Sperm donation is the provision by a man of his sperm for the artificial insemination or other "fertility treatment" of one or more females who are not his sexual partners in order that they may become pregnant by him. Where pregnancies go to full term, the sperm donor will be the biological father of every baby born from his donations. The man is known as a sperm donor and the sperm he provides is known as "donor sperm" because the intention is that the man will give up all legal rights to any child produced from the sperm and will not be the legal father. Sperm donation may also be known as "semen donation".
Sperm donation should be distinguished from "shared parenthood" where the man who provides the sperm used to conceive a baby agrees to participate in the child's upbringing. Where a sperm donor provides his sperm in order for it to be used to father a child for a female with whom they have little or no further contact, it is a form of third party reproduction.
Sperm may be donated by the donor directly to the intended recipient or through a sperm bank or fertility clinic. Pregnancies are usually achieved by using donor sperm in assisted reproductive technology (ART) techniques which include artificial insemination (either by intracervical insemination (ICI) or intrauterine insemination (IUI) in a clinic, or intravaginal insemination at home). Less commonly, donor sperm may be used for in vitro fertilization (IVF). See also "natural insemination" below. The primary recipients of donor sperm are single women and lesbian couples, but the process may also be useful to heterosexual couples with male infertility.
Donor sperm and "fertility treatments" using donor sperm may be obtained at a sperm bank or fertility clinic. Sperm banks or clinics may be subject to state or professional regulations, including restrictions on donor anonymity and the number of offspring that may be produced, and there may be other legal protections of the rights and responsibilities of both recipient and donor. Some sperm banks, either by choice or regulation, limit the amount of information available to potential recipients; a desire to obtain more information on donors is one reason why recipients may choose to use a known donor or private donation (i.e. a de-identified donor).
Laws
A sperm donor is generally not intended to be the legal or de jure father of a child produced from their sperm. The law may however, make implications in relation to legal fatherhood or the absence of a father. The law may also govern the fertility process through sperm donation in a fertility clinic. It may make provision as to whether a sperm donor may be anonymous or not, and it might give an adult donor conceived offspring the right to trace their biological father.
In the past, it was considered that the method of insemination was crucial to determining the legal responsibility of the male as the father. A recent case (see below 'Natural Insemination') has held that it is the purpose, rather than the method of insemination which will determine responsibility. Laws regulating sperm donation address issues such as permissible reimbursement or payment to sperm donors, rights and responsibilities of the donor towards their biological offspring, the child's right to know their father's identity, and procedural issues. Laws vary greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In general, laws are more likely to disregard the sperm donor's biological link to the child, so that they will neither have child support obligations nor rights to the child. In the absence of specific legal protection, courts may order a sperm donor to pay child support or recognize their parental rights, and will invariably do so where the insemination is carried out by natural, as opposed to artificial means.
Laws in many jurisdictions limit the number of offspring that a sperm donor can give rise to, and who may be a recipient of donor sperm.
Lawsuit over donor qualification
In 2017, a lawsuit was brought in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois regarding autism diagnoses among multiple offspring of Donor-H898.Cha, Arlana Eunjung, The children of Donor H898, The Washington Post, September 14, 2019 The suit asserts that false information was presented regarding a donor who should not have been considered an appropriate candidate for a sperm donation program because of a diagnosis of ADHD. Reportedly, the situation is being studied by some of the world's foremost experts in the genetics of autism because of the numbers of his offspring being diagnosed with autism.
Uses The purpose of sperm donation is to provide pregnancies for women whose male partner is infertile or, more commonly, for women who do not have a male partner. The development of fertility medicine such as ICSI has enabled more and more heterosexual couples to produce their own children without the use of third-party gametes which has reduced the demand for sperm donation from this social group. However, at the same time, social attitudes and the social/legal framework has changed in that single women and female couples can more easily have their own biological families and do so with the aid of sperm donation. Increasingly, single women and female couples form the highest percentage of those using sperm donors in order to have a baby. Some fertility centers offering sperm donation do so exclusively for these two groups of women.
