Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (24 page)

INFORMATION, IDENTITY-RELEASE,
AND THE FUTURE

Given that egg and sperm donors define their relationship to offspring in such different ways, with men identifying themselves as fathers but women not considering themselves mothers, it is surprising to find that they express similar feelings about potentially meeting the children at some point in the future. Nearly all of the donors discussed this possibility, and egg and sperm donors alike were willing to meet with those who requested it.

For some women and men, the prospect of offspring is quite concrete, yet others have no idea whether children have been born. This is because egg agencies and sperm banks vary in the extent to which they share information about offspring with donors. On the West Coast, staffers at the two sperm banks generally provided details only if the men asked, while staffers at the two egg agencies were more proactive, checking in with women about whether they wanted to know the outcome of their donations. Indeed, all of the egg donors at Creative Beginnings and OvaCorp knew whether recipients had become pregnant or given birth, but just two-thirds of the men at Western Sperm Bank did.
¹⁰
For example, Manuel, who began donating nearly two years ago, explained, “I don’t know how many people or kids or what. They don’t tell
us anything, other than ‘You’re doing a good job. Keep up the good work.’ They don’t really give us too much information.”

On the East Coast, Gametes Inc. maintains different policies for egg and sperm donors. The sperm bank began offering identity-release as an option in 2001, and like their counterparts on the West Coast, staffers readily share information with sperm donors who inquire. However, just 25% of the men who had been donating long enough for their samples to be listed for sale had any information about recipients purchasing their samples, becoming pregnant, or giving birth. In a surprising contrast, Gametes Inc. does not offer an identity-release option for women, which is true of most egg agencies but striking in a company that sells both eggs and sperm. Moreover, Gametes Inc.’s egg agency staff members, who work just down the hall from the sperm bank staff, refuse to provide any information whatsoever to women about what happens with their donations. All but one of the egg donors expressed chagrin at this policy though generally they were more interested in knowing whether the recipient became pregnant than in learning any details about the children.

Those egg and sperm donors who did have information about outcomes reported that their recipients had become pregnant or given birth anywhere from zero to four times.
¹¹
Several of the sperm donors who said they finally decided to ask about offspring expressed surprise at how few births there had been. In fact, reproductive technologies have relatively low success rates, so it might be the case that donors who are not given concrete information are more likely to assume that their donations result in children.
¹²

Regardless of whether they knew that offspring actually existed, egg and sperm donors spoke about the possibility of meeting them in the future, and most exhibited a mild curiosity in seeing how the children “turn out.” Indeed, about half the donors referenced an imagined future for the children, and these ranged from images of delinquent teenagers who start fires to ideas that the offspring could be lawyers, doctors, or even president of the United States. Ben, a twenty-six-year-old who considered donating his genes to be a charitable act, described the person he hoped to encounter eighteen years from now. “I don’t want to know that, ‘Hey Dad, I just got out of jail [
laughs
], just wanted to see how things
were going, because my parents threw me out.’ That’s not something I want to see. I want to see, ‘Hey Dad, I just made Harvard, and I just wanted you to know before I went. Everything’s cool, and I appreciate you going out of your way those years back to make me.’ ”

More than just mild curiosity, which often revolves around what the child looks like, a substantial minority of donors—about 40% of the women and men I interviewed—conveyed feeling some sense of responsibility to offspring. Here, Carla, who was twenty-five and married with a young child, thinks through the ramifications of a future meeting.

Carla: If they ever grow up and decided they wanted to come meet me, I would be open to it. I’d really feel like I’d have to have some discussion with their parents first and find out if there are issues behind this. Is there some family drama going on that is making this child seek me out, because I’m not, I was just the seed [
laughs
]. I would definitely be supportive of this person, not as my child, but this is a person that, if I can help, I will. So yeah, if I ever was contacted, I think it would have to be from the parents. If the child just came knocking on my door one day, I would say, “I don’t know who you are,” and then I would call her parents. “Okay, you can come in.” Any questions, I would answer everything I could. If they said, “I want to have a relationship with you,” it would be—I don’t know if I could do that, because they have the wrong idea. They’re searching for something else, because their parents are at home. And that could very well happen, and we just deal with it I guess, find out how it goes [
laughs
]. I don’t think I would ever seek them out, because, I mean, it’s not mine. And I don’t mean that rudely, but it’s not. Every now and then, you have that urge. Maybe if I knew where the child was going to school, maybe I’d just drive by and see what they look like. I wouldn’t mind being sent one picture, just for the physical part of it. How much did I put into this? It’s just to have, I don’t know, not have to question what they look like. That’s a big thing.

Rene: How is it a big thing?

Carla: [
pause
] I don’t know if it’s pride or what [
laughs
]. Did you get my nose? But I think that would be the only thing. I’d hope that the child’s happy, and then I’d hope that the child is beautiful.

As Carla does, most egg and sperm donors define the sense of responsibility in terms of providing information, either medical history or family background. However, a few of the donors did go so far as to say they would probably try to help if the child needed financial assistance or a place to live.

For sperm donors, the idea that they might meet offspring at some point in the future is clearly tied to their participation in the banks’ identity-release programs. Greg, a young college student who donated at Gametes Inc., described his interest in such a meeting.

Greg: My understanding is that twenty years from now, when the woman has her baby and her baby is older, then either she or the kid can contact me for the sole purpose of saying, “All right, well, now you’re forty, now you’re fifty, is there any kind of medical problems that have developed that I should be aware of?” I thought that was okay, because I have no legal responsibilities to the kid, and it’s at my own discretion whether or not I kind of want to know the kid. I may want to meet him
¹³
just to see how it turned out [
laughs
], but I don’t think I’d ever get attached to them or anything like that.

