donor conceived voices

I was raised in the Philadelphia area with my triplet sisters. We had always known that our parents used medication and artificial insemination to boost their chances of having a baby. However, they neglected to tell us they also received assistance from a sperm donor — for forty-two years.

When Eric Fish took a DNA test for fun, he initially wrote off the unexpected results as “a bad algorithm”.

Lynne W Spencer reflects on nearly three decades of personal exploration and research about common themes that emerge in the donor conceived experience.

Lauren Burns, author of Triple Helix: My Donor Conceived Story reflects on the challenges of memoir writing.

Donor conceived people want to know the identity of their genetic parent(s) to varying degrees. Some have a burning desire to know everything about who they are and where they come from, while others are content with the information on a donor profile.

I have been drowning for two years with two weights tied to my legs, pulling me beneath the surface, dragging me down. The first weight was my biological father ending our relationship, and subsequently being ignored by every member of his family.

My heart breaks for my friends and other fellow donor conceived people who have reached out to their sperm sellers and been rejected. To clarify, I use the term “sperm seller” because “sperm donor” does not correctly portray the American industry.

I finally found the email of the man who I think is my donor dad. It took me about three weeks to work up the nerve to email him. I finally did, last night.

Donor conceived people are sometimes criticized for being angry. I am one of them, and I’m ok with that.

“Do you have any siblings?.” I’ve been asked that question so many times that I developed an automatic response: “No, I’m an only child.” Even when asked now, sometimes I’ll cut myself off in the middle of answering, reminding myself of my new reality.

Donor conceived people hear this a lot. And sure, on paper and in my heart he is, but he’s not in the nucleus of my every cell. He’s not in the chromosomes of my children, no matter how hard or how long I wished he was.

Those who pose existential questions like this cannot imagine the traumatic and confusing situations that many donor-conceived people regularly experience, and they are unable to see that the question itself is rude, hurtful, and irrelevant.

“Your parents are the people who raised you,” says everyone who has a complex about that particular thing. I agree. They are. But so is he.

I have an unknown amount of siblings. I just found a new brother. I can’t contact him. I want to know him. I mean, why wouldn’t I? He’s my, from what I can see, baby brother.

For most of my life, I have known that I am donor conceived. Yet now that I can look back from this point in time, I see myself as living with thick blindfold over my eyes. Growing up, I didn’t really have any remarkable emotions when I thought about my biological father.

What’s wrong with donor conception? I don’t even know where to begin. To start with, apart from having no medical records, being conceived by ‘artificial insemination’ is just weird.

When I got my first set of test results back in 2012, I made a bargain with myself that if I gave in to my irrepressible desire to find out who I was and where I came from, then I would be satisfied.

I am a donor-conceived person. This means that my mom went to a fertility clinic with a sperm bank and was artificially inseminated to get pregnant. As a single mom, she felt this was her only option. She elected to use an anonymous sperm donor.

I cannot describe what it feels like to see your father’s face for the first time. I was on the couch and the lights were off, TV on, and the whole world stopped.

Letters from donor conceived individuals to their biological fathers or other genetic family members in search of information and human connection.