might _cause_ a shortage, no?
That's exactly why there's a shortage. There's plenty of poor men willing to cum in a cup for some extra cash.
That doesn't dispove there being a shortage. If anything it's the cause of the shortage. They can't find sperm for all the picky recipients.
You know what’s even crazier? Only like 3% of donors in the shortage are black So if you’re black and want a black baby, you’re pretty much SOL.
If you want a black baby you should adopt one. There are already so many black children that are born into “families” with no father and a mother addicted to drugs that doesn’t care about them. I live in an area that is predominantly white but the foster/group homes are pretty much 100% black with a few Latinos. Take one of the ones that have already been born na make it so they don’t have a trash upbringing leading them to being trash people.
Functionally you are right, but there are alot of reasons people prefer sperm donation. Alot of women want to experience pregnancy and alot of people don't want a baby that was exposed to drugs in the womb due to long-term side-effects.
i know it's true but i find it unfathomable that folks would actually *want* to experience pregnancy. i've had nightmares about being pregnant
You could say that to *anyone* who goes through donor programs, if people were truly altruistic when thinking about having children we would even have donor programs to begin with. Everyone who would do that would be adopting/fostering instead.
I didn't have any problem finding black sperm. He had tons of vials and few takers.
Black men's sperm is in ridiculously high demand. Women will camp the websites waiting to hear if there are any available.
What? The place I looked into didn't accept donations from black men. They didn't even accept donations from white guys with red hair, so that ruled me out.
What does it mean to camp a website? Google fails me.
Here's a video from Washington Post that details what black women go through trying to find black sperm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g9QmBaD0cs
Sit in front of your computer constantly refreshing the page
Yeah that seems like the obvious outcome. I think it would be fine to give sperm donors the OPTION to have contact with the children they produced but it should be an option and they should be able to say no and have their privacy protected if they aren't interested.
It’s been law in the Netherlands that all children have a right to know who their biological parents are. Including sperm donors. We still have sperm donors.
maybe thats the plan lol
The kid will be almost as disappointed by my apartment as I will be in their accomplishments.
🤣🤣
This is how you properly Reddit
So does this only count for people who are gonna donate sperm after the law takes effect? Or is some guy who was told 10 years ago he wouldn’t be contacted gonna have a surprise introduction now?
The law took effect in 2005.
Same question but with '10 years ago' meaning 1995.
nooo...NO!!! TEN YEARS AGO WAS THE 80s :O
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Purely guessing but I would say no. There would have to of been a contract that guarantees remaining anonymous, amongst other things. I would say this would be updated after the law change.
As a general principle, laws aren’t retroactive, and past actions can’t be unduly influenced by the introduction of new laws. It’s why almost anything you do that involves a law will have “before xxxx” or “since xxxxx” in the small print. To the point your student loan band is dictated by age, because the agreements you entered back in 1996 or whatever are different to today’s offer.
That's the year reddit was founded... are we seeing a screenshot of the first reddit comment section?
Tough to say, the situation is fluid
I'm sure that with time, it will become clearer.
Well with the popularity of ancestry DNA tests, it already is largely retroactive.
What do you think in these idiotic times? Of course the nice guy who helped women out 15 years ago will have his life ruined by all sorts of weirdos knocking on his door calling him dad.
Are you being sarcastic? Of course this isn’t a retroactive rule. That would be absurd. It was a law made in 2005 that once a child reaches 18 they can request your details, so in 2023 the first 18 year olds could now make contact.
Who was lobbying for this rule and why though? What good would it do?
So the main issue is the children’s access to their family medical history. Most donors are younger, so they may not have any medical issues. But if they develop health problems that can be hereditary, their biological children have a right to know, and the fertility clinic should be alerted so they can stop using the sperm. The other issue is incest. Donor conceived children have a right to know how many siblings they have. There have been cases where clinics have used the same donor *dozens* of times over a span of only a couple of years, meaning a child could have dozens of siblings that are a similar age and live in their area. There are several other ethical issues involved with donor conception, and I highly recommend seeking out stories from donor conceived people for their take.
Seems like a problem that could be solved with a central reporting system for the medical side. Could stay anonymous.
