There have always been infertile, straight couples who need donor sperm, but with the legalization of gay marriage and the rise of elective singles, the market has expanded over the past decade. About 20 percent of sperm bank customers are heterosexual couples, 60 percent are gay women and 20 percent are single mothers, the banks said.
To meet this demand, men have been producing sperm at a steady rate for years, some banks have said. But the coronavirus has changed things. Existing donors were afraid to enter. New donor applications stopped for months during the lockout and never really hit back at some banks. Several banks have said that they have very old frozen sperm in storage, but that it can only take that long.
“Recruiting donors is a growing challenge,” said Scott Brown, vice president of strategic alliances for California Cryobank. “And I would definitely say that people are still very interested in having children.”
Many people also want smart sperm. Therefore, some large banks are close to elite colleges. They have sperm collection centers in Palo Alto, California, near Stanford University, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard. College men are one of the most trusted groups that can see the potential chaos of creating maybe 50 biological children around the world in exchange for about $ 4,000 over a few months – and decide this is a good deal.
A donor would usually go to a bank once or twice a week to produce enough sperm to sell to dozens of families.
“Much of their recruitment is about fraternity, but fraternity does not come together,” said Rosanna Hertz, chair of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College and co-author of Random Families, a book on donor donation. said. “People want to have sperm at university, so to speak.”
Banks therefore became desperate. One recruiter told me that since the closure of gyms, she had started driving outside. A sales representative at another sperm bank said he hoped management could offer cash bonuses to attract donors, but that his bosses were concerned about the precedent.