Sperm banks face privacy pressures

Danielle Teuscher decided to give DNA tests as presents last Christmas to her father, close friends and 5-year-old daughter, joining the growing number of people taking advantage of lowcost, accessible genetic testing.

But the 23andMe test produced an unexpected result. Teuscher, 30, a nanny in Portland, Ore., said she unintentionally discovered the identity of the sperm donor she had used to conceive her young child.

The mother of the donor was identified on her daughter’s test results as her grandmother. Excited and curious, Teuscher decided to reach out.

“I wrote her and said, ‘Hi, I think your son may be my daughter’s donor. I don’t want to invade your privacy, but we’re open to contact with you or your son,’” she recalled. “I thought it was a cool thing.”

Growing interest in DNA testing already has upended families across the country. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the fertility industry is facing questions, too. For decades, the business relied on the idea that sperm banks can guarantee anonymity to donors, and promised that there wouldn’t be any relationship with offspring unless the donors wanted.

But now? “Donor anonymity will suffer the same fate as the cassette tape,” said Andrew Vorzimer, an attorney in Woodland Hills, Calif., who specializes in reproductive law.

In Teuscher’s case, NW Cryobank, the sperm bank in Spokane, Wash., from which she had bought the donated sperm, sent her a stern letter.

It threatened Teuscher with penalties of $20,000 for “flagrantly” violating the agreement she’d signed by seeking the identity of the donor and contacting his family. The bank also said it would deny her access to four vials of sperm from the same donor that she had hoped to use.

“Upon further investigation, we may be entitled to additional monetary damages if you have used other ancestry DNA programs, facial recognition tools on the internet or any other means, directly or indirectly, to contact or seek the identity of the donor,” said the letter, written by the sperm bank’s general counsel, Margaret Howell Benson.

“We will seek a restraining order or injunction if you continue with this course of action in any manner.”

NW Cryobank is known to be aggressive in enforcing its privacy provisions, Vorzimer added. “But now we’ve reached a point where it’s become impossible to protect the privacy of clients and sperm donors.”

Leora Westbrook, general manager and vice president of NW Cryobank, said in an email that the bank does not prohibit clients or their offspring from taking a DNA test. But “we seek to prevent the use of that information to identify a donor who has made a donation in reliance upon anonymity.”

Teuscher didn’t remember reading that fine print when she signed the papers. She was devastated to receive the letter. “I thought, ‘Wow, I just messed this up for my daughter.’ The letter was awful. I was angry with the bank, and I was upset about the donor,” she said.

Teuscher said she will fight to get back the four vials of donated sperm now withheld from her. In case she ever wants to have additional children, she wants them to be full siblings.

Legal experts called the bank’s position precarious. While Teuscher may be constrained by an agreement, they doubted that her child could be.

The rights of a child who hasn’t been born can’t be signed away, said Dov Fox, a law professor at the University of San Diego who specializes in bioethics and the regulation of technology.

“Even if they could stop parents from reaching out, there’s no way they can keep offspring from trying to find their genetic donors,” Fox said.