Are sperm donors really so different from other volunteers?

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Alison Motluk is a Toronto-based freelance journalist who publishes HeyReprotech, a newsletter about the ripples caused by assisted reproduction.

For many people, the Netflix show The Man With 1,000 Kids was their first introduction to the world of independent sperm donation – men offering their semen to strangers, mostly over the internet. The show is about a Dutch man who has donated all over the world, both independently and through sperm banks, and whose donations have led to hundreds of known births. I’ve had a lot of people ask me recently if I’ve seen it (yes) and if I was surprised by it (no). Was I horrified? Sort of, but maybe not for the same reasons everyone else seems to be.

Whether people are aware of it or not, there is a thriving market for donor sperm. Back in the old days, it was all hetero couples using it, and they did so secretly through their doctor’s office, as a “treatment” for male infertility. But these days, demand is dominated by single women and lesbian couples, and exchanges quite often happen with the help of platforms such as Facebook, in groups called things like “Sperm Donors U.S.A. and Canada” or “Canadian Sperm Donors and Recipients.”

There you’ll find men offering up their seed for free. (It is illegal to pay for it, except through a sperm bank.) They range in age from low-20s to mid-50s. Some postings give height and weight and education history and even baby photos. Others just say something like, “Lives in Edmonton. Willing to donate.” Recipients vary, too. Some show beautiful wedding photos or make heart-wrenching pleas, while others are more like, “Anyone free in Hamilton tomorrow night?”

The details of meeting up and exchanging the semen are usually worked out in private messaging. But I know from talking to people that the arrangements very often involve the man donating into a plastic cup in the bathroom of one of the parties’ own homes or at a local hotel. Not always, though: Sometimes it’s in, say, a Tim Hortons bathroom, to be exchanged in the parking lot. Occasionally straight women opt to just get the donation via sexual intercourse – not because they’ve been pressured, they tell me, but because it’s just easier. (Not all jurisdictions in Canada recognize this as “donation,” but Ontario does, so long as there’s a signed agreement in advance.)

Other times, though, women are pressured. They say clearly they want AI (“artificial insemination” – via the cup) but the guy is somehow still talking about NI (“natural insemination”). This, of course, is not okay.

But more commonly, the complaints are about other things. For instance, the donor promised he could help but at the last minute he had to work – and now the recipient’s fertile window is closing. Or he ghosts her altogether. This is emotionally very difficult for people trying to get pregnant. Sometimes he is cagey about his real identity and personal history. Who wouldn’t worry about that?

The men also have complaints, though. Some recipients can be pretty demanding. Even though this is all to create their child, recipients sometimes want the man to do all the travelling, which can be a few hours each way. Some recipients want men to donate multiple times in a 24-hour period. Then there are the recipients who blame the man when they don’t get pregnant.

All that notwithstanding, many arrangements go off without a hitch, exactly as planned, and a wanted child is born.

What I find interesting is how almost everyone seems to believe that a man who donates sperm must have ulterior motives. He must be in it for the sex. He’s a pervert. He’s a loser who can’t find a girlfriend. He gets off on thinking about all his progeny. He is a narcissist. He is playing God. Even many people working in the field – counsellors, psychologists, lawyers – exude this discomfort.

I’m sure there are perverts, losers and narcissists among their ranks, but I’m not convinced sperm donors have higher numbers than any other random group. Why we should be more suspicious of sperm donors than of other volunteers – kidney donors, for instance, firefighters, or church elders – I’m not really sure.

It’s not that the men don’t get anything out of this. They do. But they get what a lot of volunteers get: a sense that they are doing a good thing, that they are a good person. They feel they are helping someone, that they are appreciated, that they are wanted, that they are valued. The feeling of “power” they describe is similar to what egg donors and surrogates talk about, but while the latter are “angels,” the former are “creeps.”

But back to Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a.k.a. The Man With 1,000 Kids. He donated to hundreds of recipients in multiple countries, all the while lying about how many kids had been born from his donations. Parents are now worried about their kids having hundreds of half-siblings – partly because they fear they might be attracted to half-siblings, and go on to unwittingly have incestuous relationships, and partly because there’s now little hope of a meaningful relationship with the donor (biological father) or many of the half-siblings. They might also worry that if Mr. Meijer lied about this, he might have lied about other things.

I feel for the parents. Parents want what’s best for their kids. These parents carefully selected a donor who was attractive, healthy, charming, communicative and willing to be known to the child. No wonder so many people wanted his sperm. They didn’t know he was a liar.

The thing is, concerns about the number of offspring per donor are not new. The Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), an online platform that helps connect people born via donation, started raising the alarm about that more than 15 years ago. They knew in 2009 that there were sibling groups of more than 100. In 2011, The New York Times published a story titled “One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring.” (That group now numbers almost 250, according to the DSR.) Barry Stevens, a Canadian filmmaker who made the documentary The World’s Biggest Family, reckons his donor sired about 600 offspring. None of this, it must be noted, was the work of rogue donors. Rather, it was clinics and sperm banks. They could have limited numbers, but they didn’t. Why retire a popular donor and forego all that money?

The fertility industry is notoriously unregulated. But somehow The Man With 1,000 Kids points the finger only at Mr. Meijer and his ilk. Yes, he lied and deceived, and that’s terrible. But he certainly wasn’t the first or only. If anything, he was following a time-honoured tradition in the industry.

Liars can be anywhere. That’s why we need safeguards. First and foremost, all children born through donation should know that fact about themselves. They also need to know the identity of the donor. Finally, we need registries – both national and international – so that limits can be set and violations known about. For now, though, it seems it’s up to individual recipients to protect themselves, and I’ve heard some are turning to private investigators.

So, am I horrified? Yes. I’m horrified that after all these years of knowing this was happening, and was likely to continue happening, we’ve done nothing at all to protect the people involved.

I wish those parents had not been lied to and made to worry. But I’m also glad they have their children. And therein lies the central conundrum. If Jonathan Jacob Meijer helped create 1,000 children, it’s in large part because 1,000 families chose him. I would not want to be the one to decide which 975 should have been turned down.