By Darlene Pinkerton, Founder of Coast to Coast Sperm Donation
When I began my work in third-party reproduction over 25 years ago, I never imagined that my own family history would one day become the most powerful teacher about what it means to build families through donor conception. But that’s exactly what happened when I learned the truth about my father’s origins—a truth that illuminates one of the most pressing ethical questions in our field: Do donor-conceived people have the right to know their genetic origins?
This isn’t a story about a client or someone I’ve worked with. This is my father’s story. This is my story.
A Secret Kept for Decades
My father, Harry, always talked about his wonderful upbringing. He was the baby of the family. His parents and siblings were loving and supportive. He was a successful businessman with a family of his own. He was a happy person. My father never suspected there were secrets in his family. Until he was in his late 40s, the truth was hidden from him.
The secret was discovered when my father needed his birth certificate to travel out of the country. He served in the military during WWII, but it was his sister, Annie, who brought his birth certificate to the recruiter. This time it was my mother who picked up the birth certificate for him. There it was, in writing, his sister’s name listed as mother. The name of his father said simply ‘Unknown’. And, it said he was born in NY, not his home state of MA. My mother called me immediately. I remember it so clearly. “How do I tell your father?”
Upon learning the truth, my father was confused, but out of respect for his genetic mother’s decision, my father decided to keep the family secret, and he never asked her about what happened. In fact, we didn’t speak of it again until after his genetic mother and all her siblings passed.
The story was this: When his genetic mother, Glenn became pregnant, she delivered the child (my father) in NY. We don’t know if she was placed in an unwed mother’s home or went to live with a relative. On census documents, it shows my father listed as ‘adopted’ by his ‘parents’ who really were his genetic grandparents. His genetic mother is listed on the census as his sister, and she and some of her siblings lived in the same house where my father was being raised. By finding out Glenn was actually his genetic mother, my father realized that all those people he thought were his siblings were, in fact, his aunts and uncles. Glenn married and had other children. He was raised to believe they were nieces and nephews, but now he realized they were his ½ siblings. He had always been really close to one of the boys and over the years they became best friends. The connection was deep. They didn’t know they were brothers.
My father wondered about the ‘Unknown Father.” Once Glenn passed, I convinced my father to let me approach his half-siblings born to Glenn. I told them everything I knew. One of his sisters told us that on Glenn’s dying bed she confided to her that she had given up a child for adoption many years ago and always regretted it. But Glenn didn’t say the child was my father. Nor did she say anything about the man who was the father. Upon learning the truth, these ½ siblings didn’t hesitate to embrace their newly discovered sibling. It was beautiful and healing for my father when they went to see my father, and they immediately hugged him. They all cried and said, “You are no longer ‘Uncle Harry’ – you are our brother.” My father was 80 years old when this happened. Many years he kept that secret, and he never learned about his genetic father, but he died a very happy man knowing his half-siblings loved and accepted him. Me? I still wanted to find out more about the “Unknown Father.”
The Power of DNA Testing
When I learned about commercial DNA testing through my work with egg donors I duly spit into the tube and waited. I hoped I would learn who my missing link relatives were, but it was many years before I received an answer.
“Can you please tell me why you show up all over my genetic tree through 23&me? Who are you and why would you show up on my family tree as a cousin?” read the message from Mike.
I told him what I suspected…the only way we could be related was if his grandfather was the ‘unknown father.’ Mike’s mother was my father’s half- sibling! We began to share information and photos. My father was the image of Mike’s grandfather. Grandpa Joe, as I began to call him, married his long-time girlfriend around the same time my grandmother would have discovered she was pregnant. We concluded that Grandpa Joe probably never knew about my father. One of my father’s half- siblings was still alive, but she thought I was trying to scam them, and she refused to believe this could be true about her father. She refused to meet me or speak with me. But the rest of the family started emailing me with photos and questions. In my case, it was great fun to meet others who shared a grandfather with me, but truthfully, all we did was correspond via email and send annual holiday wishes. Maybe we will meet in person someday, maybe not. I’m good with that…
How did this affect me?
For me, this was a very positive outcome – I love the color and tapestry of my life. My father never knew about his genetic father, and I feel like he smiled down on me for not giving up. I now have medical information I wouldn’t have had. I have a much larger family than I expected, and they are really nice people. As a child, I always believed I was Irish, but no one in my family was Irish. My parents would just laugh when I said being Irish was the reason why I had black hair and all my cousins were blondes. Well, I learned Grandpa Joe, with jet black hair, was 100% Irish and was born in Ireland. Nature or nurture…family traits run deep!
