Are you my `donor daddy?'
Ease of finding sperm contributors raises worry
A 57-year-old Los Angeles man — whose donated sperm impregnated women from Massachusetts to the Cayman Islands — is making news after he struck up relationships with his 19 offspring.
He has also sparked concerns among doctors that men might become more skittish about volunteering their sperm after reading stories like that.
They’re appearing with greater frequency as more women take the unconventional path to parenthood — and their kids find easier ways to track down personal information about their sperm donors.
“There’s definitely been an increase in the number of single women and same-sex women coming in for this, especially here in Boston, where a lot of women are pursuing their professional careers,” said Dr. John Petrozza, chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s fertility center.
“Kids want to know who their genetic parent is,” Petrozza said. “The consequences might be we may see fewer people wanting to be sperm donors.”
Mike Rubino, an artist in L.A., was contacted recently by the 19th person who was conceived using his donated sperm. Rubino has welcomed them all.
“I thought it would be awesome,” he told a West Coast newspaper. “I envisioned these 18-year-old kids knocking on my door, and I would go out to coffee with them.”
And thanks to websites like the Donor Sibling Registry, which allow people to meet their halfsiblings using the donor number, tracking down biological fathers requires just a few strokes of the keyboard, Petrozza said.
The number of children born each year through donated sperm has been estimated as high as 60,000, but the actual figure may be even greater because there are no reporting mandates for the fertility industry.
In fact, there is little known or enforced about the number of offspring a donor can have. In the mid-’90s, doctors advised there should be a limit of 25 births from each donor per 80,000 people, to prevent accidental sibling marriages.
But, Petrozza said, “There’s no law that says this is what you have to follow.”
And because culture seems to be lagging behind technology, there is still a gray area about proper protocol when it comes to cultivating relationships between offspring and donors, said Dr. Gary Sachs, a Harvard University psychiatrist.
What is clear, though, is that it is a booming industry — one that is testing the “social contract” of parenthood in new ways, Sachs said.
“I think people will be finding out more with new technologies about what’s behind their DNA,” Sachs said.
“But I think the DNA will not turn out to be the important element in understanding who you are.
“I’m more hopeful the relationships people will have with those who raised them,” he said, “will turn out to be the most important ones.”