Anonymous Dutch sperm donors releasing their identity

Abstract

This study examined the motivations of anonymous Dutch sperm donors to release their identity. It aimed to increase knowledge and encourage donors to become identifiable through a more informed decision, allowing more donor-conceived persons to contact their donors. Since 2010, anonymous sperm donors in the Netherlands can register in the Fiom KID-DNA Database developed by Fiom and Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital (CWZ). An online survey was sent to donors who registered in the database (May 2015–August 2017). A total of 179 male respondents participated in this study. The motives of most donors to register in the database were child-oriented: donors believe that their offspring are entitled to their physical and social details and/or they want to give their offspring the chance to contact them. Other motives are donor-oriented, such as the curiosity about the number of offspring, their well-being and the desire to establish contact. This research showed that, to encourage anonymous donors to release their identity, one should focus on providing information about the existence of DNA databases. As well as increasing the donor’s awareness of problems donor-conceived persons can experience by the lack of knowledge about their descent, answering questions and concerns from donors, and exploring the curiosity about their offspring.

Keywords:

• Sperm donation
• donor insemination
• open-identity donors
• anonymous donors
• motivation
• DNA registers

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our respondents for their cooperation. We are also grateful to Irma Polo, Hans van Hooff and Yannick van Mook for their assistance in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Fiom is funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports. They had no influence on the contents of this article.