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The Complete Guide to Choosing a Sperm Donor

For the vast majority of us who are yet to build families of our own, the thought of having children is, frankly, overwhelming. The entrance of children into our lives means a massive personal paradigm shift; a new reality where we are no longer at the center of our own lives, someone else is-someone who needs a lot of our time and energy. But there are logistical concerns ranging from finances to education to parenting style to where your new family is going to spend the holidays (because you know your mom is going to pull a granzilla on you if your mother-in-law calls dibs on baby’s first Festivus). And yet, despite concerns about time, and money, and not being able to get drunk on any given Tuesday, year after year (or hour after hour, as our Facebook newsfeeds would lead us to believe) people decide to have babies. And it occurs to us that eventually, someday, maybe even soon(ish), those people could be us.

So now the good news for those of us with same-sex partners is that, in thinking about our future families, we don’t have to deal with added stress of a surprise “whoopsie” pregnancy. We can, instead, take comfort in knowing that by the time we decide to have kids, we will be ready (at least relatively speaking). The bad news for those of us with same-sex partners? We don’t have the option of a surprise “whoopsie” pregnancy. Instead, by the time we’ve decided we’re ready to begin a family, we are hit with the realization that that life-changing decision is just the beginning in a number of equally important decisions to be made before the baby is actually even conceived. So when it comes to lesbians creating a family that is biologically linked to one or both partners, the first major step is answering one not-so-simple question: How? Or, more precisely, using whose sperm? Or, getting right down to the meat of it (pun intended), do we want to know our donor personally, or don’t we?

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It’s this last question when posed to perspective lesbian parents that seems to bring up an understandable myriad of emotions, assumptions, fears, and further questions. Since the existence of the lesbian created and lead family is a relatively new phenomenon in our society, very few (if any) long-term studies have been done regarding the effects on the children (or on the lesbian couple) of using a known vs. an unknown sperm donor. Lesbian couples today have to carve their individual paths into largely uncharted territory using their own internal compasses. The decision to use a known, or an unknown sperm donor is one that is highly personal, and, from what we’ve seen so far, does not appear to have a right or a wrong answer. Rather, it’s a choice, much like the choice to have children in the first place, that just a lot of factors to consider.

When we say “unknown” donor and “known” donor, what we mean is you can go the way of the sperm bank, or you can use the sperm of someone you know personally-most likely a friend, or a relative (brother, or male cousin) of the non-carrying partner. For the sake of those of you immediately, viscerally averse to knowing the identity of the man whose sperm will be used to help make your babies, we get it, and luckily, so does the ever-growing industry of anonymous sperm donation.

Many sperm banks, including the popular California Cryobank, now have donor profiles so extensive that you can really start to paint a picture of the three-dimensional human being from whom your baby will derive half of his/her genetics. Such donor profiles not only outline a donor’s basic physical features, his education/profession, and his medical records, they also give you his genetic family history spanning three generations, they show you a photo of him as a child, they describe his likes, dislikes, and hobbies, and they give you samples of his writing and audio clips of his speaking voice. You can even hear clips of him playing his guitar, or oboe, or his didgeridoo.

As the demand for sperm goes up, the donor information available to prospective parents gets more extensive, affording couples with greater peace of mind as they go through the selection process. Additionally, in choosing their donor through a sperm bank, lesbian couples are spared a good chunk of the legal headache associated with sperm donation, as the banks have contracts ready to sign, and professionals on hand to walk you through the process one step at a time. Many sperms banks also give you options regarding gaining access to the identity of your donor once your child turns 18, should he/she want it. Prior to conception, you can decide whether you’d rather have an “open” agreement with what’s referred to as a “willing-to-be-known donor,” or a “closed” agreement with a permanently anonymous donor.

Amanda Deibert-Staggs and Cat Staggs, moms to one-year-old Vivienne, chose a closed agreement when they selected their donor at California Cryobank so that, theoretically, Vivi can’t look for the donor, and he can’t look for her.

“We went through several different options-if we wanted to use someone we knew, or someone related to Cat, but ultimately we decided we wanted we wanted all of the decisions for our family to be made by our family,” Amanda said. “If we were to ask someone who we know, it would probably be someone who is active in her life, like an uncle to her, who would have an opinion and feel an attachment to her after she was born. And then an issue you never would have foreseen leads you into some sort of legal battle you never anticipated.”

