Christina is 40, an entrepreneur in California, and expecting her first baby this December. She is a single mother by choice. From the moment she began seriously planning her family, she knew one thing: she did not want an anonymous sperm donor and started looking for identified sperm donation.
“I felt very strongly from the beginning that I was uncomfortable working with a traditional sperm bank,” she says.
After looking at donor profiles from some of the larger traditional sperm banks, Christina realized how much she wanted to know about the person who would contribute half of her child’s genetics.
She wanted to understand more about the donor’s motivations for donating and, perhaps most importantly, who he was as a person.
“You just don’t really know — truly understanding their motivations, or if they’re really a good, kind person, or if they’re accurately reflecting themselves.”
But the deeper reason was her child.
“If my child ever did want to get to know him in the future, I wanted to know that it was someone I felt comfortable about them getting to know — and possibly being a figure in our lives.”
Choosing openness from the beginning
Christina had done her research. She had learned that professional guidance increasingly supports openness in donor conception, including disclosure to donor-conceived people and preserving information about their genetic origins.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) has strongly encouraged disclosure of donor conception to offspring and recommends that programs maintain medical and genetic information about donors. ASRM also notes that access to genetic information can be important to donor-conceived people as they understand their biological heritage and make future healthcare decisions.
For Christina, the issue came down to giving her future child options.
“Having access to biological relatives, to ask questions and have those answered, is good for them — for their psychological development and security. So, I preferred to have that option available.”
She didn’t know whether her child would eventually want a relationship with the donor. She didn’t know what that relationship might look like.
She simply wanted to make sure the possibility existed.
Family limits mattered, too
The number of families a donor could potentially help was another non-negotiable for Christina.
“I was very uncomfortable with the large family limits and the poor regulation and monitoring of that [at traditional sperm banks]. I wanted small family limits.”
For her, choosing a donor wasn’t simply about finding someone who met a list of physical characteristics or educational credentials. She was looking for a process that felt thoughtful, personal and focused on the long-term interests of the child.
A path that can be hard to find
Identified donation, smaller family limits and rigorous medical screening together can narrow the field considerably. Christina searched for months and found very few options that met all three of her priorities.
It was her reproductive endocrinologist at her fertility clinic who pointed her toward Coast to Coast Donation.
At the time, the Coast to Coast donor database had only about 40–50 profiles.
“I was concerned at first that there were only about 40 donor profiles. What is the chance that one of them is someone I’m going to feel comfortable about, and excited about?”
Then she started reading the profiles and watching the videos sent by her Match Coordinator.
Christina found her match.
“I was very lucky, where I found that I did connect with one of the donors quite strongly, and early.”
What made that possible, she says, was depth.
Rather than relying only on a data sheet of physical characteristics, education and medical history, Christina had the opportunity to learn about the donor through videos and long-form written responses.
“Having the videos, where you could really get a real sense for them, and that you had more personal answers from them — I felt like I got a better sense of who they were and how they thought as individuals. From getting their own writing, and what mattered to them, and their interests and their values.”
She reserved him, and then they met.
From a donor profile to a real person
Connor is an entrepreneur too, a background Christina recognized instantly as close to her own.
They had come from similar places and made similar kinds of decisions about work, risk and building something independently. That wasn’t a box she’d set out to check. It was simply what happened when two people with parallel approaches to life sat down across from each other.
They resonated, and they agreed to move forward.
Connor was comfortable being completely identified, with legal agreements and contact information in place for future communication. Christina felt reassured by the screening process and the guidance she received from the Coast to Coast team as they worked through the steps toward donation.
Part of the process, required by Christina’s fertility clinic, was a joint consultation with a psychologist to talk through future contact — how much, what kind, and what each of them expected from the other over the next eighteen years and beyond.
That conversation is one Christina believes no one should skip.
Contact expectations are easy to put off when everyone is focused on getting pregnant, but they can become much harder to navigate later if the people involved haven’t talked about them upfront.
“You need to be compatible up front about what level of contact and communication.”
That kind of conversation is consistent with the broader direction of professional guidance around donor conception, which emphasizes counseling, informed consent and clear expectations about information sharing and future relationships.
After all the necessary medical testing was completed and legal documents were signed, Connor’s donation took place at a partner laboratory in New York City.
What she tells other women
Christina is now part of several single-mother-by-choice communities in her area through group threads, meetups and networking groups. She regularly tells other women about the option of identified, directed sperm donation.
“So many of them are not aware that an option like this exists. They’d already chosen a donor through a sperm bank, and so many of them said: I wish I knew that was an option. I would probably have done that.”
She believes that as more prospective parents learn about the possibilities beyond traditional anonymous donation, identified donation may become an increasingly attractive choice.
“I really think this is going to become more common going forward, as a preferred choice for women.”
For Christina, choosing an identified sperm donor wasn’t about predicting what her child will want someday.
It was about making sure the choice would remain available to her child.
“I can move forward confidently knowing that my child will have information about the donor and, when they’re ready, the potential opportunity to connect with him.”
Christina and Connor are pseudonyms. This story is shared with permission.
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Research & Professional Guidance
American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). Gamete and embryo donation guidance. Fertility and Sterility, 2024;122(5):799–813. ASRM’s current guidance addresses donor screening, testing, counseling and directed donation. Read the ASRM 2024 guidance
Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Informing offspring of their conception by gamete or embryo donation: An Ethics Committee opinion. Fertility and Sterility, 2018;109(4):601–605. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2018.01.001. This opinion strongly encourages disclosure of donor conception and supports maintaining medical and genetic information about donors. Read the ASRM 2018 Ethics Committee opinion
American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Updated terminology for gamete and embryo donors: directed (identified) to replace “known” and nonidentified to replace “anonymous”: a committee opinion. Fertility and Sterility, 2022;118:75–78. ASRM explains that the rise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing and other technologies means expectations of perpetual donor anonymity can no longer be assured. Read the ASRM terminology guidance
Golombok, S. (2021). Love and truth: What really matters for children born through third-party assisted reproduction. Child Development Perspectives, 15, 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12406
Burke, L. M., Lavery, S. A., et al. (2021). How do individuals who were conceived through the use of donor technologies feel about the nature of their conception? Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. Harvard Center for Bioethics
