As the new Netflix documentary The Man With 1000 Kids makes headlines, Polly Dunbar, a solo mother who sourced her sperm donor from a regulated sperm bank in Denmark, investigates the sperm donation options available to future mothers in the UK - and the disturbing rise of unregulated online donors.
Three years ago, Lisa* met a stranger in the car park of a pub, where he handed over a sterilised plastic container of his semen for her to try to make a baby with. Using a kit she bought on Amazon, she syringed its contents into herself when she arrived home and waited to see if she would become pregnant. The first time, it didn’t work, but the second, she conceived her daughter.
Single at 38 and longing for a baby, she’d looked into using a sperm bank, where a sample costs an average of £1100 per ‘straw’, and having IUI (intrauterine insemination) at a clinic, which can cost up to £1600 per cycle. ‘I just couldn’t even begin to afford it,’ she says.
Instead, she found a donor on one of the many Facebook groups which connect women (and sometimes couples) with men willing to give sperm for free to help them conceive. ‘I posted a message saying I was looking for a donor, and I had quite a few responses – around 20,’ says Lisa. ‘A few were really creepy, saying they were happy to help but only with “natural insemination” – in other words, sex. But the one I chose seemed normal; he had successfully fathered two other babies on the group and wasn’t asking for money, so I went with him.’
Sperm donation is making headlines this week, thanks to the new Netflix docuseries The Man With 1000 Kids. It tells the shocking story of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a rogue serial donor who donated sperm to multiple Dutch fertility clinics, as well as privately online, lying to everyone involved about the extent of what he was doing.
Last year, Meijer was ordered by a Dutch court to stop, having been found to have fathered as many as 600 children in the Netherlands since 2007. Some mothers of his offspring, based as far away as Australia, believe the true number globally is over 1000 (although Meijer contests this).
For women like me, a solo mum who bought sperm from a Danish sperm bank to conceive my now four-year-old son, the series is particularly alarming. The truth is, with no global oversight of donors’ activities, clinics have to take them at their word about where they’re donating – and we buy their sperm on faith.
But while it undoubtedly exposes a need for clinics to improve their vetting processes for prospective donors, the programme throws an even starker spotlight on the rise of ‘private’ sperm donation – DIY arrangements that take place outside regulated clinics, via Facebook groups, Reddit and dedicated websites such as Pride Angel and Pollen Tree - and the potential pitfalls of the practice.
The cost of fertility treatment at clinics has soared in recent years, and the cost-of-living crisis has prompted increasing numbers of desperate single women and LGBT+ families - the majority of whom don’t qualify for NHS treatment - to seek donor sperm online. In the UK, it’s illegal to pay donors more than reasonable expenses, although some do demand money for their services, and if it’s less than treatment at a clinic, they can find plenty of women happy to pay.
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The Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority, or HFEA, which regulates donation in the UK, warns against these private arrangements, which have none of the protections offered by licensed fertility centres. ‘Anything outside of that won’t be covered by legislation, regulations and guidance,’ says Rachel Cutting, the HFEA’s director of compliance and information.
‘Sperm donation is a wonderful thing – it gives people the opportunity to have their own families, and we don’t want that to be discouraged. But we would strongly encourage people, where possible, to go to a licensed centre, because it’s a regulated environment which ensures donors, patients and any future children are protected by carrying out rigorous health tests, ensuring legal parenthood consents are in place and offering everyone involved counselling.’
I felt that protection throughout my own experience of donor conception. When I began the process of choosing a sperm donor in 2018, it’s fair to say I was trepidatious. I’d always hoped to have a baby with a man I loved, not an anonymous stranger whose profile I found online.
But actually, sifting through the options on the website of Cryos, a sperm bank in Denmark, was surprisingly life-affirming. There were photos of the donors as babies, descriptions of their hair and eye colour, weight and height, and whether they liked reading or football. There were letters they’d written to women like me, filled with a kindness and generosity I found profoundly touching. The donor I chose had also recorded a spoken message, explaining why he wanted to help someone he’d never met fulfil their dream of motherhood.
The scandal is the subject of just-dropped Netflix doc The Man With 1000 Kids.
I found the regulations in place reassuring at a vulnerable time. Each donor is screened for infectious diseases such as HIV and hereditary diseases, and for the quality of their sperm. In one recent post on a Facebook sperm donation group, an anonymous user from the UK said she had caught HIV from the donor she had found in the group. ‘I’ll regret it for the rest of my life,’ she wrote, ‘but I’m sure you all understand the feeling of desperation because you want a child so badly.’
