062 Sperm Donor Conceived: 80 Siblings & Counting

In this episode, we delve into the remarkable story of Fran Tusso, who shares her unique experiences as a child of a sperm donor with an ever-growing family of over 80 siblings. Fran offers insights into the emotional and social complexities of donor conception, exploring the connections she’s formed and the challenges she's faced in understanding her identity. Tune in for an ultimate discussion on the modern family dynamics and the implications of sperm donation.

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Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

Music.

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Hey guys, Danica here from Multispective and I'm here to share with you a new episode where I interview Fran, a sperm donor conceived child who's grown up with a lot of complications regarding this. She grew up to find out that she's got many more siblings than she thought she did and she talks about this firsthand. It's a very personal story to her, but there's so much I learned about it as well. Things about things that I would have never thought about myself, situations that she found herself in, risks that she found herself in, Fran. Welcome to Multispective. I am so excited to have you here and share your incredible journey with us on air.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06

Thank you so much for inviting me. Like, I've never really done anything like this. So this is like totally new. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

Okay. Well, I hope this is going to be the first of many. Because I mean, you have such a unique and incredible story. And it's one that's kind of, you know, people are talking about it more now than ever, because I do think that technology is a huge reason for why we're able to, you know, explore these different parts of ourselves and our journey and our families and our experiences. So and I think especially that is important for you and your journey as well

SPEAKER_02: 1:41

even like what you say about this being a unique story is so interesting to me because obviously like I didn't really grow up with people like me but then you know once you find out you have a hundred siblings you're like a hundred people share this story so it's almost like very humbling like I'm just one of a hundred in my sibling pod let alone in in the world. It's definitely very humbling and very interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 2:14

It's kind of scary because I have read a little bit about this kind of topic and a lot of I don't know whether you would call it victims of this.

SPEAKER_02: 2:25

I think different people have different words for it. I would say this isn't very common actually but all the documentaries I see are kind of like people doing this illegally and even though half siblings and I didn't weren't born through like illegal black market sperm donation situations it's still unregulated and a lot of it like shouldn't be legal in my opinion not to say like the sperm donation system as a whole obviously but what happened I would say we are victims of the system but that's just how I classify myself

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

right yeah it's like you know a lot of people kind of get to that place where they're like am I just a statistic I've just become a population now I'm no longer someone that is unique to a unique set of sort of parents and even if it is like donor conceived just simply knowing that your father maybe has only had two or three other you know children then you still feel there's a uniqueness that you feel from that but you know if it's like hundreds and hundreds of them and you're kind of every day finding new siblings you start to realize like okay like where where do i fit into this puzzle now you

SPEAKER_02: 3:40

know exactly um we have like a running joke in um like our sibling pod every time like 23 and me or like ancestry go on sale we're like okay get ready guys like be prepared like they're

SPEAKER_00: 3:53

coming right do you feel like every time you discover find a new one like how do you generally feel like at this point now that you've discovered so many are you like oh well it's just another one or are you still really like emotionally you know affected by it

SPEAKER_02: 4:09

you know i'd say like it depends on the situation like a lot of times they'll just like one of us will connect through like ancestry or even through the donor registry itself and then they're added to like we have like a facebook group and they're added in and it's like oh there's another one but like i've had situations where i found out like people i'm working with are my siblings um like x amount of days into a job and i'm like that's unsettling but like it it worked out but might not have

SPEAKER_00: 4:42

right yeah yeah so let's let's just go right back to the beginning i'm sure our listeners have already kind of figured out what this is going to be about of course um but i do want to go back to the beginning and like your very journey of this how did you find out that you were donor conceived in the first place was it your mom that told you and then sort of like how did you start to realize that you there were more yeah

SPEAKER_02: 5:04

so um I grew up with a single mom, which isn't standard. I mean, there's no standard here, but that's

SPEAKER_01: 5:11

not

SPEAKER_02: 5:12

the case for every donor conceived child. A lot of times, if someone's husband is infertile, they'll go to donor conception or queer couples. But in my case, I was born to a single mother. So I wouldn't say I always could sense something was up. Once I started going to school, I went to Catholic school, which non-traditional families are very like

