- Some women have turned to Facebook groups to connect with free sperm donors and skirt sperm banks.
- Sperm-bank prices have skyrocketed — a single vial of sperm can cost $1,000.
- Unregulated sperm donation comes with plenty of risks but may be the only option for many women.
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Angela spent two years trying to get pregnant through a sperm bank. But after 10 vials of donor sperm, she was out $10,000 and still didn't have a child.
"It was getting too expensive for us," she said.
She and her wife started considering other options. That's when a friend suggested Facebook, where groups dedicated to matching up donors and people who want to get pregnant have proliferated.
Angela, whose last name has been removed to protect her privacy, met Kyle Gordy in a group called Sperm Donation USA. Gordy is a serial sperm donor — he says his donations have produced 70 children to date. He exchanged messages with Angela and her wife for about two weeks before the three decided to meet up in a public parking lot, where Kyle gave Angela a cup of his semen for free.
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She's one of countless women who have sought out sperm donors on Facebook, much in the same way you might buy a used mattress or stationary bike. Many of these women can't afford sperm from a bank, where a single vial can cost $1,000 or more. Other fertility treatments are even more expensive, and they're not typically covered by insurance, pushing more people to take unregulated, do-it-yourself approaches.
Angela recalled that one of her friends said she spent roughly the equivalent of a down payment on a house in fertility treatments to get pregnant.
"I feel for these people who have to spend all this money," she said. "You're supposed to be saving that for having kids."
Finding free donors online
The US largely doesn't track sperm-bank data, from how many men donate to banks to how many children are conceived via sperm donation every year. So while US sperm-bank costs are widely recognized to be increasing, no data has been collected on the extent of those increases.
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One reason for the increases may be that banks are now screening for many more genetic conditions in their donors than ever before, leaving a shortage of men eligible to donate to sperm banks. They seem to be transferring some of the testing costs onto the patients as well.
"If patients want more thoroughly tested gametes, there's going to be an added expense for that," Sean Tipton, the chief advocacy, policy, and development officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said.
Kristina Graham first looked into buying sperm from a bank three years ago but found the options too pricey, especially if she ended up needing multiple tries to get pregnant. She said the lowest price she and her wife could find was $500 for one vial of sperm.
"My wife and I were thinking, 'What if there were people who just wanted to do it for free?'" she said.
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She's since worked with two free sperm donors at different times, both of whom she met on Facebook. She's still trying to get pregnant, and her current donor comes to her house when she's ovulating to ejaculate into a cup so Graham can use a syringe to insert the semen inside herself — a method called artificial insemination.
Women who work with free donors and choose artificial insemination can buy the materials they need online. Facebook groups suggest the use of soft cups for semen and lubricant launchers for the insemination. Companies such as Mosie Baby and Frida Fertility sell special at-home insemination kits.
Traveling to donate
While some sperm donors may be motivated by a desire to continue their genetic line or seek sexual contact, Graham said the donors she'd worked with just seemed to want to "help make a family whole."
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Tyree Kelly, a 32-year-old donor from Arizona, said he's atoning for sins he committed as a "bad adolescent." "There's a lot that I try and do to help as many people as possible, no matter how I'm helping them," he said.
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When Kelly first considered donating his sperm, he looked into sperm banks but realized he wouldn't qualify because of his family's medical history.
Black donors such as Kelly are particularly rare at sperm banks. Kelly said a lot of women on Facebook messaged him because they specifically wanted a Black donor, often because they or their partner is Black and they want their child to look like them.
Kelly has been a donor for five years and has worked with about 45 women. He said he traveled frequently, often multiple times a month, to meet with recipients. When Insider spoke with him in October, he had just flown to Maine to meet a recipient for the first time.
Some donors, including Kelly, may ask women to cover expenses like gas or flights if they travel to donate. Donors can also mail their semen across the country, but that, too, can cost hundreds of dollars.
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An unregulated market
While sperm banks in the US are subject to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, Facebook groups where people exchange free sperm lack oversight, posing risks for both recipients and donors.
Women may have to weed through some creeps when looking for a sperm donor on Facebook. Graham and Angela said they specified to prospective donors that they wanted to get pregnant only via artificial insemination. But at the last minute, some donors would say they wanted to do only natural insemination — in other words, intercourse — or that they needed to watch the insemination happen, Angela said.
"I had one guy who said, I need to be in the room to see it was inserted into you and not your wife," she said. "I was like, we're absolutely not doing that."
Graham recalled that one donor even asked her for a nude photo.
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"He was like, 'I need to see who I'm getting pregnant,'" she said.
Posts in the Facebook groups warn of scammers among both sperm donors and recipients, too. In some posts, women call out donors who've asked for money to ship their sperm across the country, only to take the payment and disappear.
In an effort to minimize risk, some donors and intended parents sign contracts, which often delineate the role the donor should play in a future child's life.
Recipients may ask for a contract so the donor doesn't try to make a claim to the child, while donors may want to ensure they won't get roped into paying child support later on. However, some parts of these contracts aren't enforceable in most states.
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Still, the benefits outweigh the risks for some women who want to get pregnant but don't have other options.
"This is it, for some people. It's the only way they're going to have kids," Tipton from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said. "You have to balance safety, autonomy, and availability; it's a big complex picture."
Using the sperm she got from Kyle in a parking lot back in October 2020, Angela finally got pregnant. Her son turned 2 in July.
If Angela and her wife decide to have another child, "we would definitely do this process again," she said.
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Want to tell us about your experience with fertility treatments? Contact Rebecca Torrence at rtorrence@insider.com.
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