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Donor Conception: Old vs. New Thinking


By admin on November 08, 2017

Old thinking: Infertility is something to be ashamed of.

New thinking: Coming to terms with infertility is a process. With proper education and counseling, healing can begin so that the shame of infertility isn’t passed along to the child as the shame of being donor-conceived.

Old thinking: Keep the secret. Don’t tell anyone that you used a donor, especially your child.

New thinking: Secrecy implies shame. Openness and honesty are the best choices for all families, and your child has the right to know about how they were conceived. Donor children do not love their non-bio mom or dad any less, so this is something that shouldn’t be feared.

Old thinking: Wait until the child is “old enough” to understand donor conception before telling them they are donor-conceived.

New thinking: Research shows that starting the conversation long before a child can fully understand is best. That way, the information is incorporated into a child’s identity, and there is never any “telling” event.

Old thinking: Wait until a child is “old enough” or until they ask before telling them about half-siblings.

New thinking: We don’t wait to tell children about any other relatives, so why wait to tell them about half-siblings? Why not give a child the opportunity to grow up knowing their half brothers and sisters? Why risk a child asking later on, “You mean I could have grown up knowing my half-siblings? Why didn’t you allow that?”

Old thinking: If your donor-conceived child finds out the truth, ask them to keep the secret.

New thinking: It is not healthy or fair to ask your child to keep this information a secret. Secrecy implies shame. Being donor-conceived is a part of their identity and needs to be acknowledged and embraced. If the child is struggling with this new information, it’s a parent’s responsibility to walk with them and support them. Parents: You can apologize for keeping the secret. This is no longer about you.

Old thinking: Donors can and should remain anonymous, for 18 years (“open” donors) or forever (”anonymous” donors).

New thinking: DNA = Donors Not Anonymous. With DNA (and the Internet, social media, public records, etc.) donor anonymity ceases to exist. Many egg clinics/agencies are now writing the Donor Sibling Registry into their contracts so that contact between parents and donors is made right from pregnancy or birth. Why don’t sperm banks do the same?

Old thinking: Donor-conceived people should be kept from their biological parents for at least 18 years, as with “open” or “willing-to-be-known” donors.

New thinking: It can be extremely important for both medical and psychosocial reasons for donor offspring to connect with their biological parents, long before the age of 18. Parents: The choices that you make early on will affect your child for decades to come.

Old thinking: If donors are anything but “anonymous” they will have rights and responsibilities for their donor offspring.

New thinking: Donors who donate through clinics and sperm banks have no legal rights or responsibilities.

Old thinking: Donors shouldn’t tell their spouses or children that they were donors.

New thinking: Donors should be telling anyone that they are in a serious relationship with that they have sold their eggs or sperm. Donor’s children should be told that they (might) have (many) half-siblings, as they too might want to connect. Again, secrecy implies shame. Own it and share it. Your family has the right to know.

Old thinking: DNA doesn’t make a family.

New thinking: DNA is certainly not the only way to make a family, but it can and does define family. As with adoption, many donor-conceived people wish to connect with and learn about their ancestry, medical history, and first-degree genetic relatives. There is no need for a parent to minimize the importance of their child’s “other” genetic relatives. For parents, it might be nothing more than a “donated cell,” but to a donor child, it can mean so much more.

“You can’t really know who you are and where you’re going unless you know where you come from.” 
—Bruce Springsteen


Old thinking: Donors shouldn’t have any obligation to update their medical records.

New thinking: Updating and sharing of medical information is crucial and can even save lives. Parents should know about all medical issues reported by families and donors, both before and after pregnancy.

Old thinking: There is no need for accurate record-keeping on the children born from gamete donations.

New thinking: There is a dire need for accurate record-keeping so that groups of half-siblings of 50, 100, or 200 stop happening. You can’t notify families of reported medical issues if you don’t know who they are.

Old thinking: It is more important to put profit before ethics in the reproductive medicine industry.

New thinking: The needs and rights of the child should be considered first and foremost.