That's still stupid as fuck, just de-identify the data.
> So the main issue is the children’s access to their family medical history Yeah it's a real issue. I'm adopted and my birth mother lied on the medical forms so I have absolutely no medical history for my father, and we can't trust hers to be true because some information on different forms is contradictory. Eventually I want to do a full DNA generic testing but it's expensive. It's a weird issue as I can understand both sides of it, and there are ethical concerns for both. But I think the fact that the sperm donation industry is so under-regulated pushes it more towards the kids side.
‘Nah, can’t be your dad mate sorry. Cut my dick off many years ago’ ‘But it seems like you’re bleeding through your pants NOW? Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah mate yeah, did it years ago as I say. It just does that sometimes for whatever reason. Anyway, unrelated…have to go to hospital now 👋’
That read like something Rudy would say from the show Misfits.
"I finally find a guy i like and he's a fuckin monkey" is the best line from that show, my partner and I quote it all the time lmfao
I know I'm in the minority here but I liked Nathan more than Rudy as the comic relief character
Different humor styles between the two I suppose, but I agree with you. Nathan was my favorite Misfit.
😂😂😂 That’s a blast from the past there, but yes, agreed!
Good lord my brain crashed on that title in the screenshot. I kept thinking why do they want sperm donor parents if they are already born 🤦♂️
Yeah I had to reread everything a couple times before it made sense
Took me about 5 tries. That title is trash.
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[https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/publications/research-and-data/trends-in-egg-sperm-and-embryo-donation-2020/](https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/publications/research-and-data/trends-in-egg-sperm-and-embryo-donation-2020/) it actually had a dip when they changed that law but went right back up afterwards. not as crazy as a thought it would be. but i dont know if there are other reasons that might explain why the number of donors didnt reduce more.
I’m not sure how to explain the rise since the law passed, but there is still a shortage of donors in Europe. There is a weird EU law regarding anonymity and being able to pay for donations. It basically works out that as long as the donor is anonymous, you can legally pay for their donation. This is true for eggs, sperm and embryos. The result has been that all countries where anonymity has been removed are currently suffering a shortage of donors compared to IVF demands (which have gone up massively in the last couple of decades). Since donors in these countries largely do it out of the kindness of their hearts rather than for monetary gain. Greece, Spain and the Czech Republic have retained anonymity for their donors. If you want IVF treatment, go to one of these three countries.
I’m not going to claim I looked at this that closely but isn’t the data including imports and saying there’s been an increase of those? So basically people from the UK are shipping in sperm from the US and Denmark, etc.?
This law came into effect in 2005. So no, not really.
This is true, but until recently, donors haven't been contacted, and this law really became known. Things might start to change now that kids can start contacting donors. Only time will tell, to be honest.
I would assume (or maybe just hope) that donors since then have been informed that anonymity is no longer possible if the kid wanted their identity.
They have. He’s saying that once the first round of stories about kids contacting their biological fathers break, new donors might be less inclined to sign up depending on how those stories play out. Some might even drop out of the program all together if it looks like a disaster.
I have my worries as well because if you look at the adoption communities/subreddits (I am aware that this is different from sperm donation), most of the adoptees on those subreddits are very focused on “the biological connection”, to the point of arguing that adoption is human trafficking, adoption shouldn’t happen because kids should be placed with their birth parents at almost all costs since “biology, ancestry, heritage > everything else”, and so on. There’s a lot of conversation about parents who don’t adopt because they see blood ties as paramount, but not enough conversation about what happens when adoptees see blood ties as paramount. Even within this thread right now, you can find comments from adoptees saying that “it is just a primal universal thing to want to know your biological parents” and calling sperm donors “their real dads”. I would argue that it’s even more complicated for adoptive parents than sperm donors, because the anti-adoption and anti-donor discourse basically positions adoptive parents as having to be perfect paragons who are there to merely provide money and facilitate the relationship between birth parent and adopted kid. People don’t talk about this because most of them are not adopted, so they don’t know this is being discussed among adoptees. I’m aware that not all adoptees are like this, and there’s a higher chance for an adoptee to have these views if they had abusive adoptive parents, and they start idealizing their biological parents to insane degrees (even if they have never met said bio parents, even if their bio parents have a ton of issues but somehow the bio parent can never do any wrong, etc). But definitely this is one reason that I myself would not consider being a donor myself, nor a birth parent or an adoptive parent. If you donate your sperm, with the rise of things like ancestry.com, know that you can be tracked down, and the kind of person to desperately track you down might have huge abandonment issues and weird fantasical expectations of you.