Because California Cryo provided them with such a comprehensive donor profile, they were able to pick a donor who not only physically resembled Cat and shared much of her ethnic makeup, but who also shared interests, hobbies, and aptitudes of Cat’s, as well. They felt very comfortable with the family medical history they were provided on their donor and did not see this was somehow secondary to knowing their donor personally and being able to question him further if any health concerns should arise later in Vivi’s life.

“Amusingly,” Amanda said, “because I don’t know anything about my own biological father, I have more medical history on Vivi than I do on myself.” From soup to nuts, choosing to conceive Vivi by way of an anonymous sperm donor was a positive experience for the Staggs family, and as time goes on, the couple can retain a certain peace of mind knowing that their family is its own unit.

Caroline Madden is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has worked with many lesbian couples, as well as adults who were adopted as children, a demographic who often share similar concerns to children conceived via sperm donation. Her strong recommendation to perspective lesbian parents was to use a willing-to-be-known donor from a sperm bank, versus known donor, or an entirely anonymous donor. (Her exception to this, interestingly, was in cases when the known donor is the brother of the non-carrying mother, but we’ll come back to that later.) Dr. Madden’s reasons in favor choosing an unknown donor included Amanda and Cat Staggs’ concerns about third-party meddling in child-rearing, and also included issues surrounding the non-biological mother’s experience.

“The thought that goes on with some of the most functional couples who come through my office is this ideal image of the father being part of the family,” Caroline said. “Like, ‘He might not see them much, he might not even live in town, but he’ll call the child on her birthday, or she’ll make him a little Father’s Day present.’ The image is ideal, except how is the non-biological mother affected? When it’s time for the child to do my family tree, instead of drawing the biological mom and her wife, the child may draw the biological mom, and biological father. The non-biological mom is a third. It’s almost like she’s a step-parent. It’s like mom and dad got divorced, but they’re friendly.”

Still, Dr. Madden does emphasize that there is a primal human drive to know our own biology and that the quest to discover one’s roots is something that children conceived via sperm donation (just like children who are adopted) should have the option to embark on once they turn 18. The donor profile handed to the child may paint a detailed picture of their biological father, but it can never be the same as meeting, or even just speaking to the person himself. Having this kind of open access to your biological roots is, in fact, considered a fundamental human right in many parts of the world, so in places like Canada, the UK, Scandinavia, and Australia, entirely anonymous sperm donation has been banned.

In an effort to give children with closed donor agreements the ability to connect to at least some of their genetic relatives, California Cryo does offer parents the option of listing their child on a sibling registry, which allows the child to find/contact any half-siblings they may have from the same donor. Even so, the desire to quest does remain very real for very many people later in life, regardless of the connection to the lesbian parents. As Dr. Madden says, by the time the child is 18, they’ve already been raised without third-party interference, their moms are their parents for life, and the quest is not a threat to the lesbian family unit. So if you’re going to go the way of the sperm bank, an open agreement with a willing-to-be-know donor is something to consider.

So okay, we’ve got that using a friend’s sperm can go awry, and we can all agree that there’s a fair amount to chew on before you go running to your high school bestie and pull the lesbian-mommy version of the “If-by-the-time-I’m-30…” pact with him/his reproductive fluids. That said, for those of you who still like the idea of you and your kid knowing your donor for the get go, fear not-we promise there are also instances where this arrangement works. The non-biological mother in one lesbian couple we spoke to had a much more positive experience to share with us about how she and her wife’s friend and donor has fit into the grand scheme of their family.

Michelle, wife to Shauna and mother to eight-year-old Wyatt and six-year-old Evie, explained that she was skeptical when Nick, a young, straight co-worker of Shauna’s, offered to be the couple’s sperm donor. To that point, the couple had tossed around a couple of alternatives for how they would conceive.

“We threw around the idea of using Shelly’s brother,” Shauna said. “We even broached the subject with him, and he was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ but then we feared he would want it in return, and I wasn’t willing to do that. Plus, we made the mistake of mentioning it to a couple family members, and they freaked out and were like, ‘That’s incest, you can’t do that, that’s gross.’ We told them it definitely was not incest, but there was no explaining it to them.”

