麻豆约拍

Aleks Krotoski

When an email titled “Collaboration opportunity” landed in my inbox, I was surprised, shamed and shocked by what I discovered inside, writes Aleks Krotoski.

The serendipitous note from a psychology lecturer at Leeds-Beckett University inspired 麻豆约拍 Radio 4’s Male Order, a 10-part series investigating the online sperm donation marketplace, and a research project that begins this year with academics across the UK.

Here’s what I’ve discovered so far about the modern pursuit of parenthood.

1. It’s £1000 a pop if you take the official route

If you’re going to go through the regulated route and purchase sperm from a licensed clinic, you will pay an average of £1000 per vial. I say an average, because each bank establishes its own price point. But, biologically speaking, it still takes an average of six cycles before pregnancy. For same-sex couples or single mothers, they must pay for sperm and treatment that many times to be eligible for NHS fertility services.

2. You can find more than Friends on Facebook

The largest alternative market to the licensed sperm clinic is on Facebook. There are private and public groups based on location, characteristics of the donor and even method of delivery. The largest groups have more than 20,000 members, but the vast majority of people in the groups are women looking for sperm – a whopping 85% – creating an imbalanced seller’s market. The people who run the Facebook Groups are prolific donors who have optimised their lives to successfully get hundreds of women pregnant using their sperm.

3. Anonymity for donors is impossible…

It is not possible in the UK for a British man who donates to a licensed sperm clinic to be anonymous. In 2005, the law was changed, giving donor-conceived children the right to find out their donor’s name and last known address, when they reach 18. Contrary to concerns that this change would reduce the number of men who would be willing to donate, the number of donors continued to rise. Still, demand outstrips supply, and US and Dutch sperm is still imported into the UK to make up the shortfall.

4. …but relationships with donors ARE possible

Many women and couples go through the Facebook groups for sperm for financial reasons – they simply can’t afford the services that are sold through licensed clinics. No money is supposed to be exchanged for private sperm exchanges. But another group of hopeful recipients goes through the Facebook groups (and other online marketplaces) because they want to know who their donor is, speak with him, and sometimes involve him in their family from the time the child is born, rather than wait until the age of 18.

The majority of donor-conceived children in the UK wish donation to be “known”, or to know their biological father’s identity from birth. Louise McLoughlin, a journalist and donor-conceived adult, explained to me that a system that sits between the licensed clinics – with their health and legal protections for recipients, donors and the child – and the Facebook route (with the option to know the donor) would be a better alternative to what is available now.

There is no scientific evidence that sex is more successful at achieving pregnancy.

6. Some donors have ulterior motives

Online donors offer to deliver their samples via a variety of methods, and according to a recent study from one of the collaborators at Leeds-Beckett University, this can lead to “morally challenging” behaviour. All of the recipients I spoke with while investigating this marketplace for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4's Male Order series said they were offered sex by at least one donor during their search for sperm; several described potential donors withholding their donation unless the recipient “did something for them”. As I learned, there is no scientific evidence that sex is more successful at achieving pregnancy, but research by a group at the University of Cambridge has found that approximately 50% of heterosexual donors who go to parenting connection website Pride Angel advertise their donation method as NI, or sex. To date, only one donor has been convicted of sexual assault by a British court.

7. One donor might have hundreds of children

The number of families a donor can legally donate sperm to in the UK is 10. In the US, there is no legal limit. Online wherever you are in the world, anything goes. Many online donors I spoke with claimed to have more than 100 children. One online donor in the UK claims to have more than 800 offspring. According to sociologist Rosanna Hertz, this creates problems for donor-conceived children, who must try to make sense of how that many siblings can fit into their ideas of who they are.

8. This rule-breaking market is tolerated…

Although the social networks know people exchange a regulated thing (sperm) through their unregulated marketplace, and the marketplace breaks their community service rules, they are making no attempts to curb this activity.

9. …and society is not keeping up

Online sperm donation is a microcosm of the challenges of the digital world: people empowered to do it themselves, able to go around the rules, with no oversight except their own. At worst, it exposes the exploitative outcomes of an imbalance of power. At best, it gives people an alternative future they didn’t realise they had. It is messy, it is complicated and it is moving faster than any regulatory body can.