IExperts warn that sperm donated in the UK is being exported and used to father large numbers of children in multiple countries, in breach of the UK’s strict limit of 10 families.
A legal loophole means that while a single donor can be used to create up to 10 families in British fertility clinics, there are no restrictions on companies making sperm or eggs available for additional fertility treatments abroad. The Guardian spoke to those affected.
Laura Dine, South Wales
Dine, 36, discovered she was a donor when she was 10. She wanted to reconnect with the man she thought was her biological father, who had left home when she was three. But her mother revealed that her biological father was in fact an anonymous sperm donor.
“It was one of my life missions to find my biological father.” Dine eventually tracked him down through DNA testing websites. In the process, she also matched with 25 half-siblings.
“I do little calculations in my head,” says Dine. “About 5% of the British population is on Ancestry.com. If we’ve just identified 25 siblings, there are variables, but if you extrapolate it straight out, it’s 500. Even if you reduce that by a degree of magnitude, I feel uncomfortable about it.”
She initially worried that the donor would be reluctant to pursue a relationship if he found out how many biological children there were. But he and his wife are open and welcoming, and Dine says they have an eerie amount in common; they own the same breed of dog, both studied environmental science at the University of Plymouth, and are both runners.
The steady accumulation of genetic half-siblings, however, sometimes felt overwhelming. “I matched with my first half-brother, Sam, in 2017. In seven years, I went from one to 25.”
She worried about the possibility of forming an unintended romantic connection with a blood relative and says she gravitates towards dating men who aren’t from the UK as a result. And discovering she’s one of many half-siblings has affected her sense of identity. “You hear about parents meeting at Glastonbury. It’s not very glamorous or romantic and the numbers reinforce that feeling. It makes you feel a bit like you’re mass-produced.”
Grace Halden, London
Halden, a single mother by choice, used donor sperm to conceive twin daughters, who were born in 2019. Halden, who is a senior lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, has a professional background in bioethics but says she was not aware of the possibility of her donor’s sperm being exported. “I selected a British donor who I believed would be used for a maximum of 10 families. Everyone makes different decisions, but I wanted to keep the pool of donor siblings as small as possible within my control.”
However, when she revisited her donor profile page some time after her daughters were born, she was shocked to see a note that read “export only.” “I was overwhelmed. I felt like I might not have made the decision I did if I had thought exporting was an option.”
When she contacted the clinic, she was referred to the terms and conditions of the consent forms she had signed. “Sure enough, it was buried in there,” she said. After raising the issue in a local social media group, she realized that others were making similar discoveries.
Halden has since been reassured that in her case the donor’s sperm will not be exported and says the sperm bank responded positively after she raised the issue. However, she is concerned that there is a wider lack of transparency.
“Yes, it is a business, but they are in the business of creating people. The priority should always be the children that are being created.”
Kevin Moore, Wiltshire
Moore, 39, is a donor and also a sperm donor. Moore now lives in Wiltshire and is originally from Florida, where “in the 80s, when I was born, they didn’t really keep records”.
He is in a WhatsApp group with seven of his donor half-siblings, but says he has no idea of the total number. “There are a lot of stories coming out of the States about these huge family gatherings.”
With each addition, it becomes harder to form a meaningful connection, he found. “It’s just hard to build a relationship with someone every year, every two years,” he said. “You have to go through the same life story … I think, ‘Not again.’”
Moore is also a sperm donor and has at least 14 biological children, based on figures provided five years ago by the HFEA, the UK’s fertility regulator. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s quite a lot.’ That’s where I think the 10-family limit feels a bit more severe. Even now, because there’s no limit within families, I could have 20 or more. That’s quite intense.”
So far, the mother of one of his biological children – a 12-year-old girl – has reached out. “As a first experience, it was very respectful and kind,” he said, but it came at a time when he was supporting his own parents in the US who were struggling with health issues. “You don’t know if or when they’re going to find you, but you have to be prepared to have that conversation 20 times.”
Moore favors “some kind of limit,” saying 10 families feels about right. “To me, it begs the question, why should one donor be used 50 times,” he said. “Isn’t there a better solution than this? You imagine these extended families of thousands and thousands of people. It’s less of a personal issue for me and more of a societal issue.”
Liam Renouf-Macnab, London
Renouf-Macnab, 29, came into contact with four biological half-siblings after appearing in the ITV documentary Born From the Same Stranger and has since been in touch with three more. “Seven feels manageable,” he says. “I’m building relationships with them and that’s really great.”
From the non-identifying information from the HFEA, he knows he is one of a group of 17 siblings. Although this falls within the limit of 10 families, he says he was shocked by the number.
“I’m proud to be part of a legacy that’s really connected to women’s rights, fertility rights, LGBT rights,” he says. “But the commodification of the industry to create 17 children felt like something I had to deal with and process and think about.”
Renouf-Macnab would like to see tighter regulation of the industry, with sperm banks being taken into public hands and a legal requirement for the HFEA to inform donor-conceived people of their biological origins. “One thing I’m in favour of is that donor-conceived people have the right to know. If the HFEA, at age 18, were to contact people who are donor-conceived to tell them, that would encourage parents to make sure they have those conversations early.”
