Accidental Incest? It’s A Serious Concern With Sperm Donation

When we think of incest, we usually picture a bygone era of royal families marrying cousins to keep their noble bloodlines “pure.” It’s hard to forget the global history trivia about dynasties like the Romanovs swapping so much DNA they ended up with recurrent genetic issues like hemophilia, but we like to imagine that those realities have been long tucked away in history textbooks. Now, many advocates say that history is repeating itself. Incest, they argue, isn’t making a comeback with royal families, though; it’s a risk that is becoming increasingly prevalent because of far more modern inventions: sperm donation clinics. 

The Fertility Gap

With the global decline in male fertility, sperm donation is becoming more and more common. Studies estimate that male sperm count fell by more than 50% in the last 50 years, and its decline is now speeding up to more than double that annual rate, leaving many couples to seek alternative methods to conceive. Infertility isn’t the only phenomenon driving demand, either. According to one report, only 20% of the increased demand for sperm donation was driven by heterosexual couples. Sixty percent came from lesbian couples, and 20% were single women.

Although there is no official record of sperm donation in the United States, one study estimates that in recent years nearly a half million women in the United States have used donor insemination to conceive children, an increase from previous decades. While sperm donation has helped many families conceive (an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 donor-conceived children are born every year), regulation hasn’t managed to keep pace with its popularity. Much of the industry has been driven by profits rather than ethics, leaving a host of consequences in its wake.

An estimated 30,000 to 60,000 donor-conceived children are born every year.

The Parent Trap

One area that’s particularly out of control is donor frequency. Many countries regulate how many children can be conceived from a single donor. In Germany, it’s 15, and the United Kingdom regulates by family, restricting the number to 10. In the U.S.? The limit does not exist. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends no more than 25 births in a population of 800,000, but without regulation, these guidelines aren’t stopping anyone. Fertility clinics have no incentive to limit the number of times “donors” can sell their sperm, especially now that a Covid-19 induced sperm shortage is increasing their pressure to rely on “super donors” to close the gap. The result? Unprecedented numbers of genetic half-siblings, often living just around the corner from one another.

In the movie The Parent Trap, Lindsey Lohan plays two girls who become friends at summer camp, only to realize they’re long-lost twins. While it’s a heartwarming plot for a children’s movie, it’s an eerie reality for some. One 12-year-old from California had nearly the same experience, meeting a girl at sleepaway camp who instantly reminded her of her best friend from back home. They didn’t just have the same mannerisms, they were sisters. Two college roommates at Tulane University also bonded over their similar curly hair, and the fact that their lesbian mothers had both used donor insemination, only to find out they, too, were sisters from the same mister. When it comes to girl friends, the connection is harmless. But what if one of them had been male? And what if they’d felt more than just a friendly connection?

A Family Affair?

Anonymous donation and the lack of regulation create the perfect storm for communities saturated by super donors. The lack of regulation means there’s no central registry for donors, allowing them to hop between clinics, donating again and again. Even if clinics do adhere to the 25-donation guideline, they have no way of knowing if a man has donated to every other clinic in the area. Many donors will only agree to donate to fertility clinics that grant them full anonymity, which has historically made it even more difficult to stop serial sperm salesmen. The chaos this creates means it’s possible for a donor-conceived child to have as many as 1,000 half-siblings (one donor in England boasts about his 800 children), and the proximity of clinics to the families they’re helping conceive means the resulting half-siblings are especially likely to live near one another. Half-siblings have even found out they’ve attended high school together, raising serious concerns about the implications on the dating pool.

It’s possible for a donor-conceived child to have as many as 1,000 half-siblings.

Wait, but wouldn’t you and your boyfriend know to take a DNA test if you were both donor-conceived? Not exactly. Historically, doctors have recommended parents keep their children’s medical history a secret from them. Sometimes this is because doctors want to hide the fact that they’ve swapped in their own sperm to father children, but other times it’s just been misguided advice to keep the child from feeling isolated from the fathers raising them. Many parents also want to keep their use of donors secret for privacy reasons. The result is that many children don’t even know they’re donor-conceived, and find out via 23 and Me-style DNA tests or not at all.

Sounding the Alarms

Donor-conceived children and their families are beginning to sound the alarms about the dangers of an unregulated fertility industry. Advocates in Australia are pushing for a centralized database to track donors and allow their children access to their health information. In the U.S., some advocates are trying to take it into their own hands. DonorSiblingRegistry.com is one such platform, but its creator says it’s not enough. “There are many half-sibling groups on the Donor Sibling Registry that are between 100 to 200 [kids],” says Wendy Kramer, the site’s creator. “Because the DSR is a voluntary registry, we can assume that these groups are actually much larger in size, as not everyone is interested in connecting. Additionally, when these groups get too big, we see people removing their posts, so it’s hard to know exactly how large many of the groups actually are.”

Others, like comedian Laura High, are taking to social media to raise awareness of issues like incest for donor-conceived children, hoping to push for more common sense legislation. Current proposals include banning for-profit sperm donation and criminalizing doctors who lie about the sperm they’re using to impregnate women. Unfortunately, some legislation is walking in the opposite direction of progress. Legislation like the Right to Build Families Act seeks to prohibit legal limits on reproductive technology, making it difficult to rein in the issues already plaguing the fertility industry. They argue that greater regulation will increase men’s hesitance to donate sperm, making it harder for families struggling with fertility to rely on these methods to conceive.

Closing Thoughts

Every human should have a right to their own health information, especially when it includes consequences as dangerous as accidental incest. If giving children rights to their own health information makes men shy away from donating, maybe it’s a sign that we haven’t adequately considered the ethical consequences of the for-profit fertility industry.

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