Another story from an active sperm donor at AnonymousUs.org:
My name is Dr. [removed for privacy policy]. My story is that of a proud, loving donor daddy, and I would not change a thing nor hide any details. I have helped many couples conceive a baby they have always wanted. Some have been same sex couples, while others have been male/female couples, and still others have been single. These wonderful people have come seeking assistance, and it has been an honour to help provide it to them. I never charge money to help donate, as I would want someone to help me out, too, if I ever needed it. The experiences I have had as a sperm donor have truly changed me as a person. Before I continue, please allow me to elucidate about myself . . .
Certified as a teacher, principal, and superintendent, I currently work as an officer of the court, private investigator, and deception expert. I have worked on two master’s degree programs and have completed my doctoral degree. If time permits, I may eventually teach part time at a college or university, but right now there is no space in my schedule for it. I greatly enjoy my work and do not care if others know I am a sperm donor.
Originally born in Oklahoma City in the United States of America, I have traveled to over fourty different countries and have lived in Estonia, India, Mexico, and China. I have also lived in Texas and Alaska, and I currently reside in Edmond, Oklahoma. The opportunity I have had to travel has broadened my horizons and has made me more open to the idea of donating sperm to singles and couples. Indeed, I first began donating back in 2009 while living in China.
I always inform potential recipients that I have no sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and I test regularly and show them the results. Since I only donate via artificial insemination (AI), that pretty much ensures that I do not get diseases or pass them on to others. This is especially important, since I am happily married, which seems to also put recipients at ease. Of course, my wife knows about everything and supports my endeavor to help others, too, and she is monogamous.
It is also important that people to whom I donate know that I have no criminal history and am a vegetarian. I really take care of my health, as this is very important to me for many reasons. Health is indeed wealth, and it is important that I keep my body and thus sperm healthy. I take great care never to go into hot tubs, do not drink or smoke, etc. It is also important that I keep myself healthy, as I have a wife, parents, siblings, and several kids of my own who rely upon me.
Whenever I donate sperm to recipients, I do not discriminate against them because of their age – except in such cases where their chances of conceiving are very small or nonexistent, weight, sexual orientation, height, transgendered status, race, ethnicity, nationality, veteran status, marital status, political affiliations, religious beliefs or the lack thereof, etc. I have a “live and let live” policy per se, and that seems to suit many people just fine. I do wish, however, that all recipients will raise their kids to be open-minded, loving individuals.
I have always been open to being a known donor. I am perfectly fine if any of the kids I help conceive contact me via SKYPE, e-mail, regular mail, via Facebook, telephone, web camera, or in person. I believe that it is great if the kids born from my sperm and the recipients’ eggs know about me. Most recipients and I have agreed that the kids will know by at least the time they are eighteen, but all recipients seem to want something different.
Some people I help want me to put my name on the birth certificate and to have the child and my kids contact each other at any time. Indeed, some of the people I have helped and I have grown so close that they even have keys to my house. Our kids will play together and we will all get together for certain holidays and other times. I love it! This is always the very best scenario for me.
Other individuals I help do not want the child(ren) to know anything until they are eighteen years of age. They want to keep things more private, and this is fine with me. I wish they would tell their kids right away, and I am perfectly fine if they ever change their minds and want their kids to seek me out earlier.
A few couples who are male/female couples want to put the husband’s name on the birth certificate and just tell the child that he or she is the husband’s son or daughter. This is a little different and, I suppose, deceptive to the kids. However, if this brings such great joy and happiness to the couple and the kids have wonderful, loving, kind parents, then so be it.
I know that couples can break up, and that there is always the possibility that the birth mummy will tell her child(ren) that her husband or perhaps ex-husband is not his/her/their “real” daddy. I have no control over such things, but I just want everyone to be happy and healthy.
I will not donate to sperm banks, as they sell sperm in much the same way as international adoption centers sell kids born overseas. I know how much money some couples who went the sperm bank route spent each time they tried, and it was so much! Couples have told me, “We were spending so much money on this each time and could only try once every several months. Now that we found you, we can try each month for much less!”
Hearing what you had to say on this website has made me think a great deal about the donation process and its effects on the kids born from sperm donation. As far as I know, two mummies or two daddies can raise the kids just as well as a mummy and a daddy can. However, I suppose my situation and the way I help others is different than kids who are conceived through a sperm bank. I suppose it is also different, as I am willing to be known at any time to any child I help conceive. However, questions now loom on my mind.
After listening what has been said on this website and after doing a bit of other research, I ask myself several things. “What would it be like to grow up not knowing my daddy?” is one such question. Also, I would wonder how many siblings I have out there. I do try to help recipients I have helped who want to make things known connect with each other, so as to help each child get a better sense of his or her roots and identity. Nevertheless, my heart and sympathy go out to those who will never know who their father was or who their siblings might be.
