FERTILITY
Making motherhood a reality in the face of virtually every cultural taboo
SINGLE WOMEN AND LGBTQ+ COUPLES are increasingly pursuing pregnancy via known donors—people they find on the internet, in Facebook groups and through dating-like apps. In her own quest to become a solo mother by choice, investigative journalist Valerie Bauman has spent the past four years embedded in the world of freelance sperm donation, attempting to get pregnant. Along the way, she interviewed dozens of donors, recipients, donor-conceived people and relevant experts. She learned that freelance sperm donation thrives in a corner of the online world where women’s dreams come true: Many find decent men who will get them pregnant for little-to-no-cost. It’s also a place where men go for easy sex.
Either way, more Americans are turning to this world to build their own unconventional families, whether driven by cost, fear of assisted-fertility institutions or a desire to know the biological other half of their child. Nearly 171,000 American women used sperm from a bank to get pregnant in 1995. By 2016 that number had risen to more than 440,000. As more U.S. women wait longer to marry and have a child, the demand for donor sperm has grown. Rosanna Hertz, author of single by chance, mothers by choice, estimated that approximately 2.7 million American women are single mothers by choice. This excerpt from newsweek reporter Bauman’s new book, inconceivable, provides a window into how exactly the world of unregulated sperm donations work.
THEY INSEMINATE THEMSELVES IN CARS, PUBLIC restrooms and cheap motel rooms. They pray over urine-drenched sticks, guzzle supplements by the dozen and sometimes have unprotected sex with men they’ve only just met on the internet, Facebook groups or dating-like apps—whatever it takes to make their baby dreams come true.
What could possibly drive a woman out of the cool, clinical embrace of the health care industry for one of the biggest medical decisions of her life? For some it’s the insurmountable costs imposed by the reproductive industry, or discrimination, or a lack of insurance coverage. Others just want to know the person who will help create their child.
I am one of those women. Like most, I started out scrolling through the sperm bank websites, analyzing donor profiles and squinting at their baby pictures. I even made a color-coded spreadsheet (green for positive attributes, red for negative and yellow for things that gave me pause). But like many women, I soon realized that sperm banks weren’t the answer, not for me. I wanted to know th
