“When I saw a picture of him, it was kind of unavoidable that he was mine,” says Andy, recounting the first time he was contacted by his adult biological son.
Now in his late 50s, with silver hair and a jovial manner, Andy, who gave only his first name, chose to give sperm at a time when anonymity was still written into U.K. law. Donors — often students looking for a bit of extra cash — were not prepared for the possibility that they might be tracked down by biological offspring decades later.
But here he was: a son resulting from Andy’s decision to donate sperm during his university days in Liverpool in the late 1980s.
The boom in DNA testing leads to one inescapable conclusion: There is no such thing as a lifetime guarantee of anonymity for any donor.
Since 2015, Andy has been tracked down by two of his donor offspring. He met his aforementioned biological son three times and introduced him to his own children before contact tapered off after a couple of years. The second, a man from New York, had not known he was donor-conceived. He signed up at a DNA testing site for other purposes, received an unexpected match and, according to Andy, “was deeply traumatized” by this newfound information.
Since the days when Andy was a donor, the global landscape of egg and sperm donation has shifted. Many countries — including Britain, France, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands and New Zealand — have rewritten their fertility laws. Accepting that the rise of DNA testing means donors are no longer untraceable, governments are outlawing their anonymity altogether.
The changes have been driven in large part by donor-conceived communities, who insist they have a “right to know” about their genetic heritage. Especially in an age of increased understanding of hereditary illness, multiple surveys have found that many feel disadvantaged by being denied any information about their donor’s medical history.
In the U.K. and New Zealand — countries that led the way with the law change — donor-conceived individuals who turn 18 this year will receive an unusual birthday present: the full name, date of birth and last known address of their previously anonymous donor. What happens in these countries will give a taste of what’s to come.
It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the medical guidance on transparency about donations changed. Before then, doctors explicitly told parents using sperm banks not to tell their children about their origins. Doctors wanted fathers, grappling with the shame of infertility, to feel secure in their family dynamic. They also worried that children might struggle psychologically to process the truth, “so it was brushed under the carpet,” explains Nina Barnsley from the Donor Conception Network (DCN) charity. The DCN offers parents support on how to talk openly with their children about their conception story from the very beginning, to prevent the discovery coming later in life in what feels like an identity-shattering moment.
As for those who donated sperm in their youth, they often don’t think, years later, to tell their own families. “I’ve spoken to an awful lot of donor-conceived individuals who’ve tracked down their donors and received extremely hostile reactions to the extent of threatening court orders to keep them away,” says Andy. When unexpectedly contacted by donor offspring, the typical donor is likely to see them “as a threat to their family relationships, which might mean having to tell their children they have quite a few brothers and sisters they didn’t know about.”
But Andy is not the typical donor. He has been open with his own family, is an active member of the donor conception networks and has helped donor-conceived individuals compose letters to approach their respective donors. He has also signed up with the donor-conceived register to give any further offspring a chance to contact him if they so wish. His own daughter has not shied away from adding a layer of complexity to her nuclear family. She has signed up with DNA testing sites herself and has been curious about the possibility of finding other individuals who are, in genetic terms, her half-siblings, or as the donor community calls them, “diblings.” It has “meant a lot” to Andy to know that she could pass on information about their family to other donor offspring even after his death.
The likelihood of additional donor offspring coming out of the woodwork is by no means slim. There was no limit on how many times an individual could donate sperm in the late 1980s, and Andy did so liberally. Given the regularity with which he donated over a five-year period, and what he knows about success rates, he reckons he is likely to have somewhere around 80 to 100 children.
This is a figure that he admits to feeling “deeply uncomfortable” about, especially now that he has read case studies about donor siblings who have unknowingly ended up in romantic relationships with one another. It is why he both supports the U.K.’s decision to introduce a 10-child cap for sperm donors and is wary of giving his full name to journalists, given the media’s eagerness to fixate on the “man-with-100-kids angle.”
Only now are the implications of granting individuals the legal right to turn up on their donor’s doorstep upon reaching adulthood about to become fully apparent. While Britain and New Zealand banned anonymity back in 2005, the effects of this change are just kicking in, as the first cohort, following the historic ruling, turns 18.
By the end of this year, 766 adults in the U.K. will have been granted the right to contact their donor. By 2030, the figure will rise to over 11,400. Other countries, including France and Germany as well as the U.S. state of Colorado, enforced a similar law (removing anonymity after 18) in 2022, meaning that understanding the implications of laws on donation — and the relationships formed between donor kin — is vital, because more individuals will be navigating them.
Demand for egg and sperm donors is growing fast, with many embracing later-life parenthood and more single parents and same-sex couples looking to build families. Further driving the growth is rising infertility — in large part among men. Sperm quality is in decline around the world, affected by factors like pollution, in what some fertility experts are labeling an overlooked public health crisis.
There is no global consensus on anonymity laws. Japan, Spain, Canada, Bulgaria, Italy and South Africa, among others, still allow donors to remain anonymous. And the laws in a country where an individual undergoes fertility treatment take precedence — meaning Britons, for instance, could travel to Spain on a hunt for cheaper treatment and an anonymous donor.
A ban on anonymity comes with its own complications. Some studies, for instance, warn it could lead to a shortage of eggs and sperm at a time when demand is rapidly on the rise. At least in Britain, this has not materialized.
After an initial dip in donations, the numbers recovered by 2007. What does appear to have shifted, according to infertility charity Progress Educational Trust, is the demographic of those donating: fewer students looking for fast cash and a greater number of older donors, some of whom will have witnessed infertility struggles within their families.