Using a regulated route ensures the donor will not be the legal parent of any child born, or have any rights or obligations towards them. Both donors and would-be parents are given counselling to ensure they understand the full implications of what they’re signing up for.
By contrast, private arrangements are far greyer areas. ‘Unlike a clinic donor, this is more like having a brief relationship with someone and having a child together,’ says Nina Barnsley, director of the Donor Conception Network. ‘You want to get to know them to be sure, as much as you can, that you can trust them, and that doesn’t happen in a few messages over Facebook.’
Legally, donors in these circumstances are the father of any child born. Theoretically, they could claim parental rights over the child, or be pursued by the mother for child support.
‘At first, it can feel exciting when you’re having a baby, and the guy seems nice, but then what happens when you have a seven-year-old who’s asking if the donor can come to their birthday?’ says Nina. ‘It’s important to be clear on what the rights and responsibilities are, and write them down, because there can be so much misunderstanding and misremembering of conversations and that’s when things can go awry later on.’
Sperm banks which ship to the UK must abide by the 10-family limit, which means each donor’s sperm can be used to create just 10 families (although other countries have different limits and their sperm can be used elsewhere, too.) As the HFEA explains, this is to minimise the potential emotional difficulties of having large numbers of genetic half-siblings, as well as the possibility of two children from the same donor having a future relationship without knowing. With private arrangements, it’s impossible to know how many other offspring there might be – and in the age of genealogy websites such as Ancestry.co.uk, the reality won’t stay hidden.
The UK law also states that children will be able to access anonymous information about their donor when they’re 16, and will be able to find out their identity when they’re 18.
For Lisa, using a donor she could meet in person was a bonus. ‘I liked being able to check him out and see what he was like,’ she says. ‘He seemed like a nice guy who was doing it for the right reasons. He wasn’t expecting money or trying to pressure me into sex, and he told me upfront he wasn’t interested in having any kind of relationship with my daughter, which suits me. I got it in writing from him, and even though I know it’s not an enforceable contract, it gave me peace of mind.’
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Sadly, not everyone searching for sperm online has such a positive experience. Sexual harassment is rife in these forums. Laura* gave up trying to find a donor after receiving several sexually explicit messages from one man. ‘I wasn’t in a great place emotionally, and the messages totally freaked me out,’ she says. ‘They were essentially a string of fantasies about how he wanted to impregnate me and I just didn’t feel safe at all.’
On Facebook forums such as Sperm Donors UK: A Free Speech Group, which has 40,000 members, there are men offering ‘NI’ – natural insemination. One man’s profile states: ‘I did think I was only AI [artificial insemination], however after talking to other donors and potential recipients, I see there is both physical and mental advantages to natural insemination’ – a false claim, but one which shows how normalised it has become within these groups. Troublingly, there are also women saying they’re happy with that method.
‘It concerns us, because some vulnerable women’s safety could be at risk,’ says Nina. ‘You can see how it happens. You’ve got a donor lined up, you’ve timed it, then he arrives at the door and might say, “It’s natural insemination or nothing.” And people can find themselves doing things that they’d never planned to do.’
A spokesperson for Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook Inc.) has said: “We know that Facebook can be a place where people talk about a variety of personal and medical issues, which we allow. This can include communities discussing issues related to fertility. However, we have explicit rules against harassment and sexual solicitation to help keep people safe. We remove this content when we find it and encourage people to report it to us if they see it.’’
Recently, the HFEA has created a new system whereby every donor and patient treated in a licensed clinic in the UK has a unique identity number, meaning if a donor went to another UK-based clinic and tried to donate more sperm, they would be flagged up.
Of course, this only applies within the UK, and currently more than 50% of sperm donations are from abroad. A joined-up, global approach to tracking donors’ activities would be very difficult to enact, says Rachel. ‘You can never stop someone lying, but if you’re using a clinic, at least you know donors have been through a process which is designed to make sure they’re doing it for the right reasons.’
The DCN (Donor Conception Network) urges everyone thinking about conceiving using donor sperm to think above all about ‘how you’ll explain your choice to a child,’ says Nina. ‘This is part of their story, part of how they came into the world, and you want it to be one they can feel proud of and happy sharing.’
For more information, visit dcnetwork.org. *Names have been changed.
The Man With 1000 Kids is streaming on Netflix now.