SPEAKER_00: 5:37

controversial yeah

SPEAKER_02: 5:39

yeah so like my teachers would ask where my dad was like back to school night and I'd be like what dad like I don't know what you're talking about I just don't have one of those but then like as I got older people would be like no like everyone has a dad and I was like well I don't so like that clearly cannot be true but like I remember I think the earliest memory where I like realized this was like something kind of different was I always say language class in elementary school especially like the family unit we took Spanish in my elementary school and so you know to practice we'd talk about our families or there'd be like a project where you interview your family but like you report their answers in Spanish they were like you know just interview everyone in your house and I was like that's my mom like you're getting a really small project from me and I noticed that my teachers would respond very like almost sympathetically. And

SPEAKER_01: 6:38

I

SPEAKER_02: 6:38

was like, there's nothing going on. I just don't have a dad. And then I think when I was in fourth grade, I think I was 12, my mom sat me down and she brought out this huge folder, a blue folder, full of information on my biological father, my sperm donor. And it was all the stuff from blood type, health history, to physical favorite color childhood pets so I think that was really interesting because you know everything about him but his name and who he is and when you're a child you don't really at least for me I didn't wrap my head around this the right way I would say I was like oh so I've had a dad this whole time and you've been like keeping him from me like what's up with that and obviously that was not the case but as a kid that was really weird and there's like a donor registry I don't really know what it's like for other sperm banks but at least for the one that I was conceived with like you could go on there and it's optional to like list um basic info about your children like basically just gender and age um and there was 12 people on there and at the time I was like this is crazy who could possibly have 12 12 siblings little little did I know there was like way more but 12 was like the highest number I had heard of at the time and I remember my mom being like you know just like whatever you do like maybe don't share this in school and so I walked into school and I was like what is up you guys I have 12 siblings you will never believe this can we meet them and I was like I can't meet them like what do you mean no one believed me i looked like a weirdo but that was like the first time i found out and then eventually i was able to like make contact with one of my sisters and from there i just kept meeting and talking to them and finding out about new ones and it just kept on going

SPEAKER_00: 8:54

isn't there supposed to be a regulation at least on with regards like how many sperm donations a man can make

SPEAKER_02: 9:02

yeah there should be and I don't think that there is. If there is, it's not working in my case because there's so many of us. Because if you think about it, 80 siblings is honestly a modest estimate that we know of. We know of 80, but it's fair to say there's more. But if you think about it, not every attempted conception comes to term, not everything results in a pregnancy. So there had to be hundreds, hundreds of donations just from my biological father alone and that's like crazy I've read um I think I read on like Wikipedia that there's like a limit to how many um how many children can be born from the same sperm donor within like a population size so like within like a certain area there should only be like 25 but um as far as I know that was not if that's

SPEAKER_00: 10:04

not the case

SPEAKER_02: 10:04

that was not in my case. It's actually like I have siblings all over the country, but I'd say there's very strong concentrations where I live in the East Coast of America, which is, I guess, nice as I get older because I can meet more siblings like face to face.

SPEAKER_01: 10:24

But,

SPEAKER_02: 10:25

you know, it's it's still like it's a little just unsettling. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 10:30

I imagine like, you know, you mentioned that, you know, you're finding out that someone that you work with or you've you've potentially dated or you know been really close to not having any idea that this person is actually a sibling what would you say are some of the biggest challenges you've experienced with this

SPEAKER_02: 10:47

yeah so usually the number one question people ask me is like oh have you dated a sibling and i'm like no not hopefully but like now like when i date people i'm like you you're like sure that's your dad like you look like you've been like like maybe yeah yeah that's crazy like he's on the birth certificate like he DNA test so it's something

SPEAKER_00: 11:12

like it's crazy to think that that has to be a question that you have to ask in order to weed out you know a potential potential date you know yeah

SPEAKER_02: 11:22

and like it's kind of an off-putting question but you really don't want to get far at all with someone without knowing yeah you're definitely not related but even like the fact that I thought I could never come across one of my siblings in the wild but you know just a couple months ago like suddenly like someone I'm working with is my sibling and it's been great don't get me wrong

SPEAKER_00: 11:46

but

SPEAKER_02: 11:47

that shouldn't happen

SPEAKER_00: 11:49

oh exactly wow that's really crazy have you seen that documentary the man with a thousand kids

SPEAKER_02: 11:55

I've heard a lot about it but I haven't gotten around to watching it but like I need to watch it

SPEAKER_00: 12:00

are you are you more do you feel like you're inclined to watch these kind of documentaries because you feel like there's going to be some useful information from it, or are you kind of averse to it because it's just too triggering for you?

