Black sperm donors wanted: Black women seeking to have a baby struggle, with few Black men donating
When Venus Brady, a Black woman who lives on the South Side, decided to become a single mother, she knew she wanted a baby who shares her ethnicity.
She says her Black heritage is important to her and is proud to come from a “very Black family" — people who took off from work for Juneteenth even before it became a federal holiday.
But when she checked the donor catalog at Midwest Sperm Bank in Downers Grove, she says she found just two Black donors — and they didn’t meet her criteria, which included genetic considerations.
So she expanded her search beyond Illinois and eventually found more of a selection at the Seattle Sperm Bank, she says, but, even then, some of the men with Black heritage identified as biracial.
“It was, like, all right, I’ve got these three to choose from,” says Brady, 42, of Pullman. “Do I just abandon hope? Do I wait to see if somebody else comes up? So it was a lot of prayer.”
Brady went ahead with a biracial donor with Black and Italian heritage and had a son, who's now 5, through in vitro fertilization.
Though Black men make up 13% of the U.S. male population, they account for under 3% of sperm-bank donors, according to a study this year in the journal Fertility and Sterility, published by the American Society of Reproductive Health. White men, who make up 55% of the male population, account for 61% of sperm donors — a disparity that affects not only Black women like Brady but also same-sex couples and heterosexual couples with fertility issues.
In the past year, well-known Black women including rapper and Chicago native Da Brat have spoken out about their struggles to find Black sperm donors.
Black donors hard to find
Experts say the reasons that Black men become sperm donors at a lower rate include a widespread distrust of the medical community and fears of perpetuating the stereotype of absentee Black fathers. To change that, there have been calls for sperm banks to expand outreach and to reconsider some of their donor requirements.
Angela Stepancic, a Chicago native, has opened Reproductive Village Cryobank in Washington, D.C., where she now lives. Stepancic says she thought it was important to open a Black-owned cryobank — which she says has raised 35% of its $500,000 initial fundraising goal — after taking part in a webinar in which the head of a large cryobank spoke of the difficulties in finding Black donors.
“I decided to reframe my thinking from ‘How do we help you get more donors?’ to ‘How do we do this for ourselves?’ " says Stepancic, 42, who chose a Latino donor for her now-2½-year-old daughter when she and her wife couldn’t find a Black donor. “I know where Black people are. Just like we created HBCUs for us, we can create this for us.”
Chicago shortage
In the Chicago area, the online catalog for the Midwest Sperm Bank recently showed 42 available donors. About 81% identified themselves as Caucasian. One donor identified himself as African American, listing two African American parents. The only other donor with African American heritage described himself as "Caucasian and African American" and listed Creole parents.
Midwest Sperm Bank didn't respond to interview requests, though a staff member who refused to be identified, said in a brief call that Black donors sometimes are lined up but don't show up: “The doctor schedules them to come in, and they don’t show up.”
Its guidelines require potential donors to commit to making weekly visits for at least 12 months and says they must be at least 5-feet-10-inches tall, between 19 and 40 years old, have exclusively female sex partners and have a bachelor's degree or be attending a four-year college. They are paid up to $70 per donation.
Black donors who aren’t put off by such requirements might still feel hesitant to donate because of mistrust in medicine borne of unequal access to medical care and the unethical experiments that were done on African American men with syphilis for the Tuskegee study, experts say.
Dr. Denise Asafu-Adjei, Loyola Medicine's director of male reproductive medicine, says she hears such concerns even when men are just beginning the process, getting a semen analysis.
“It’s, like, ‘Well, where is my sperm going?’ ” Asafu-Adjei says. “ ‘Who is going to take this?’ I think those fears are definitely higher in my minority patients, and I think a large part of that is due to the history of some of these nefarious actions with genetic information.”
“Many sperm banks require you to have three generations of medical history,” says Dr. Cassie Hobbs, a coauthor of the disparity study, who is a reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. “When we’re thinking about Black people, a lot of our grandparents didn’t even have access to care. That definitely puts us at a further disadvantage.”
Hobbs says another factor is that, with accessible genetic testing services like 23andMe, it’s more difficult for donors to remain anonymous.
Also, some Black men might want to avoid being perceived as parents who abandoned their kids. “I think there is a fear of being labeled as not being in a child’s life, specifically for Black people, because that has been a label put on a lot of Black men,” Hobbs says. “In order to actively avoid that, they steer away from donating because they don’t want to have children that they don’t know out there.”
Hobbs’ study also cited research that's found that religions whose followers include a large number of Black people, including Islam and certain Christian denominations, often oppose the use of donor gametes or reproductive technologies.
Also, Asafu-Adjei says, "A lot of people in minority communities don't really understand what the process is."
Alternatives to sperm banks
As alternatives to sperm banks, some businesses help clients find what are referred to as known Black donors, who aren't anonymous. The Arlington, Virginia-based donor matchmaking service The Seed Scout reported having 381 donors, with about 12% identifying as Black. The Seed Scout opens its network to gay donors, limits donors to providing sperm donations to only a maximum of three clients, paying donors $5,000 per client and requiring them to be 24 or older in an effort to ensure that they understand the weight of their decision. Donors are required to provide annual updates on family medical history.
Seed Scout says it doesn't reject prospective donors based on education, physical characteristics such as height or medical history, except for those with HIV. Clients seeking a sperm donor are given a medical report and then decide if a donor is a good fit.
Many other sperm banks turn away men with a family history of sickle cell anemia, which is more prevalent among African Americans, according to the donor disparity study, which also noted that federal regulations banned donations from men from certain African countries after 1977 due to a “perceived increased risk for HIV positivity.”
“I think, when you build an ethical company and when you explain to people the issue with the system and tell them how you’re trying to fix that, it just makes it a more appealing prospect to donate,” says Danielle Winston, co-funder of The Seed Scout.
Stepancic says she has a similar aim with the Reproductive Village Cryobank, saying, "A lot of health care hasn't been tailored around the Black male experience.”
Stepancic says that, if a donor is rejected because of a health issue, the cryobank connects him with a health provider to address it.
“You're not just making a deposit," she says. "We actually do care about your health and your life and wellness.”
Asafu-Adjei says she sees hope for improving the number of Black sperm donors.
“I think you can encourage people to care about diversity,” she says. “As we drive the market of wanting more Black sperm donors, I think that's what's going to actually prompt some change.”
Hobbs says sperm banks need to take a different approach to recruiting Black donors.
“I think the elephant in the room is that we're just approaching [them] in the same way that we approach anyone else but not with the knowledge that Black people are not OK with the medical system,” she says. “I think there needs to be acknowledgment of the trauma and the historical patterns that exist.”
She says she thinks that Black women will help change things.
“I think we just need to continue speaking out about this because a lot of people are just, like, ‘Oh, I didn't even know there was an issue,’ "Hobbs says. "I think it needs to come from us.”