I also found out my genetic grandmother had many regrets about not keeping my father as her son. I am glad she was honest with her daughter, and I am glad my father knew Glenn really did care about him, and that she believed she made the best decision for him under the circumstances. I can even laugh when I think of my grandmother’s fling …she always seemed so boring to me! Most importantly, it also changed how I view a donor-conceived person’s struggle to get information about their donor, and I now do what I can to make sure that I provide a way for them to get it. Transparency and Truth – it is the ethical and moral path forward.
Lessons for The Fertility Industry
My father’s story carries profound implications for those of us working in sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogacy. It raises critical questions that we must grapple with as an industry:
First, can we ethically maintain donor anonymity in the age of consumer genetic testing? The answer is increasingly clear: No. Anonymity is an illusion we can no longer sustain. Donor-conceived people are finding their genetic relatives through DNA testing platforms, often without any preparation or support and often because someone found them and revealed a truth they didn’t know. If anonymity is impossible to guarantee, are we not obligated to build transparency into our programs from the start?
Second, what do we owe to donor-conceived people? My father’s story demonstrates that donor-conceived individuals deserve access to their genetic history. This isn’t merely about curiosity or a desire for medical information, though both are important. It’s about having a complete sense of self, understanding one’s origins, and being freed from the burden of family secrets.
Third, how do we balance the interests of all parties? Donors, recipients, and donor-conceived people all have legitimate interests and concerns. Some donors wish to help families without ongoing involvement. Some recipients prefer privacy. But we must ask ourselves: Whose interests should take priority when they conflict? I would argue that the donor-conceived person—the one who had no choice in these arrangements—has the strongest claim to information about their own genetic origins.
Building a Better Model
My father’s experience is just one reason why I, along with my daughter Kaitlin, established Coast to Coast Sperm Donation with a fundamentally different approach. We couldn’t unknow what we’d learned. We couldn’t unsee the pain that secrets caused. We require all donors to agree to identity release when the donor-conceived child reaches age 18. Many of our donors are open to connection even earlier. We limit each donor to creating no more than six family units worldwide, addressing concerns about inadvertent consanguinity and giving families more control over the number of siblings their child may have
We’ve learned through 25+ years in egg donation and surrogacy that transparency builds trust. When we give intended parents detailed profiles with adult and childhood photos, when we verify academic credentials, when we facilitate meaningful connections between donors and recipients, we create better outcomes for everyone involved. Most importantly, we center the needs and rights of the future donor-conceived person in every decision we make.
The traditional sperm bank model, built on anonymity and treating donors as “inventory,” fails to account for the lived experience of donor-conceived people. It prioritizes the convenience of donors and recipients over the fundamental rights of the children created through these arrangements.
The Ethical Imperative
My father’s experience—growing up without knowing his genetic father, a family carrying shame about his origins, spending decades uncertain about his identity—represents a preventable harm.
This doesn’t mean every donor must have an ongoing relationship with donor-conceived offspring. Identity release doesn’t obligate a donor to meet, parent, or support a child. It simply ensures that when a donor-conceived person reaches adulthood, they can access basic information about their genetic origins if they choose.
Some may argue that mandatory identity release will reduce the donor pool or make intended parents uncomfortable. These are legitimate concerns, but we find our recipients want their child to have information about their donor, and they want to speak with or meet the donor, and they want access to medical updates. Our donors want to limit the number of children born from their donation and they understand why being available for the donor conceived person is important. We must be willing to have difficult conversations about what we owe to the people created through third-party reproduction.
Moving Forward
The fertility industry stands at a crossroads. We can continue operating under outdated models that prioritize the comfort of adults over the rights of children. Or we can embrace transparency, acknowledge that anonymity is no longer tenable, and build programs that honor the dignity and rights of donor-conceived people from the beginning.
Every donor-conceived person deserves that opportunity for truth and healing. As an industry, we have both the power and the responsibility to make it happen. The ethical path forward is clear: transparency, identity release, ongoing medical updates and centering the needs of donor-conceived people in everything we do.
This is personal for me. This is why we push for identified, or known sperm donation. This is why we advocate for limiting family units. This is why we believe secrets can be discovered, but only through openness can we truly honor the dignity of all people involved in third-party reproduction—especially those who will live with these decisions for a lifetime.
————
Darlene Pinkerton is the founder and CEO of A Perfect Match, Inc., which she established in 2000 after her own experience with gestational surrogacy in 1990. In 2022, she co-founded Coast to Coast Sperm Donation with her daughter Kaitlin Pinkerton-Locher to bring transparency and ethical practices to sperm donation. Coast to Coast is an FDA-licensed tissue bank that requires identity release and limits each donor to six family units worldwide.