  • Communicate openly and honestly with your partner and your known donor/sperm bank to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding parental roles, expectations, and agreements. If using a known donor, insist that all three of you undergo individual mental and physical health screenings before beginning the conception process.
  • Know your rights. If you use a known donor, seek legal counsel and sign an iron-clad, specific contract with your donor drawn up by your lawyer-don’t simply use the standard forms at a fertility clinic. The laws around fertility are not always clear, and differ from state to state, so assume nothing. For example, as described to us by Assisted Reproduction and Family Formation Attorney, Kate Lyon, in the state of California, your family is protected under Family Code Section 7613, which states, among other things, that a man donating sperm to a woman other than his spouse relinquishes all his paternal rights only if you undergo an insemination in a doctor’s office, rather than at home. If you decide to do home insemination, and the sperm does not pass through a doctor’s hands, you are not automatically protected by the law. Additionally, did you know that as the non-biological mother, you can be on your child’s birth certificate, but still not be considered a legal parent in some states without doing a second or co-parent adoption? (Didn’t know that? Neither did we. Lawyer up!) To learn more about your rights state-to-state, visit LAMBDA Legal’s “Protecting Your Children” page
  • Prepare for a financial commitment. Understand that no matter what way you cut it, baby-making requires a lot of money, so be sure to investigate the costs associated with sperm bank packages, known donor agreements, fertility treatments, prenatal supplements, doctors visits, etc. before choosing your approach to conception. Remember, as many frustrated hetero couples will tell you, getting pregnant isn’t always as easy as they make it sound in 9th Grade Health Class. Each attempt to conceive via an assisted reproduction procedure means handing over more cash. And, unfortunately for the lesbian community, current health insurance policies do not cover any fertility costs before conception for same-sex couples. Ugh. Hopefully, this will change in the coming years, but as of now, the best we can do is financially prepare ourselves for what can potentially be a long and costly process.
  • Pick the brains of other who came before you. To the naked eye furiously scouring the internet for resources/discussion boards on lesbian family planning, there may not appear to be much out there to guide us as of yet. But helpful articles and non-profit organizations dedicated to this subject are beginning to crop up, we promise. Love Comes First, an “ongoing transmedia project designed to inspire, inform and document a community on the brink of tremendous societal and cultural change,” is a wonderful resource for perspective lesbian parents looking to find advice from experts, and read stories of other families who have been through the process.

Okay, so sure-standing back and really taking all of this into consideration when thinking about your future family is enough to make many of us want to down a quick bottle of rose and sing “Forever Young” at the top of our lungs with our college field hockey teammates. We’re right there with you. (Especially because that actually does sound like a lot of fun.) But when it comes down to it, like the majority of humans who have come before us, we still can’t help feeling like the notion of having a family of our own is, well, totally worth it, no matter what hoops we have to jump through to get there. Jenn Duncan seemed to hit the nail on the head with this:

“We know lesbian couples that have chosen all of these different routes we’re talking about and in every case I can think of, it’s been happy families-happy children, happy moms,” Jenn said. “I think it’s possible in any family, whether it’s traditional gender binary straight marriage, or gay marriage, or surrogate moms, or adoptive parents, you can go down all the different paths-things could go poorly. So if you get caught up in what could go wrong, I think that you’re setting yourself up for a very stressful situation. Just be mindful, communicate, and be smart.”

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Shelly also said they were approached by a friend of hers from high school who was gay, too.

“Oddly enough, right around this time, he emailed me out of the blue and was like, ‘Hey, if you guys ever consider having kids, would you consider me as a donor because I really want to have kids?’ but he wanted to be more involved that we would have been comfortable with.”

With these other avenues eliminated, the perspective moms had pretty much settled on going to a sperm bank when one day at work, Nick quite suddenly offered to be their donor. Shauna responded with, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, read this book,” and handed him the LAMBDA Legal book on LGBT family planning that the couple had been reading. “I was like, ‘You need to read this. This is the good and bad of what could happen if you’re our donor. And the next day, he came back and said, ‘It didn’t change my mind.'”

Among their lesbian friends, Shauna and Michelle were “pioneers” when it came to using a friend as their donor.

“Before Nick came along, we’d pretty much decided sperm bank because what else was there?” Shauna said. “When I’d heard about the people who got pregnant with a friend, I was like, ‘Oh that’s a mistake. That can only go bad from here. It’s too many people involved, too much going on.’ And then Nathan offered, and we were like, ‘Wait…what?'”

The couple says it really didn’t take them long to come around to Nick.

“We set up a meeting for all three of us to talk about it together because I didn’t see him on a regular basis.” Shelly said, “So we talked about what would be involved.” Shauna went on, “During that discussion talked about his expectations, our expectations, our dream scenario, just everything. And what was said kind of outlined our contract that we wrote up, too.”