I suppose this debate will continue for some time to come, but I hope that all kids I help through donating are happy, healthy, and may, if they so desire, know that I helped conceive them. I never hide who I am, and I am readily found on Facebook and through a simple Google search. I hope that sperm banks are required to tell kids who their father is, like Great Britain has since done. I commend the discussions this website is promoting, and I hope that it brings about changes which will benefit the kids born from all sperm donations.
Categories: Childbearing, Fatherhood, My Daddy's Name is Donor, Reproductive Technologies, The Future of Parenthood
Exactly how many children has this man helped to create?
There is a real public health issue here; species diversity helps the species survive. Not to mention the individual children who will grow up and have too many half-siblings.
And I guess my second reaction is that he hasn’t really thought about what he is doing beyond the idea that he is helping people. He sounds well-meaning, but completely unconnected from his biological offspring (they might have bad lives, but oh well). And he doesn’t seem to have a clue some of his children might be mad at him someday.
Just a thought, if this guy is being honest, maybe that’s too much biographical info to keep him anonymous.
How does he choose the offspring he kept and raised? What was extra special about them that he wanted to do the work of raising them himself. What was wrong with the ones he did not keep?
I wonder if the children he’s raising himself could so easily be given to the mother and her new husband to raise without his further involvement knowing he might see them again in 18 years would he be happy to walk away and make a gift of them to her to raise alone or to her spouse to raise as father. Would he let them stay at a strangers house over night? One night if they told him they really wanted to experience what it would be like to be a parent? Would he share the ones he’s raising or the ones he wants to raise so quickly as gifts? Are they his to give as gifts?
He has a chance to come to his senses he seems like a sweet man. But think fellow think.
the lengthy tortuous language strikes again.
“the children I helped to conceive” not that I conceived.
“the children that were conceived with my sperm and the recipients egg” thats a pretty long sentence to say “my offspring.” Hey I’m not even asking you to say “my children,” which could have social connotations, just offspring which is a word of biology.
But how can we expect more when sperm donation has become such an establish fact of society that even the so called professionals and experts use this obfuscating language?
I wonder if he’s even keeping track of the various donations he’s made and kids he’s sired.
And this is the compromise. An example of an “ideal open and honest donor”.
I think pregnancy really does make a difference in that often men do not emotionally grasp the reality of their offspring until they have actual contact with it live.
“I think pregnancy really does make a difference…”
How does that fit with gestational surrogacy?
Yes Karen exactly! Yes Ki exactly!
There he is the perfect donor and yet, something is still wrong, right? The language is just mind blowing and the fact that the whole world buys into it is amazing to me.
A translation of the dialog that lead us to this point goes something like “We don’t need a whole orphan in order to become parents, its only him/her that is infertile, not me. I just need to have a biological child with a deadbeat willing to abandon their kid with me so that I can either raise our kid on my own or name my husband/wife as the other parent. It happens all the time naturally when people have one night stands its just hard to find people that are sexually reckless anymore. Everyone wants to use condoms and they want to do the right thing and be there for their child whether they are married to the other parent or not. Its just not the world it use to be there are too many precautions now too many safety nets. With a one night stand there is always the risk that they’d care about the kid and want to be involved as the other parent and I don’t want that. I want to do this alone/have a child with the person I’m in love with. I don’t want some stranger having control over my child. My child will have all the love they need from me/me and my partner because your parents are the people who raise you.”
Gamete donation is said to emulate the one night stand where the resulting child grows up with one natural parent absent; a situation universally understood to be tragic and avoidable by not drinking too much and jumping into bed with total strangers. Gamete donation does not just emulate the one night stand with the careless lover its exactly that – reproducing with someone careless and irresponsible. Its bad. So its real frustrating to hear people say what angels they are to donate their gametes what gifts they give to help infertile couple’s conceive. They don’t help infertile couple’s conceive. They conceive their own children and then abandon them. Sometimes they do it for money and sometimes they do it for other reasons but its no different than a one night stand except that they plan to do it. Most estranged parents have one maybe two kids they have abandoned and there is a right amount of guilt associated with it and public admonishment for having done it. Gamete donation they make lots and lots of kids and leave their children’s upbringing to chance. I had an egg donor answer my question about if it bothered her that she had no control over how her kids were raised and she said “well you just have to trust that these are good people because they want to be parents so badly” I said “No you don’t have to trust a stranger to take care of your child – you could just not make the child with the stranger to begin with. Why did you want to make children for strangers to raise? You would have no way of helping them if they needed you no way to know if they were in trouble. Why did you create children as gifts? She said that she was not sure she’d ever have children otherwise. She’s a fairly well known donor, lovely person actually and her whole family knows so if the child ever comes to call there will be open arms. But still I don’t think many donors really ask themselves why they are willing to trust people with their offspring. I also don’t think they ask why some offspring would be keepers while others are not. Surely their offspring will wonder that question daily so – not something to be overlooked by everyone so focused on how wanted they were. They had to be un-wanted by a parent in order to be had by anyone else it seems.