Choosing a Sperm Bank ... What To Know


By admin on August 23, 2017
An open letter to anyone choosing a sperm bank:

Hello Future Parents,

I am so glad that you’re reading this, and that you are doing your due diligence. And I know, this can seem completely overwhelming — hang in there! Honestly, right now there is only one sperm bank that I can recommend, and that is The Sperm Bank of California (TSBC). Maybe because they are a non-profit, they do seem to try a bit harder to keep accurate records and to act in a more responsible and ethical manner. They are not perfect, but they do seem to try harder to contact donors when a child turns 18, not just send a generic letter in the mail, as some banks (such as California Cryobank) have done. Or not responding, or claiming that donors are not really “open” at all, as some banks do. TSBC’s “informed consent” form (on our Which Sperm Bank page), which you’d need to sign, implies that you or your child shouldn’t contact donors or half-siblings outside the scope of their mutual consent/age 18 recommendations, but ​​this is unenforceable because anyone can contact anyone, at any time — and your child is not signing or agreeing to anything.

We think that 18 is an arbitrary number, only in place to protect the sperm banks’ liabilities. That’s why any family can make contact at any time on the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR). (Children under 18 do need their parents’ permission.) There is no psycho-social research that recommends waiting until age 18, and a lot of research does show the benefits of connecting early on in a child’s life. If a child could have the opportunity to grow up knowing their first-degree genetic relatives, then why deliberately prevent that contact?

Many egg clinics and agencies are now writing the DSR into their parent/donor contracts, so anonymous (if wished) contact is made on the DSR right from pregnancy/birth. Messages, photos, and medical information can then be shared freely. Parents and donors are empowered to decide exactly what type of communication they are interested in, without the need of a middleman who knows nothing about them or their family, or the needs of their child. Not one sperm bank will do this. Ask your potential sperm bank “why not?”

Some sperm banks “claim” to limit numbers of children, but the truth is ... you can’t limit until you actually have accurate records, which none do, because reporting births is voluntary. Some sperm banks have estimated that only 20%-40% of women actually report back their births back to the sperm banks. The DSR has many half-sibling groups of more than 100. Xytex and Fairfax are the two sperm banks with the most number of very large half-sibling groups.

Because of little regulation or oversight, besides the FDA mandated STD testing, and testing for a small handful of other diseases, each bank can say whatever they want, and then do whatever they want. So, some banks test some donors for some diseases. You can read all about the medical and genetic issues here on the DSR’s Medical Issues page. 

Sharing medical information with half-sibling families and donors on the DSR is often the only way to know about this type of important medical information. Families should never rely on sperm banks to contact families when medical issues arise, because most often they are unaware — and even when they are made aware, we know that they frequently do not update the families. 

I would definitely steer clear of the big banks such as California Cryobank, Xytex, Fairfax/CLI/Pacific Reproductive Services (PRS), NW Cryobank, the U.S. “Scandinavian” sperm banks such as Seattle/European Sperm Bank/Cryos, or New England Cryogenic (NECC). I used California Cryobank, but I could never recommend them because on many occasions I haven’t found them to be honest. See the Johnson v. California Cryobank case (the sperm bank deleted Polycystic Kidney Disease from a donor’s profile), this O Magazine article, and my blog entry on the DSR. At least two sperm banks, Fairfax and NECC, have not let their donors know their own donor numbers, trying to actually prohibit the sharing and updating of information by donors with families on the DSR.
Read through the user comments about these and other banks on our Which Sperm Bank page. Ask your potential sperm bank the 30 questions we’ve provided on that page. For the most part, these sperm banks only seem responsive to people before they sell their product.

I hope that you’ll be using an open donor — please read through the 25 published papers on our Research page and the advice that donor-conceived people offer on the DSR’s Offspring page to better understand why using an open donor is SO important. The DSR has spent many years researching, listening, and responding to the needs and issues of donor-conceived people, and we know that they do not recommend that prospective parents use anonymous donors. Remember though, that without offering early connections (like the egg clinics/agencies are doing) all sperm donors are essentially anonymous, albeit some only for the first 18 years of a donor-conceived person’s life.

