Louise McLaughlin discovered herself when she was 13 years old. conceived by a sperm donor. When her parents told her that, she said, “I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me.”
McLoughlin grew up in Dublin as an only child. When at-home genetic testing became available in 2006, she enrolled and learned she had a half-sister. Not long after that, there was another match.
“Lo and behold, I went and found my biological father,” she told CBS News. Within hours, McLoughlin found her biological father’s website and called him the same day.
Courtesy of Louise McLoughlin
“I know I was caught off guard,” McLoughlin told the man on the other end of the phone. “I have a million questions. You might have a million questions, too.”
Her biological father said the call came out of the blue, but admitted he had donated sperm at a clinic in London many years ago. He said he thought the donations would remain anonymous but welcomed McLaughlin’s call.
“When I hear this man say, ‘You’re welcome,’ I feel guilty because I know it’s not a happy ending for everyone,” McLaughlin told CBS News.
McLaughlin currently hosts a podcast called You Look Like Me, which explores the lives of people conceived by donors. Some faced the discovery of hundreds of half-siblings.
CBS News
A recent Netflix documentary focused on the case of Jonathan Jacob Meyer, a prolific sperm donor from the Netherlands who fathered hundreds of children. Some of his donations may have reached the United States.
Meyer told CBS News he believes he has about 550 children, but acknowledged there could be more. The sperm bank he used is not required to tell him how many children were born from his donation.
In a Dutch court in 2023 The man, identified only as Jonathan M., was banned under Dutch privacy laws.who said he had fathered about 550 children and decided not to donate any more sperm. The court noted that national guidelines allow a donor to have up to 25 children with 12 mothers, and the judge said that in order to persuade the parents to accept the man as a donor, the judge “He intentionally ‘deliberately lied’ about the amount of his donation,” he said. . ”
“The people who came up with Donner have been sounding the alarm about this for years,” McLoughlin said. “We’re seeing men giving hundreds, thousands of times. They’re giving in small areas, they’re giving in similar numbers over the years. So you end up with kids growing up knowing each other, or meeting them as adults, which is incredibly dangerous.”
One risk is that the donor’s offspring may unknowingly enter into an incestuous relationship.
A Connecticut woman revealed last year that she had an unknowing affair with her half-brother in high school and said she was the victim of a fertility scam after her mother was inseminated by a doctor with his own sperm. More than 50 fertility doctors in the United States have been accused of using their own sperm to inseminate patients.
“We regulate gasoline more comprehensively, we regulate driving more comprehensively, and yet we’re actually creating lives here,” said Indiana law professor Jodi Madeira. said. She is trying to pass a law in Indiana that would make fertility fraud a felony.
Madeira said the United States is like the Wild West compared to European countries when it comes to regulating sperm donation.
“If you think it’s possible in Europe for a man to have 1,000 donor-conceived children, it’s exponentially more likely in the United States,” she told CBS News.
America has several known prolific sperm donors, including New Yorker Ali Nagal, who is said to have had 165 children and counting.
There is no national database to track sperm donations in the United States, and there is no legal limit to the number of sperm donations one person can make. There is also no requirement for donors to disclose any genetic conditions that may affect their offspring.
Madeira said it is possible to regulate sperm donation, but “in the United States, our cultural orientation simply prioritizes the market, the industry, and the wishes of the parents. Whereas in Europe, donor-conceived “We prioritize individual rights,” he said.
Louise McLoughlin said the industry could do better and said people conceived by donors should be included in the process.
“We’re not babies. We’ve been able to contribute to this conversation for a really long time, but we weren’t really given the space… this pregnancy journey, this fertility journey, It doesn’t end just because you’re over With a baby, it doesn’t end at the point of conception, it continues all the way down the road, until the child becomes an adult. These are realities that the child will have to deal with. It’s a problem.”