“They don’t help infertile couple’s conceive. They conceive their own children and then abandon them.”
You say that, yet you think it should be allowed? It’s not enough that they know the donor’s name or that he pays them child support, they are still selling their offspring and abandoning them.
Ricardo
Your new here. I am the last person on this green planet that would ever say I think it’s OK for us to continue allowing people with offspring to abandon them. I think all people with offspring should be held to an identical standard of care so that their offspring all have identical rights. That being said its none of my business how two people meet and decide to reproduce together. My only concern is that they both take care of their offspring once born. If they want to meet through some service where they pick one another out of a book of profiles fine. If they don’t want to have sex but prefer to have the doctor inseminate the woman to get her pregnant – fine by me too but it should not mean either one of them gets to walk away from their offspring once born. Its a technicality but an important one. I don’t want to BAN anything. I want to enforce existing child protection laws and apply them legally across the board and if that means people won’t want to donate their genes any more then so be it. Having to take responsibility for the offspring we create is nothing new to the majority of citizens in this country and we are not worried about all the children they don’t create because they are not prepared to take care of them. So I don’t feel like its a real loss that some people won’t want to be careless if they would not have legal exemption from responsibility. Rather than banning and being all negative I just want to do some positive enforcement of existing laws intended to protect minors from being trafficked, some positive enforcement intended to strengthen people’s position within their own families when the parents are not married. I want to ensure that marriage of the parents is not what makes people bonded to the child legally.
But one of the rights of offspring is to be conceived to married parents that are committed to each other and not someone else instead. Why should some children get both of their parents who are devoted to each other, while other kids are intentionally ditched by one of their parents who prefer raising their half siblings but not them? It doesn’t make it equal to require child support as if they had divorced, it’s still very much worse than being raised by their own parents.
Rather than banning and being all negative I just want to do some positive enforcement of existing laws intended to protect minors from being trafficked, some positive enforcement intended to strengthen people’s position within their own families when the parents are not married.
I don’t see how you can protect them from being trafficked while also allowing people to intentionally create children they don’t intend to raise. But since your law would probably stop sperm donation anyway, I guess it is one way to do it. But it would still happen sometimes, kids would be born from parents who don’t love and care for each other at all, intentionally, and we would allow it to happen as long as they are willing to both spend money. I think that’s unfair to the kids, being intentionally born to divorced parents. But nothing would stop people from marrying just to conceive together and then divorcing, but I hope we recognize that is unfair.
“I want to ensure that marriage of the parents is not what makes people bonded to the child legally.”
Well, I agree if you mean we should do away with presumption of paternity masking adultery. But I think only married parents should be allowed to conceive together, at least intentionally with IVF or AI.
I dont’ support the government regulating people’ right to reproduce anyhow they choose.
however, the buying and selling aspect of the gamete trade is not part reprodutive rights in my view and thus may be regulated by the government.
The less government the better. I agree about the buying and selling aspect but that’s not enough. Quite honestly, I’d really REALLY like to see our culture of political correctness balanced with a bit more healthy shame.
I’d also like to see THIS promoted more in the public square (IMHO this should be mandatory viewing for all young people – our future):
http://www.heritage.org/events/2013/01/what-is-marriage
The easiest way to regulate it is to ban all forms of intentional unmarried conception. Otherwise, we need to have a big new agency and all kinds of ever-changing rules, saying what’s OK and what’s not. With a blanket ban, we just enact the ban, and then tell the FBI to do it’s job. There would be short period when they went around padlocking and sperm banks and destroying the contraband, and then a longer period where a few agents were assigned to arrest some people selling sperm online and put them in jail, like they do with software priates sometimes. It’s a lot like software piracy, where the software is encoded in DNA. We already patent genes, and can synthesize DNA from sequences stored on computer, so we already have government involved. To have “the less government the better” we should have a blanket ban, not have a giant regulated industry. There is no right to do it, it violates rights of other people, why tolerate it?
“I dont’ support the government regulating people’ right to reproduce anyhow they choose.”
How about with their sister or mother? How about with a chimpanzee? How about with their neighbor’s wife? How about with a different woman every night?