SPEAKER_02: 12:13

Um, I wouldn't say it's triggering, necessarily. It's just, like, I think the, like, almost, I don't want to say, like, underground sperm market, but, like, I think that's a very separate situation from mine, so it just hasn't always, like, completely resonated with me. But, like, I still don't think those two scenarios are that dissimilar. Even in the donor-conceived community, I'd say, people who were born from, like, a Right. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 13:13

No, but that's really, actually, it's really, I'm really glad that you brought that up because honestly, there are issues that can really like health related issues. These things are passed down in DNA and it's really important for there to be that responsibility, right? That accountability that, Hey, look like these are the things that I carry with me. And now beyond that, it's your choice to conceive or not through me. Right. But you know, if a person is not being responsible, aware of it beforehand well then it is like a betrayal right you're you're bringing someone into this world without you know their knowledge of of what they could you know have down the line

SPEAKER_02: 13:48

100 and i think um especially like in my like my particular situation i'm only i'm about 21 a lot of my half siblings are like i don't want to say much older than me but they're in their like early mid 30s um because my donor started donating in college when he did Yeah. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 14:37

Have you seen your dad or reached out to your dad eventually? Did you finally find out who he is and where he

SPEAKER_02: 14:45

is? So I wasn't supposed to know until I was 18. But like I said, many of my siblings are older than me by 10, 15 years. So once he was out there, he was out there. And we started off by writing letters back and forth, because I thought that was cool. I was like, I'm writing letters. Yeah. Yeah. has had consequences that I didn't expect.

SPEAKER_00: 16:24

Did you ever confront your dad or ask him, like, why did you do this? What's the reason for, you know, spreading your seed so far and wide? Why couldn't you limit it to, I mean, did you think about the consequences of what you were going to do? Like, did you ever have that conversation with him?

SPEAKER_02: 16:42

I didn't have that conversation with him, actually. But when I got that folder, I got a little CD with like an interview with him, which was like, kind of a fun thing to have, I Yeah. And so it was for like, I don't know, things that couples need, probably. I think that, especially when I first started talking to him, I was almost seeking like a paternal figure, which obviously not the right person to go to.

SPEAKER_00: 17:40

Yeah, because I do think a lot of like kids, you know, are looking to a father figure, right? And you're ultimately looking for your father to have that fatherly figure connection. So it totally makes sense having to realize and recognize that that's not going to be perfect. by your actual father and rather he's just a person to get the information that's needed for your livelihood and that's kind of as far as it goes so your donor conceived father never kind of never took on any kind of roles or like maybe financially helped in any way or you know supported in any sort of way just

SPEAKER_02: 18:17

definitely not for me I have some siblings who live more in his like region of America that I believe had more of that kind of connection with him but we don't have that anymore and it's for the best we have each other

SPEAKER_00: 18:33

how how is it then when you when you speak about it with your mom how did your mom come to terms with you know all of this like knowing and understanding that there are so many of you I

SPEAKER_02: 18:44

think because I grew up an only child like I'm my mom's only child and so I think it was difficult for her see me like actively like almost seeking a father, I could definitely see how that would make her feel like. Almost not enough, but that was never the case. I was a kid and she was a mom, so we couldn't really have those conversations, especially when I was like 12. But I think when I started talking to other siblings, I would talk to them very often. Had to have been at the very least weird for her.