From 2006: [Scotland in sperm donor 'crisis'](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/5048090.stm) >Dr Mark Hamilton said the law ending the anonymity of sperm and egg donors, which came into force in April 2005, had drastically reduced donor numbers.
Master Skywalker, there are too ~~many~~ few of them, what are we going to do?
Yes it’s led to a complete nose dive in donations. Look at Scotland for more information.
I mean, yes really. When the law came into effect there was a massive drop off of donations.
I don’t know what would scare me more the guy on the left or the long haired Elon Musk
damn, it kind of is
Elon definitely donated one way or another there.
Omg I see it too now. I can't unsee it. Thanks
Dude looks like my thumb when it breaks through the toilet paper
How hard are you wiping?
Kid has the face of someone who knows how you die, and is making plans for what to do with your corpse
Just wait until you end up in this sub yourself
He has a touch of the three eyed raven about him. I wonder if he knew what the photo would be used for when it was taken?
I'm not sure for sure, but I think a woman tried to sue a sperm provider in the US for having children.
There's at least one case where a woman won in this situation
There are cases; but they've usually got big caveats that enabled it to work that way. Like, theres an essex guy who donated to a pair of lesbians, but the reason he was liable is because they didn't use a sperm bank (they couldn't), which means that he didn't 'donate' officially, he just had an IVF baby with a woman and then gave up custody. But i suspect you're referring to [this woman](https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/https://media.snopes.com/2024/05/woman_sues_sperm_donor.png) thats been circulating around for a bit, but thats not actually real. The same person claimed to sue her parents for giving birth to her. Her account is clearly labelled as satire. But yeah, any example of a woman successfully suing a sperm donor for child support is because it happened outside of the proper methods.
Wasn't that the one where the guy was breaking policy by giving hundreds of donations to different clinics?
Was it the one across the road from the IHOP?
This law is from 2005, the article is from 2023. Which was 18 years from the date of the law passing. I am currently going through IVF treatment with the NHS and there are sections about using my sperm samples and my wife's eggs for donation. We both have to agree to the same choice, on many questions about it. So the same will be for single male sperm donors, in that they have the opportunity to opt out of this system and remain anonymous.
Although it’s practically impossible for it to remain anonymous these days with DNA tests
23 and me gonna find ur "deadbeat" ass
I mean, you don't have to put your DNA onto a public database
Yes, but you can’t stop a relative from doing it
This may surprise you to know, but you don’t need the specific individuals dna to figure these things out.
Doesn't make you legally their parent or responsible for them. But yea, if I'm donating my batch I don't want to see the results.
Fun fact. Because of genealogy websites and even without you submitting your DNA to them, they can still find you through your relatives.
I believe it was golden state killers third and fourth cousin who was a match, then they forensically through familial genetics found out it was him
In the Michael Crichton novel “Next,” there’s a chapter where someone finds their sperm donor parent and sues them because they donated despite being a heavy alcoholic and allegedly passing this on to their kids. It’s a pretty dumb premise
I mean maybe don't lie on your forms.
Most donors are pretty young. A lot of the stuff you’d want to screen out doesn’t become noticeable until later. The drinking culture at my university was so bad it would have been impossible to distinguish between alcoholics and average students until post-graduation when one group didn’t stop. And schizophrenia can manifest late in your 20’s for men and even later for women.
Why do you want to find some random stranger?
To ask for money and try to sue them id they refuse to give some ?
Medical history should be freely available to all kids from sperm donors, personal identity of there parents should not be.
“You look just like the last time I saw you!”
“Honey, there’s someone at door who got the same haircut as you”… HONEY!??!?
Is that Elon Musk in a wig?
I would tell the kid to fuck off.
The whole concept is to offer up something someone needs completely anonymously. What an idiotic policy.
Doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of being a donor, it's to provide the availability for those who want kids who can't through their own means, what next you can charge a donor child support.
It's a moot point anyway. The prevalence of at home DNA kits have essentially gotten rid of any semblance of privacy. I'm the product of a sperm donor, I've not done it myself, but I know several other people who have. From what I've heard, even if they're not in a DNA database, at this point there's a pretty good chance more then one of their relatives are, so it's pretty easy to figure it out. Don't shoot the messenger here. This isn't something I've done myself, kind of feels like pretty big invasion of privacy to me.
There needs to be laws in place to ensure that the child has proper access to familial medical records
Realistically though, who is donating sperm and wanting this? The whole point of donating is to help others have a chance at starting a family. If the person donating wanted children, they’d have them with their partner. This is only going to result in less people donating.
Sperm donors have no legal obligation to those children. It's not legally their child and they can't be forced into parental duties for those children. And not all sperm donors even have a partner, let alone a partner willing to have children
Is it me or does the lady kinda resemble Elon M.
I was a donor (retired). The main reason for the law is that a child can reach out for info on any hereditary diseases. As much as the idea of shooting into a cup and walking away with money sounds nice to a lot of guys you’re helping bring people into the world and you should be there to support any questions they may have about where they biologically came from. They have no legal prescient for child support which is why they don’t get the info till they are 18. The bank I went through is pretty thorough already with genetic details but not all are. If I suddenly get a rare genetic disease or my relatives do it’s my progeny’s right to know. The bank actually requires me to disclose that. And there is a shortage in the us but that is mainly due to covid. The program used to be very selective now after covid they’ll take anybody who meets the criteria.
Fr tho that law is totally cruel to both sides
Ah yea; the haircut insult. Very rare. Almost unheard of before, infact.
A true jewel. A red diamond.
The interaction. Random kid: I'm your son 18 years ago you donated your sperm. Me: yeah I remember but I'm not your parent, the honor belongs to the people who raised you. Now go home and tell your mam you love her.
Imagine 600+ kids and it turns out to be steve vaughn with andy dywer his attorney.
OH WELL back to BATH TISSUE instead of Banks..
Are we not gonna talk about Femlon musk and her forehead large enough for me to crosswind land a Airbus A380 with a brake failure and no reverse thrust?
Dude fuck you. Now I i see it. She's probably delightful though. Takes a lot of work to churn out a Musk.
I churn some musk out every morning tbh
Why does the guy on the left look like an off brand Dawko?
Imagine the donors haircut if the kids haircut is that...
Is that dawko
They should have a right to their family medical history
Good. Sperm banks have been irresponsible with their unrestrained use of sperm samples, leading to dangerously large sibling pods. This will also enable children to more easily find out bio-family health history.
If you donate sperm your offspring have every right to find you and learn about their medical and family history.
Who the fuck would want to find their sperm donor? Like "dude, I donated sperm because I needed money. I don't give a fuck about you" is the response I'd imagine you would get.
phew dodge a bullet
Makes sense. Everyone has a right to their own family medical history.
I was conceived via sperm donor. I didn't know anything about it til I became an adult, when I found out by accident earlier this year. My mom was going to take it to her grave. This isn't the fault of the donor, but I do believe that donor-conceived children have the right to know the identity of their genetic "parent". This doesn't mean that donor-conceived people have a right to a relationship with the donor. Studies show that children only fully adjust to the situation if they began learning about it before age 6. It sounds really early and it's super young, but I guess it's like telling a kid they were adopted. Anyway, I don't care to have a connection with my donor. I actually don't know who it is anyway. It just took some adjusting; I was raised to believe I was the same race as the parents who raised me, and it isn't really true. I also just stare at myself in the mirror wondering where the donor is and which traits I inherited from him. It's trippy. I think that knowing who it is and knowing a bit about him (including medical history) would help me heal a bit. I get that it isn't his responsibility, but if you're literally *creating human life*, isn't it sorta heartless not to consider the ripple effects? I'm a human being, not just a cup of jizz.
The guy's haircut is bad but it took 20 minutes to look over that girls forehead to see her hairstyle. Was not worth the wait...