Rene: To see how they turn out in what way?

Greg: Just kind of this is one possibility of how my genes could have turned out. Being a [science] major, I look at everything in probabilities and statistics and all the different ways things work out. So I guess if the kid ever called me, I’d kind of want to meet him, just to say this is one possible outcome of me having children. And then after that, I would probably just put it in the back of my head and move on.

Carla and Greg are similar in that they are both willing to meet offspring in the future, but Carla downplays her role by consistently calling the recipients “parents” and Greg underscores his own contribution by privileging the importance of his genes in how the child “turns out.”

Gametes Inc. pays 50% more per sample to identity-release donors than it does to anonymous donors. Western Sperm Bank does not offer additional compensation to identity-release donors, so this is probably why just about half the men with posted profiles there are identity-release,
compared to about two-thirds of the men at Gametes Inc.
¹⁴
Indeed, several of the Gametes Inc. donors described it as a hefty financial incentive. Walt, a nineteen-year-old who was donating to make extra money, responded to my question about what influenced his decision to be identity-release by stating bluntly, “The money.” When I asked if it was a difficult decision, he said, “Not really, because I really don’t mind if they look me up or not.” Kyle, a twenty-two-year-old student, agreed that the decision was “not too difficult.”

I’d say on a [scale from] one to ten, with ten being the hardest, it was probably about a five or six. It wasn’t super hard. I thought the money is kind of like a weight on a scale, the difference between $65 and $100 [per sample]. When you think about a whole week, I come Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I’m more a day-to-day person, and I’m thinking long term, eighteen years from now, they would be able to call me. But if I don’t sell good, if you don’t get out enough information, somebody might be kind of hesitant to buy your specimens. If you can’t give them what they want to know, they won’t buy it, and then I wouldn’t be able to come in. [The sperm bank] might say ‘We’ve got enough stock.’ For me to maintain my lifestyle, I need a steady paycheck coming in just like my other job.

In contrast, when Western Sperm Bank donors explained their reasons for participating in the identity-release program, they were more likely to reference the offspring’s welfare. Andrew, who like Walt and Kyle, signed on to donate for the extra money, said,

I am [identity] release, but that’s more toward the children’s benefit than anything for me. I can understand how if you were a product of a sperm donation, you might be curious as to what the other donator of whatever genetic material you have is like, what their personality is like, their likes and dislikes, that type of thing. I can understand how there’d be curiosity, and not knowing where you come from would be a question that children might have. That’s why I agreed to do it.

More and more sperm banks are creating an identity-release option to attract recipient clients.
¹⁵
However, when banks provide monetary incentives for donors to sign on, it is likely to focus men’s attention on short-term gains rather than long-term ramifications. As a result, it remains to
be seen whether those donors who are paid to participate will be as committed to staying in touch with the bank and following through on their commitment to be in contact with offspring at least two decades into the future.

SPERM : FATHER :: EGG : NOT-MOTHER

To return to the finding that sperm donors think of themselves as fathers and egg donors consider themselves not-mothers, the question remains: why does this difference exist, especially given that both women and men are making parallel contributions to reproduction? Looking more closely at how donors discuss their connections to offspring reveals an explanation that relies on a distinction between biological and social parenthood (distinguishing between the person who provides the genetic material or gestates the fetus and the person who raises the child). Nearly all of the egg donors made such a distinction, but just about half of the sperm donors did.

When men do differentiate between the person providing sperm and the person providing care, they do so not to say that they are not fathers but that they are a particular kind of father. Dennis, a twenty-four-year-old with no children of his own, explained,

The father’s the person who’s there, the one who’s doing the work, and I absolutely believe that environment greatly affects how a person turns out, no matter what kind of genes they have. So the only way to be a true father is to have a child and raise it, and there’s no way of doing that as a donor. And yet I’m really intrigued by the idea that someone may turn eighteen and be like, “I know that I was donated sperm, and I’m curious to find out who my father was,” actually encountering the person who’s like, “Hey, I am the result of your genetic system.” I think it’d be great to see how someone turned out. What environment, how did they grow up? What was their family like? How did they deal with being a child of a donor? I would love to have that experience, which is why I’m an identity-release person.

Dennis notes the role of nurture before returning to a more deterministic view of nature. The child is “donated sperm,” and there is no mention
of the recipient’s “genetic system” as playing a part. The rearing family provides an “environment,” but at base, the offspring is still the “child of a donor.” Later in the interview, Dennis employed kinship language in defining his connection to the child.

Even though I may never meet this kid or I may run into them on the street and never know it, but just the fact that there is that sort of connection. It’s also sort of a fatalism thing. Figure get it out there [
laughs
], as crude as that sounds, because if something were to happen to me tomorrow, I might still have a kid out there who’s a Baby [Dennis’ last name]. Their name may not be the same, but they’re going to be a part of my dad, a part of my grandfather, a part of my mom. It’s going to be a part of the family, and I think it’s a damn good family.

When women distinguish biological and social parenthood, they do so in the service of defining themselves as not-mothers. There are two aspects of this definition, both of which appear in each of the following quotes. First, egg donors routinely break out reproduction into multiple stages, differentiating conception, pregnancy, birth, and caregiving. Second, as a result of the emphasis on recipients in egg agencies, women evinced more awareness of the people to whom they were donating than did men. In fact, nearly 70% of the women pointed out that their eggs would go into another woman’s body, a detail noted by just 5% of the sperm donors.