Shauna, Michelle, and Nick made a legal agreement based on a form that was in the LAMBDA Legal book and tailored it to what they all wanted. To ensure in a court of law that their agreement would be considered a business transaction and not a personal donation of sperm, the group agreed that Nick would be paid for his sperm over the course of one year. The contract stated that their agreement had to end in a live birth and that if there was a miscarriage, the year would reset. Within three months, however, Shauna got pregnant and gave birth to Wyatt nine months later.

All three parties had originally agreed that Nick would remain anonymous to everyone – their friends, family, and the kids until they turned 18- but soon after Evie, their second child, was born, they all changed their minds because the pressure of keeping Nick’s identity secret felt weighty. They mutually decided they didn’t want to hide anything from the kids as they grew older. Nick also felt a very strong unexpected connection to Wyatt the first time he saw him (about three months after birth), and later felt that he wanted to be able to tell his close friends and family that he had biological children.

As we’ve addressed, this issue of the donor friend’s emotional connection to his biological offspring seems to be what any couple using a known donor is afraid of, but in the eight years since Wyatt was born, Nick’s paternal connection has never posed a threat to Michelle and Shauna’s family unit.

“In our case, it’s better for the kids because when Nick comes to visit the kids, it really has been an ideal scenario,” Shelly says. (Nick lives halfway across the country, and sees Wyatt and Evie a two or three times a year, and speaks to them on the phone a few times a month.) “I know a lot of times it doesn’t work out like this, but for us so far it’s been really great and enriching to our family. He’s part of the family, and when he comes to visit, he’s very interactive with the kids, and he disciplines them by saying, ‘Listen to your moms.’ Never have I ever felt like he’s stepping on toes, or inserting himself in a way that’s inappropriate. He never tries to take over my role. He sort of naturally fits in perfectly as the third piece of the parenting puzzle.”

As the non-biological mother, Michelle said she does not feel insecure or scared about Nick’s relationship to the kids. But when mental/emotional challenges have arisen for her in the past (like the thought, “Do I have trouble with the kids calling him ‘Dad’?”), she’s talked to Shauna about her feelings.

“We reaffirm that we’re in this together, that this is our family.” And the truth is, the kids do see their moms as their primary parents. “It’s funny,” Shauna said. “They know they have two moms and a dad, that’s how they identify themselves, but in school, someone will be like, ‘What’s your daddy do?’ and they’ll just say, ‘I have two moms.’ They don’t say, ‘I have a dad, but he lives in Chicago,’ they just say they have two moms. They know he’s not primetime. They totally paint themselves as having a lesbian family. And we tell them that they’re the luckiest kids in the world because they have two moms and a dad. We’re not divorced, there hasn’t been a remarriage, they get to have two moms and a dad off the bat.”

So say the idea of knowing your donor is appealing in some way, but you also want some added protection in regards to your family remaining its own, secure unit-like, say, the kind of security that would come with both you and your partner being biologically related to your child? Well, friends, if either/each of you has a brother, and you can put aside (even just for the next few minutes) the ‘ick’ factor of thinking about your brother’s spunk, then we have a very interesting prospect for you to consider:

Los Angeles couple Jenn Duncan and Stacey Book knew they wanted to have kids some day, but had not really considered what kind of donor they would use until one holiday dinner when Stacey’s mom openly suggested that her son/Stacey’s brother, Sam, be Jenn’s donor. Jenn and Stacey initially joked about this, but later it became a real consideration, and it brought up another interesting idea: If Sam could donate sperm for Jenn to carry their first child, then perhaps Jenn’s brother, Jake, could donate sperm for Stacey to carry their second.

When both brothers agreed, and signed donor contracts relinquishing all paternal rights, they handed over the goods, and the idea became reality. Jenn, with the help of Stacey’s brother, Sam, conceived Mason, who is now six, and later Stacey, with the help of Jenn’s brother, Jake, conceived Madeline, who is now three. So biologically speaking, Jenn is mother to Mason and aunt to Madeline, while Stacey is mother to Madeline and aunt to Mason, making the two kids something like double-cousins (which is a term we are officially coining for any future literature written on alternative family planning, thank you very much). Both kids have the same sets of biological grandparents, and their biological fathers are, for all intents and purposes, their uncles. Jake lives in Montana with his wife and three-year-old daughter, and Sam lives in New York and travels around the world for work. The relatives all see each other on the same sort of holiday/vacation cycle as most other families, and Jenn and Stacey’s brothers are the loving uncles most kids (if they are lucky) have growing up.