Also, I would suggest that after making a short list of possible donors, you check the DSR to see if any of the families who used those donors are already listed on our site. If so, you could reach out to them to see if there are any medical issues that you should know about. Also, you can see how many families are already posted for that donor. Sharing and updating medical information on the DSR with other families (and the donor) can be important and even life-saving. Wouldn’t you want to know if the donor you’re thinking of using already has 30, 50, or 200 kids out there and that too many of them have autism, ADHD, or a heart disease?

Please read ALL the articles in my Huffington Post blog; they contain a lot of information you won’t find anywhere else — for example: 10 Things Your Doctor, Clinic or Sperm Bank Won’t Tell You. I highly recommend reading Finding Our Families: A First-Of-Its Kind Book for Donor-Conceived People and Their Families; it’s everything I wish I would have known when I was beginning my journey as a parent of a donor-conceived child.

In July 2017, we submitted an FDA Citizen’s Petition with 173 powerful comments, stories, and testimonials from parents, donors, and donor-conceived people that should be read by anyone wishing to learn more about the reproductive medicine industry.

Best wishes and good luck!
Wendy

2020: Please see our new page for Prospective Parents


Half-Siblings from Sperm and Egg Donation


By admin on March 14, 2017


Three half-sisters meet


Family can be formed and defined in so many different ways, but biology has always been the most common family bond. If biology didn’t matter, we’d give birth to our babies, and then just pick any baby from the hospital nursery to take home. That doesn’t happen! In most cases, parents want to take home and raise the child that they have a genetic connection with.

Having a biological connection to a child (to one parent) matters to parents who use sperm and egg donors.* So, if parents value this genetic connection on one side of our child’s family tree, shouldn’t they also recognize and value its importance on the other side? All too often I hear parents negate or minimize the importance of their child connecting with their unknown biological parent (the donor) and their half-siblings (people conceived from the same donor). Some refer to the donor’s contribution as merely “a piece of genetic material” or just a “donated cell.” But to many donor-conceived people, it’s so much more.

Donor offspring desire to know about their genetic relatives.
Genetic uncertainty has clouded my life since I was 12 years old, when I learned that my conception was facilitated by an anonymous sperm donor. Though the shock dissolved in the following months, I’m reminded of this obscurity entwined in my DNA when I’m asked to fill out a medical history form at the doctor’s office and have to indicate that, genetically speaking, half of my family tree remains in shadow. I’m joining the Donor Sibling Registry in the hope of connecting with others who have had similar experiences, hearing stories, and maybe even finding a biological half-sibling or relative.

Even children of donors can be curious about their half-siblings.

We often talk about the importance of honesty in donor families and honoring a child’s curiosity about their first-degree genetic relatives. Do donors also owe their own children the truth about their donating? Do the donor’s children have a right to know that they (may) have half-siblings? DNA testing is already revealing these family connections, and it will only continue to become more common. My guess is that most donors do not inform their families, because some are ashamed, some don’t consider donor children as true “family,” some are afraid of 100 kids coming forward, and some have spouses very much against it. I should note that we do have a few thousand donors on the DSR who are open to contact (with some wonderful resulting stories), and we do hear about positive donor/offspring connections also made through DNA.
I recently found out that my father donated to sperm banks many times years ago and I wondered if I have any more siblings out there.

Why not give children the opportunity to grow up knowing their half-siblings?
Our kids are two and half years old. They are only 3 weeks apart in age. They are so alike and they are so different. They spent 4 days together, fighting and playing and then fighting some more. Within our individual families they were only children. In our new family they are very much sister and brother. There aren’t words to explain the sense of peace that has given us as parents. There’s no yardstick that can measure how much this has enriched our lives.