Shortage concerns aside, several campaign groups for LGBTQ families in the U.S. also fear that creating a formal route for contact overemphasizes the role of the donor and could undermine the legitimacy of infertile parents or LGBTQ families. This plays into a wider tension with respect to egg and sperm donation — about the place of biology in defining parenthood — a large part of why the language used to describe a donor is so contested.
“It’s an absolute minefield finding the right terminology that doesn’t offend people,” Andy admits. Surveys of donor-conceived communities have found that some want to refer to their egg or sperm donors as their “biological father,” “biological mother” or “genetic parent.” This is, after all, someone carrying half their DNA. Plus it’s inaccurate to use the term “donor”; it was their parents’ donor, not their own. Others, however, insist that “father” or “mother” attributes too great a role to a person with no involvement in their life beyond conception.
Especially insensitive or frustrating — in the eyes of many of the donor-conceived and those who have enlisted the help of a donor — are individuals who clumsily equate the terms “real” and “biological” parent.
It’s a frustration shared by Malina Simard-Halm, 28, one of the first children in the U.S. to be born to two fathers through assisted reproduction, using the sperm of one of her fathers, an egg donor and a surrogate. While she has had the chance to meet both her surrogate and egg donor, she tells me over a Zoom call: “The relationship I have with them is a companionship, it’s an appreciation, but it’s not parental.”
There are reasons those who are donor-conceived want to meet people who are genetically related to them, Simard-Halm acknowledges. But often, “there is this mythology around reunion between biologically related people,” she adds. “It’s a tale as old as time. Every Disney movie seems to have some subplot around that theme. I saw that it didn’t really fit with what I actually wanted, which was just to be close to my two parents: my two fathers.”
When it comes to the role of biology in parenthood, modern society can feel as though it is pulling in different directions.
On the one hand, advances in gay rights, paired with a push to end the stigma surrounding infertility, have created a society more open-minded about what constitutes family — one that views shared biology as not central to kinship. On the other hand, advances in medical knowledge — and heightened interest in how genes shape us — risk reinforcing a biologically deterministic worldview that can feel at odds with modern-day family building.
Online DNA testing sites — such as the ever-popular Ancestry, whose tagline is “Find out who you really are” — are eager to capitalize on the idea that biology is central to identity formation.
Understanding the relationship between donors and their genetic offspring is only part of the puzzle. Given that donors often donate many times, there are also the diblings to consider. In Britain, alongside changes to donor anonymity, a donor-conceived individual can now discover the number, sex and year of birth of their donor siblings. And if those siblings have also signed up with the online donor registry belonging to the U.K.’s fertility regulator, HEFA, it will facilitate contact between them once they turn 18.
Ireland-raised Louise McLoughlin, who is now in her early 30s, was told by her parents as a young teenager that they had used a sperm donor to conceive her. At that time, secrecy about donations was the norm and donors were still anonymous, meaning she would never be granted a formal route to contact her biological father or obtain his medical records.
At 28 she signed up with Ancestry in a bid to find her donor and six months later she had a match, albeit an unexpected one: from a dibling, whose two mothers had used the same anonymous donor as Louise’s parents. Louise has since formed a close bond with Jess, whom she refers to as a “sister,” and Louise’s parents have been supportive of their relationship.
When she started attending meet-ups for the donor-conceived, McLoughlin was surprised that many were much more interested in finding out whether they had half-siblings than they were in tracking down their biological father. It’s an observation that chimes with wide research, suggesting that the most enriching matches for the donor-conceived are often between siblings. While contact with a donor parent may well result in an initial flurry of activity and exchange of information, contact between donor siblings more commonly leads to lasting connections, perhaps because there is not just a biological tie but also a shared experience.
Andy tells me he has come across one large group of about 60 middle-aged diblings from the early days of donor conception. They meet up annually. Their biological father was a fertility doctor, who took matters into his own hands at a time when sperm banks were short of donations.
Multiple cases of fertility doctors covertly using their own sperm have been uncovered in recent years. In one high-profile and particularly chilling American example, a fertility doctor in Indiana spent 30 years secretly impregnating unwitting patients, not as a means of resolving sperm bank shortages but rather by secretly swapping the sperm of women’s husbands or chosen donors for his own.
However, in the instance Andy raises the ethically murky origins of the diblings’ shared biology hasn’t prevented them from connecting.
“They’re all smart as hell, funny as hell, and have formed a community of siblings who meet together for BBQs,” says Andy. When in their presence, he adds, it feels very apparent “that they are cut from the same biological cloth.”
All of which raises the question: If tracking down donors upon reaching adulthood becomes a rite of passage for the donor-conceived, what will they be hoping to gain?
There will be no single motivation. That a lack of medical records is a frustration expressed time and again in surveys of the donor-conceived community suggests many will primarily be seeking answers to questions about genealogy. Some donor contact may lead to enduring bonds, though, as in the case of Louise, not necessarily with the genetic relatives envisaged.
The proportion who decide to reach out to donors will in part depend on how many even know the story of their conception in the first place, which is by no means a given. While medical advice has shifted to favor openness, there is nothing on a birth certificate to show that someone is donor-conceived. Fertility regulators believe that many donor-conceived individuals are still unaware of their origins.
McLoughlin, who struggled with the emotional effect of this sudden revelation when she was 13, is a strong advocate for openness from the start. “If you’re told from day one, you don’t remember having that conversation and it’s just who you are.” Anecdotally, she adds, those who know from the very start, such as her half-sister Jess, fare much better with it.
Her other advice to parents would be to try to understand that, if their child decides to look for their donor, it’s no reflection on them at all. “That’s what I always said to my dad. I’m not looking for another dad. I’m just looking for answers.”
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