Donor sperm is prepared for use in artificial insemination in intrauterine insemination (IUI) or intra-cervical insemination (ICI). In most situations, the majority of people seeking sperm donation, being either single or women in a lesbian partnership, do not themselves have "fertility issues" in greater proportion to the rest of the female population although donor sperm is often prepared for use in other assisted reproductive techniques such as IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Sperm banks and fertility clinics often offer, for example, donor sperm for use in IVF to facilitate treatments in which one lesbian partner will produce an egg which is fertilised by sperm from a donor, and the egg is then inserted into the other partner. A variation of this is when each partner carries the fertilised egg of the other, usually fertilised by sperm from the same donor, and often where the pregnancies run simultaneously. Donor sperm may be used in surrogacy arrangements either by artificially inseminating the surrogate (known as traditional surrogacy) or by implanting in a surrogate embryos which have been created by using donor sperm together with eggs from a donor or from the 'commissioning female' (known as gestational surrogacy).
Procedures of any kind (e.g., artificial insemination or IVF) using donor sperm to impregnate a female who is not the partner of, nor related to the male who provided the sperm, may be referred to as "donor treatments".
Provision A sperm donor may donate sperm privately or through a sperm bank, sperm agency, or other brokerage arrangement. Donations from private donors are most commonly carried out using artificial insemination.
Generally, a male who provides sperm as a sperm donor gives up all legal and other rights over the biological children produced from his sperm.
Donors may or may not be paid, according to local laws and agreed arrangements. Even in unpaid arrangements, expenses are often reimbursed. Depending on local law and on private arrangements, men may donate anonymously or agree to provide identifying information to their offspring in the future. Private donations facilitated by an agency often use a "directed" donor, when a male directs that his sperm is to be used by a specific person. Non-anonymous donors are also called "known donors", "open donors" or "identity disclosure donors".
A review of surveys among donors came to the results that the media and advertising are most efficient in attracting donors, and that the internet is becoming increasingly important in this purpose. Recruitment via couples with infertility problems in the social environment of the sperm donor does not seem to be important in recruitment overall.
Sperm banks
A sperm donor will usually donate sperm to a sperm bank under a contract, which typically specifies the period during which the donor will be required to produce sperm, which generally ranges from six to 24 months depending on the number of pregnancies which the sperm bank intends to produce from the donor. If a sperm bank has access to world markets by direct sales, or sales to clinics outside their own jurisdiction, a man may donate sperm for a longer period than two years, as the risk of consanguinity is substantially reduced and a sperm bank will have to adhere to local laws, although these may vary widely.
The contract may also specify the place and hours for donation, a requirement to notify the sperm bank in the case of acquiring a sexual infection, and the requirement not to have intercourse or to masturbate for a period of usually two–three days before making a donation.
Sperm provided by a sperm bank will be produced by a donor attending at the sperm bank's premises in order to ascertain the donor's identity on every occasion. The donor masturbates to provide ejaculate or by the use of an electrical stimulator, although a special condom, known as a collection condom, may be used to collect the semen during sexual intercourse. The ejaculate is collected in a small container, which is usually extended with chemicals in order to provide a number of vials, each of which would be used for separate inseminations. The sperm is frozen and quarantined, usually for a period of six months, and the donor is re-tested prior to the sperm being used for artificial insemination.
Sperm agencies In some jurisdictions, sperm may be donated through an agency. The agency may recruit donors, usually via the Internet. Donors may undergo the same kind of checks and tests required by a sperm bank, although clinics and agencies are not necessarily subject to the same regulatory regimes. In the case of an agency, the sperm will be supplied to the recipient female fresh rather than frozen.
Sperm agencies are largely unregulated and, because the sperm is not quarantined, may carry sexually transmitted diseases. This lack of regulation has led to authorities in some jurisdictions bringing legal action against sperm agencies. Agencies typically insist on STI testing for donors, but such tests cannot detect recent infections. Donors providing sperm in this way may not be protected by laws which apply to donations through a sperm bank or fertility clinic and will, if traced, be regarded as the legal father of each child produced.
Private or "directed" donations Couples or individuals who need insemination by a third-party may seek assistance privately and directly from a friend or family member, or may obtain a "private" or "directed" donation by advertising or through a broker. A number of web sites seek to link recipients with sperm donors, while advertisements in gay and lesbian publications are common.
Private donations may be free of charge — avoiding the significant costs of a more medicalised insemination - and fresh rather than frozen semen is generally deemed to increase the chances of pregnancy. However, they also carry higher risks associated with unscreened sexual or body fluid contact. Legal treatment of donors varies across jurisdictions, and in most jurisdictions (e.g., Sweden) personal and directed donors lack legal safeguards that may be available to anonymous donors. However, the laws of some countries (e.g., New Zealand) recognize written agreements between donors and recipients in a similar way to donations through a sperm bank.
Natural insemination