Some parents who have seen their children’s half-siblings posted on the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) have said that they will wait to establish contact with the half-siblings until their child is old enough to make that specific request. Generally, children don’t decide when to meet their relatives. (They also don’t decide the timing of a lot of things!) We don’t wait until they show interest or ask to meet Aunt Shirley, Cousin Frank, or Grandpa Larry to make the introduction. Our children grow up knowing their relatives, and then, when they are older, they choose who they wish to be in contact with.
Just imagine being 20 something and finding siblings on your own when DNA testing is even more wildly popular, or they find you. You then develop some kind of relationship. You find that many of these siblings had parents who encouraged these relationships, even from babyhood. You see the pictures, you hear the stories. Disney, camping, birthdays.... A couple of them will be roomies in college, maid of honor in a sibling wedding, etc. To me, this would be crushing. I would feel so cheated. Whether or not I had great neighbor pals, awesome cousins, or even siblings from the same home.

We chose early contact with half siblings because we felt if he wanted to end contact when he was old enough to choose, he could. But if we waited until he was older, and told him we knew his half siblings all along, and he wished for that contact, there would be a lot of years and missed opportunities gone. We feel being open, honest, and having connected early on may instill a sense of pride and ward off any shame that may come about if we were secretive about this part of his story and family. We also have a son who was adopted at birth so we are big on celebrating and embracing the ways in which our family came to be.

Connecting on the DSR may be the only way to share/update important medical information with other families.

For most, connecting with half-siblings on the DSR has been an overwhelmingly positive experience:
I just found my half-sibling this year. I am 29 years old and wish that I could have known him my whole life. It is really special, and I’m so thankful to have found him. We met a couple of months ago and it’s like we have known each other all along.

I think it’s really cool that I have siblings (I’m close to three sisters and one brother). We get closer every year because we FaceTime, text, and get together in the summertime; ever since I was three. My sisters and I are now teaming up against our brother. And it’s fun picking on him. We live thousands of miles apart, yet it feels like we all live together. We’re talking about going to college in the same town.

Twins (on either end) meet half-siblings for the first time





You’re never too old to find half-siblings.
When I signed up with the DSR a year ago, I did it more with the hopes of finding information about my donor, than with any thoughts of actually finding a sibling. After all, I’d been conceived in the late sixties, well before the existence of sperm banks with registered donors. At that time everything was very secretive, with absolutely no information given to the parents. When I got to the DSR, I was the first person to create a listing under my mom’s doctor’s name, from New York City. About eight months later, a woman emailed me to say that her mother had used the same doctor as mine, just two years later. We figured we could band together to find out as much info as we could about how the doctor (now long deceased) had gone about finding donors. After a few months of research, we were able to piece together that the pool of donors he used was actually very small. It honestly hadn’t occurred to us before that we could be siblings, but once we learned about the small donor pool, we figured why not give it a shot. So we found the most reliable and thorough testing facility, and did a half-sibling DNA test. Lo and behold, it came back with 99.7% certainty that we were sisters! So for all the older donor offspring out there who have only fragments of the story of their conception, don’t give up hope.

And finally, of course, there are no guarantees that all family connections will be entirely positive.

Some people are suspicious when they look at the success stories on the DSR, and have asked, “How can these connections all be so positive?” While the great majority of new family connections on the DSR are indeed very positive, some might be more flat or sometimes even more of a struggle. Our families are made up from all races, religions/non-believers, academic backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, socio-economic backgrounds, political perspectives, nationalities, and varied personality types.

All families have issues. Not all people are like-minded, or have enough in common to wish for a continued relationship, and sometimes people don’t agree on the desired level or degree of contact. When we look around our Thanksgiving table, do we want to hang out with everyone there? Sometimes not! Some family members are just not the kind of people you’d want to hang out with, and some may just be people with whom we don’t have enough in common. Are these reasons to not seek out your (or your child’s) unknown genetic relatives? We think not!

* People who sell their sperm and eggs are commonly known as “donors,” although most don’t actually donate anything.