Selecting Your Sperm Donor
Making The Donor Decision
Pacific Reproductive Services recognizes that donor selection criteria will vary in accordance with the unique situation in which each couple or individual considering parenthood finds themselves.
Selecting a donor from a sperm bank catalog
Many women may choose to use a donor from a sperm bank because they want exclusive parental rights to their children (in California, like many other states, a sperm donor is not seen as the natural father of and therefore, has no parental rights to any children conceived through use of his sperm). However, being concerned that their children be guaranteed a future opportunity to know their biological heritage, many women may seek donors who are willing to meet the child once he or she reaches adulthood.
Here are some of the most commonly considered questions:
- Do I (we) want to use a "Willing To Be Known" donor?
- Should the donor have physical characteristics similar to my own (or to my partner's)?
- Can I (we) have more than one child using this donor?
- What is the donor's medical history?
- What is the donor's family's medical history?
- What are the donor's interests, education, values, talents, etc.
Additional donor information available for purchase online
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Donor Long Profiles. These are typically 10-15 pages in length and are available for all donors. They are handwritten by
each donor, and include three generations of medical and genetic history, professional and personal aspirations, interests,
personality characteristics, and why he chose to become a donor.
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Donor Baby Photos. Photo files of selected donors contain one or more images in color or black and white.
Image quality will vary depending on the original photo(s) supplied by the donor.
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Donor Adult Photos. Files of selected donors each contain one current, high quality color image.
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Donor Full-Face Video Interviews. These streaming video interviews of selected donors offer special insight
into a donor that no other medium can provide, including his personal values, career goals, why he chose to become
a donor and his hopes for donor-conceived offspring. PRS is the only sperm bank to provide video interviews.
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Donor Audio Interviews. These 15-20 minute CDs reveal a donor's thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of topics.
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Photomatching service. (This service is not available online). When you have a short list of PRS donors
you are considering, you can submit one or more photos of someone with specific physical characteristics you would
like to match to PRS. The donor coordinator will then recommend potential donor matches based on characteristics you rate
as most important.
Click here to download request form.
"I'm in my last year of law school and I won't deny the extra income is pretty helpful, but I'm also very close
with a single friend who used an identity-open sperm donor. I saw how important it was for her to give her child
the opportunity to meet the donor someday. It just felt good to me to go ahead and give another child that chance."
PRS "willing to be known" donor
"We have always worked hard to give our clients - and their children, should they wish it - the greatest possible sense of who our donors are as people while maintaining strict donor privacy. Unlike the large majority of married heterosexual couples in which male factor infertility is an issue - and who often do not tell their children they were born of sperm donation - the lesbian couples and single women we serve have a deep interest in having as much information as possible beyond a donor's physical health because they will be more disclosing with their children."