DIVA speaks to London Sperm Bank to find out more about the sperm donation process that helps so many LGBTQIA women and non-binary people start families
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGE BY IURII MAKSYMIV VIA CANVA
It is a fact that conceiving a child requires sperm. For heterosexual couples, this isn’t usually a problem, but for LGBTQIA women and non-binary people things can be a little more complicated.
If you’re considering your options when it comes to having a child, you probably have lots of questions about how all this works. So, ahead of The Familymakers Show in May, we took a trip to the London Sperm Bank to find out more.
Where is my sperm from?
Well, as one writer in The Times put it, Copenhagen is “the sperm capital of the world”. It’s estimated that approximately 21% of sperm vials in the UK come from Danish sperm banks, while 23% come from American ones. Given the significantly smaller population of Denmark compared to the US, it’s fair to say our Scandinavian friends are more than pulling their weight when it comes to helping the LGBTQIA community become parents.
Sperm banks had never really taken off in the UK. Despite some funding from the Department of Health, most banks have been short-lived, primarily because donors are limited to siring 10 families. That means you need less than 30 vials per donor, so the cost of recruiting and qualifying the donor per vial is much higher than Danish/US banks, where the cost is spread over 200 vials. But, demand in the UK was still high, hence the international focus of acquiring sperm.
That is why, nine years ago, the London Sperm Bank ran a campaign with the slogan: “The British are coming!” Since it was founded in 2010, the bank has set aside the need to make money quickly and concentrated on cultivating relationships with donors to address the imbalance of foreign to UK sperm. They are now the UK’s largest sperm bank.
Who is my donor?
That depends on where you got your sperm from. According to UK law, sperm donors cannot be anonymous and must be traceable, but that is not enforceable outside of the UK. An American sperm bank may promise to keep in contact with any donors whose sample is being sent to us, but if that man wants to move to a tiny town in the middle of the Arizona desert with no way of contacting him, there’s nothing they can do to stop him.
Donors in the UK can always be traced because our law says they must be. When a donor-conceived child is 16, they can request information about their donor, such as their medical history. At 18, they can apply to the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority) for the donor’s full name, date and place of birth, and the most recent address. London Sperm Bank has also created an online portal where donor records can be linked to specific patients, to ensure traceability is easy and efficient later down the road.
At 18, your child can also join the Donor Sibling Link, which allows people to find and share their contact details with any genetic siblings they may have.
How many siblings will my donor have?
If you’ve seen The Man With 1,000 Kids, a Netflix documentary about a Dutch sperm donor, you may be concerned that your child will have a huge number of half-siblings. But this is not necessarily the case, especially if you choose to go to London Sperm Bank. In the UK, sperm donors are allowed to sire a maximum of 10 families. Of course, this means that a Danish or American donor could have 10 British children and hundreds more across the globe, but UK sperm will only go to 10 families or less.
Why are they donating?
The assumption about sperm donors is sometimes that they’re students looking for quick cash. However, London Sperm Bank views its donors as altruistic people, not least because the only money that exchanges hands is compensation for travel, which is just as well, given how few donations UK donors are allowed to make, compared to their Danish and American counterparts.
It is, in fact, illegal to pay someone to donate sperm (beyond £45 expenses), so the people heading to the sperm bank again and again over the months they’re being asked to aren’t doing it for financial gain. One donor told Stylist that he chose to do it because he saw a friend go through infertility and wanted to do something to make it easier for others. As he put it, “Why wouldn’t I help?”
London Sperm Bank cultivates a relationship with its donors, many of whom have similar reasons for donating. This relationship is unlike those seen in clinics around the world. The Times writer who said Copenhagen was the sperm capital of the world spoke to a Danish donor about why he donated – he shrugged and said, “It’s on my way to work.”
Meanwhile, the donors at London Sperm Bank spend significant time at the sperm bank and attend events arranged so that they can get to know each other, with many becoming friends. In fact, they become something of a family themselves.
For more information visit London Sperm Bank’s website and don’t miss The Familymakers Show on 10 May at Hilton Brighton Metropole. You can grab tickets to the show here.
