King of the Anonymous Fathers : Sperm Donor May Have 40 Children He’ll Never Know
Though men may be increasingly recruited by single women for sexual encounters that will lead to conception, experts point out that far greater numbers are becoming fathers in a simpler, more anonymous way.
They donate to a sperm bank--in some cases, hundreds of times.
Though theirs is a field not monitored by the Guinness Book of World Records, such fathers might well find their champ in Paul, a slender, blue-eyed, blond now living in Northern California.
Not only is his family medical history free of killer diseases, he is a clean-cut college grad with military service, all noteworthy commodities in the sperm business.
And as a bonus, the guy did time in the Boy Scouts.
Estimating Offspring
Paul--who asked that his last name not be used for fear that countless sperm bank babies searching for their natural fathers might seek him out--claims he made about 300 donations of spermatozoa between 1976 and 1984. Based on statistics that he said he was given, that approximately 1-in-8 donations results in a child, he figures he probably has between 35 and 40 offspring.
Paul was retired from service at age 35, over the reproductive hill in the view of the sperm bank with which he last dealt. And though he made about $9,000 from his donations (he recalls being paid $25 per donation in the early days, $35 more recently), he insists he didn’t do it just for the bucks.
“I also donate blood,” he offers. “I probably would have done the same thing (donate sperm) for free. I considered it a service. . . . I still think the net result of what I did was a benefit, but I think the (sperm banking) system could be improved.”
Initially, Paul says, he worked with a private physician he had gone to see about an unrelated health matter. The doctor informed him there was a shortage of healthy, educated, blond, blue-eyed sperm donors and was asked to consider the work.
No Future Confrontations
After donating sperm through the doctor for a few years, Paul then worked directly with a sperm bank. In the beginning, he remembers being reassured when he was told his identity would never be revealed.
“I’m not a lawyer and I had no idea what my responsibilities might be,” he explains.
But now Paul believes there should be a registry of sperm donors so that children may learn their true genetic, medical, cultural and personal heritages: “Children should be told (that their fathers were sperm donors) and they should have the option of consulting with the registry.”
What would he do if somehow his children discovered his identity and wanted to meet with him?
“I think I would agree to meet with a child, but probably not more than once a year. As a child gets older I think they’d think up new questions,” he replies.
”. . . I’d be concerned about the role they’d expect me to play. I would be willing to provide them with information. . . . I would not want much involvement. It’s sort of like dealing with new relatives. If I liked the kid, though, maybe I’d be interested in spending more time.”
Are Those Towheads Mine?
Occasionally, Paul acknowledges he’s “somewhat intellectually curious to see how my children turned out, but it’s not a big craving.” He admits he does feel a little strange, though, when he passes a school yard and sees a few blue-eyed towheads and wonders if they might be his kids.
“It’s from a humorous light,” he claims. “I have a fantasy that when I see these kids and they’re all slightly balding, blond with mustaches, I’ll know I’m with my kids.”
There is one area of light regret in the champ’s mind, though, and it reveals he has done considerable soul-searching on the subject.
“I don’t presently have children that I call my own,” says Paul, now 39 and married for the last 2 1/2 years.
“I hope the fact that I already have all these children doesn’t play a role in our decision of whether we want to have children or not. My feeling at the moment is that that doesn’t enter into my thinking. There are other issues that go into our decision not to have children.”
And now that he’s heard arguments that donors should be permitted only three offspring before their sperm is retired from service (to avoid such possibilities as unwitting incest in a small or even large town), Paul has begun to think that 35 or 40 sperm bank children with the same father might be too many.
“(Los Angeles psychologist) Reuben Pannor’s view is that you shouldn’t do it (donate sperm) for more than three children or about 24 donations,” Paul says. “But I could see five or 10 children--probably half of them wouldn’t be interested in having more than one or two meetings with their father.”
Met at a Seminar
Paul met Pannor at a recent Bay Area seminar on artificial insemination at which Pannor, co-author with Annette Baran of the recently published “Lethal Secrets, the Shocking Consequences and Unsolved Problems of Artificial Insemination,” was a speaker.
After interviewing 37 sperm donors (as well as 19 donor offspring and 70 husbands and wives in donor-insemination families), Pannor and Baran say they found “a morass of legal, emotional and societal complexities.”
“The important thing is that the donor be known (to the offspring),” Baran emphasizes, adding that at present no such legislation exists in the United States. “No one considers the lifelong effect donor insemination will have on the feelings of the donor offspring. We’re hearing about sperm banks rethinking their positions (supporting anonymity) on this. In Australia, Sweden, New Zealand and England, for instance, all donors must now be registered and must be able to be known when necessary.”
Donors’ Second Thoughts
Pannor asserts that the majority of donors he interviewed said that, in retrospect, they wouldn’t do it again.
“It troubled them that they had these offspring out there,” he says. “I interviewed one doctor with three daughters advanced in their teens. He said anytime one of their boyfriends comes to date them that he looks them over very carefully and is concerned that they may be going out with somebody for whom he is the donor father.”
But government legislation regulating sperm banking isn’t likely to sit well with the field’s bankers, contends Dr. Cappy Rothman, director of California Cryobank, a Westwood-based sperm bank, and medical director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Century City Hospital.
“As a clinical practitioner, I have no preference (regarding donor anonymity). But I know the couples and the donors want anonymity,” says Rothman. “It’s my opinion that 90-plus percent of the couples who are recipients of donor sperm do not tell their child that he or she is a product of donor sperm. The real problem is going to confront us in about 13 or 14 years, at which time the progeny of single women will be older. I don’t know their position, but I would expect those children are going to want to know who their fathers are.”
Even so, Rothman maintains that anonymity is necessary to protect both sperm donors and recipients who insist on anonymity.
“I can tell you that people in Sweden go to Germany for insemination where they do protect anonymity,” he says. “It’s none of the government’s business what people do.”