For those of you worried about, as one perspective lesbian-mother-with-a-potential-donor-brother put it, the “awkward rom-com” moment of explaining to your kid that their uncle is actually their biological father, just know that, in most instances, it’s really not as weird for the kid as you may think. As any lesbian parents and good alternative family therapists will tell you, establishing clear roles and labels is one of the most important things you can do for your kids, and for yourself, to ensure a clear, honest, and functional family dynamic. So when Mason Duncan-Books’s friends ask him about his parents, he tells them, “I don’t have a dad, but I have two moms, and my Uncle Sam helped bring me into the world.” And to Mason, and his peers, this makes perfect sense, and the conversation turns once again to their latest creations in Minecraft. And that’s why kids are the greatest.

If it hasn’t already become abundantly clear by this point, there are any number of ways lesbian moms create their families, and in the debate between known and unknown donors, there doesn’t seem to be a wrong answer- only personal preferences and individual experiences yielding individual results. No matter what method you choose, the most common cautionary advice from nearly every single couple, mental health professional, and attorney in this field seems to be the following:

  • Communicate openly and honestly with your partner and your known donor/sperm bank to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding parental roles, expectations, and agreements. If using a known donor, insist that all three of you undergo individual mental and physical health screenings before beginning the conception process.
  • Know your rights. If you use a known donor, seek legal counsel and sign an iron-clad, specific contract with your donor drawn up by your lawyer-don’t simply use the standard forms at a fertility clinic. The laws around fertility are not always clear, and differ from state to state, so assume nothing. For example, as described to us by Assisted Reproduction and Family Formation Attorney, Kate Lyon, in the state of California, your family is protected under Family Code Section 7613, which states, among other things, that a man donating sperm to a woman other than his spouse relinquishes all his paternal rights only if you undergo an insemination in a doctor’s office, rather than at home. If you decide to do home insemination, and the sperm does not pass through a doctor’s hands, you are not automatically protected by the law. Additionally, did you know that as the non-biological mother, you can be on your child’s birth certificate, but still not be considered a legal parent in some states without doing a second or co-parent adoption? (Didn’t know that? Neither did we. Lawyer up!) To learn more about your rights state-to-state, visit LAMBDA Legal’s “Protecting Your Children” page
  • Prepare for a financial commitment. Understand that no matter what way you cut it, baby-making requires a lot of money, so be sure to investigate the costs associated with sperm bank packages, known donor agreements, fertility treatments, prenatal supplements, doctors visits, etc. before choosing your approach to conception. Remember, as many frustrated hetero couples will tell you, getting pregnant isn’t always as easy as they make it sound in 9th Grade Health Class. Each attempt to conceive via an assisted reproduction procedure means handing over more cash. And, unfortunately for the lesbian community, current health insurance policies do not cover any fertility costs before conception for same-sex couples. Ugh. Hopefully, this will change in the coming years, but as of now, the best we can do is financially prepare ourselves for what can potentially be a long and costly process.
  • Pick the brains of other who came before you. To the naked eye furiously scouring the internet for resources/discussion boards on lesbian family planning, there may not appear to be much out there to guide us as of yet. But helpful articles and non-profit organizations dedicated to this subject are beginning to crop up, we promise. Love Comes First, an “ongoing transmedia project designed to inspire, inform and document a community on the brink of tremendous societal and cultural change,” is a wonderful resource for perspective lesbian parents looking to find advice from experts, and read stories of other families who have been through the process.

Okay, so sure-standing back and really taking all of this into consideration when thinking about your future family is enough to make many of us want to down a quick bottle of rose and sing “Forever Young” at the top of our lungs with our college field hockey teammates. We’re right there with you. (Especially because that actually does sound like a lot of fun.) But when it comes down to it, like the majority of humans who have come before us, we still can’t help feeling like the notion of having a family of our own is, well, totally worth it, no matter what hoops we have to jump through to get there. Jenn Duncan seemed to hit the nail on the head with this:

“We know lesbian couples that have chosen all of these different routes we’re talking about and in every case I can think of, it’s been happy families-happy children, happy moms,” Jenn said. “I think it’s possible in any family, whether it’s traditional gender binary straight marriage, or gay marriage, or surrogate moms, or adoptive parents, you can go down all the different paths-things could go poorly. So if you get caught up in what could go wrong, I think that you’re setting yourself up for a very stressful situation. Just be mindful, communicate, and be smart.”

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