Diving Into Donor Conception (with Laura High)
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(Total Runtime: 5 minutes 37 seconds)
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
background music starts [0:00-5:37]
ANCHOR VO: Ircania Aybar [0:00-0:57]
For countless people around the world, starting a family includes having children. According to the CDC, about one fourth of women in the US “have difficulty getting pregnant”. Meanwhile, a 2022 study found that sperm counts have dropped internationally, by more than fifty percent in the last fifty years.
More people are struggling to have kids the traditional way and they’re finding new ways to grow their families. Aspiring parents might find their solution in adoption or artificial reproductive technologies like IVF, while others are conceiving with the help of anonymous egg or sperm donors.
The US opened their first cryobanks in the 1970s. As this method gets normalized and destigmatized, donor conceived people are being more vocal about their experiences.
Follow along with Kira Scott as we listen to one person's story. Just a reminder: this episode contains explicit language.
GUEST: Laura High [0:58-1:08]
“How I was born was kind of fucked up and how a lot of people in this industry were born is really fucked up and it doesn’t have to be this way.”
rewind sound effect [1:08-1:09]
HOST VO: Kira Scott [1:09-1:26]
That’s Laura High. A lively comedian, tiktoker and donor conceived advocate in New York City. At 14, High’s parents told her she was conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor. Up next: she explains how being donor conceived affected her identity.
HIGH: [1:27- 1:51]
So my father - my social dad - is Irish, Scottish and Catholic. We always assumed my donor would be Irish, Scottish and Catholic. But as I got older and my features really started to fall into place - didn’t really look like that, I started looking like something else.
I would have Hasidic Jewish people coming up and speaking Yiddish to me and I would be like ‘I’m so sorry I don’t speak it,” and they’re like ‘but you’re Jewish,’ and I’m like ‘I’m not’ and they’re like ‘ok..’
SCOTT: [1:52-2:05]
High was conceived in the eighties and says her parents weren’t allowed to pick her sperm donor. The fertility clinic told High’s parents that they would pick a donor that matched her father’s appearance, but more importantly, his religion. However, that’s not what happened.
HIGH: [2:06-2:34]
And then the test results came back and I am half Ashkenazi Jewish. It really affected me a lot because looking back I’m realizing that I was dealing with anti-semitism my entire life and had no idea.
50% of me is part of this incredibly rich culture, this incredible ethnicity that I felt was kind of stolen from me and I didn’t even have a chance to connect with it. It’s been a journey and it’s taken me many years.
SCOTT: [2:35-2:45]
As an advocate, High has talked with many other donor conceived people through social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. When I asked her if she had noticed any recurring themes she said
HIGH: [2:46-3:01]
The horror stories that I have heard are terrifying! One: There’s a lot of similar medical issues. It does seem like there is something within either IVF, the fertility drugs or the frozen sperm or frozen eggs that is causing Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and POTS [Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome].
SCOTT: [3:02-3:15]
As we dove deeper into these “horror stories,” it became clear that most of them were caused by the lack of regulation in the industry. So I wanted to know “how do we fix this?” High says the first step is banning anonymous donations.
HIGH: [3:16-3:34]
Anonymity needs to get banned, it’s normalized in other countries. Sweden, The UK, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, all have banned anonymity because it has been deemed unethical. The UN has deemed it unethical - has deemed like yes everybody has the right to know who their biological parents are
SCOTT: [3:35-4:07]
Allowing donor-conceived people to know the identity of their donors is important for multiple reasons. It allows them to get an updated medical history and it can quench their curiosity about the person that contributed to half of their DNA: a person who they may look like.
If donor-conceived people know who their donors are, it would also prevent accidental incest. Some fertility clinics try to prevent this by placing a limit on the amount of children that can be born from a single donor. Still emerging stories show that this limit is rarely enforced and often exceeded.
HIGH: [4:08-4:19]
We need a sibling cap, so desperately. The fact that we’re finding as many pods of 100 kids as we are is just terrifying. It affects our society, that affects our genetic diversity, it affects the health of our gene pool.
SCOTT: [4:20-4:23]
To sum it all up, High thinks it’s important to advocate for
HIGH: [4:24-4:39]
[An] Anonymity ban, updating medical history, verifying medical history, desperately need a sibling cap. [Pause] We need background checks on recipient parents and donors because it’s very easy to use donor conception for human trafficking and sex trafficking.
SCOTT: [4:40-4:53]
Advocacy for donor conceived people is still in its infancy. However, last June Colorado became “the first state in the country to prohibit anonymous egg and sperm donation” It’s a great leap, but it’s only the beginning.
HIGH: [4:54-5:22]
As we are advocating, industry and stakeholders are actively dismissing donor conceived voices. Actively! They don’t want to hear from us!
I don’t want to end donor conception. I genuinely don’t. I think that this is such a beautiful way to potentially create families for the LGBTQIA community, Single By Choice, infertile couples - I’m all a-fucking-bout it. But we gotta do it with the donor conceived person in mind, because they don’t consent to it and they are the most affected by it
HOST OUTRO: Kira Scott [5:23-5:37]
As the industry continues to grow, many donor-conceived people are optimistic and see a better path forward. For Hunter College, I’m Kira Scott. Thanks for listening.