SPEAKER_01: 19:23

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 19:24

who are sister but like I've never met this sister and I don't know who she is and I think it also raises questions of like internet safety because since my siblings are like a lot of them are much older than me like I was talking to random adults on the internet who just happen to be related to me by blood and so sometimes I think about that and I'm like that's really weird

SPEAKER_00: 19:50

like yeah

SPEAKER_02: 19:51

luckily they're very good people so nothing bad happened to me

SPEAKER_00: 19:56

but if

SPEAKER_02: 19:57

I if there had been one bad apple like things could have been very different and very scary

SPEAKER_00: 20:04

yeah exactly and I would imagine not all of them would necessarily see feel that same sibling kind of protectiveness for each other because there's so many of you and no one has really you guys have all met each other so late in your lives that you haven't had a history you haven't had an upbringing together but it's also I can imagine that being really weird to tell your mom like hey mom I'm gonna meet a sibling who's 30 years older than me and I don't know where this person's background is but it's my sibling so I want to trust that this person is yeah and I

SPEAKER_02: 20:32

think it's interesting because I definitely feel like a strong sense of closeness with my siblings but not everyone feels that way and that's totally fine this is a really weird situation and

SPEAKER_00: 20:45

everyone

SPEAKER_02: 20:46

can have their feelings like totally valid but like even just in language like I call them my siblings but some of them And we'll say, have siblings. And that's cool. Because that's also what we are. Some of us are very active in the big sibling group chat. Some of us aren't. Some of us have kids. And that's crazy. Because now I have not only this many siblings, but I have this many nephews and nieces.

SPEAKER_00: 21:12

Nephews and nieces, yeah. I

SPEAKER_02: 21:13

would say that dynamic's even a little stranger. Because it's like... It's like degrees of separation almost, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00: 21:24

Yeah, for sure. And I

SPEAKER_02: 21:25

have some nieces and nephews who I've met, and they're the coolest little babies ever. But there's some I hardly know, but I'm like, biologically I'm your aunt, but you don't want to overstep that line at all because that's

SPEAKER_01: 21:38

me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:41

The whole dynamic goes beyond even just donor-conceived-child-sperm-donor and donor-conceived-child-half-sibling. There's family trees of how these people work. It's so much more nuanced than you expect.

SPEAKER_00: 22:01

Thank you. Shhh. So tell me about if you were to make a family tree today, that same assignment that was given to you when you were in high school, what would it look like today for you in your mind?

SPEAKER_02: 23:02

That's like really funny. So I'm in college now. And I'm going to be a junior. But my freshman year, I had to take like language classes. And I went back to Spanish. And on like a test, it was like, you know, like write a paragraph about your family. And my professors like took off points because i said i have a hundred siblings he was like surely you mean 10 and i didn't even bother going up to him honestly because i did so bad on that test that like those points would not have given me anything but you know they're a part of my story but i kind of keep in my head like my my sibling family like my sibling pod separate from my family i grew up with for the to that rule like I have a brother who I invite to Thanksgiving every year even if he goes with another sibling it's fine I don't take it personally but like some of my siblings like some of my older siblings especially are like close with some of the younger siblings parents because in earlier like probably like when I was less than 10 our Facebook group was the parents of the younger siblings and then just the older siblings So then there's that kind of dynamic.

SPEAKER_00: 24:28

It's really hard. Yeah, it's complicated.

SPEAKER_02: 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:32

I'm just wondering, like, if your mom were to have a second child, you would have, like... I don't know, like half siblings, but from your mom's side, well, that could make things even more sort of really interesting dynamic because it would be like, well,

SPEAKER_02: 24:45

still a half sibling. Oh, yeah. if they're willing to share it.

SPEAKER_00: 25:41

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. Right. I mean, I was just talking about your situation, but I mean, the reality is that true. Yeah. If you, for example, had a sibling with your mom, technically they would also be related to your dad's side siblings. Yeah. If it was the

SPEAKER_02: 25:57

same sperm donor or it could be a different sperm donor. There's so many different structures of these families that have donor conceived children.

SPEAKER_00: 26:09

Okay. So talk to me about like what are some really cool you know ways or things that you found that connects you to your siblings like things that are similar between you guys that you maybe only find that to be quite unique to you and your half siblings that you know maybe has come from your dad

SPEAKER_02: 26:25

Yeah, that's like really interesting. I've like, I noticed, especially like reading through the file on my dad, I know this is kind of off topic, but like I would notice like shared like the favorite, like my biological father's favorite like soda or like sparkling water flavor. One of my sisters, she lives in Arizona. She is like, we joke that we're twins, even though she does have like an actual twin because I think we think the exact same we're like we're just on the same page and I think the biggest thing is like when you're on the same page with a sibling it it feels like maybe like there is something to all this

SPEAKER_00: 27:08

you know yeah because it makes you really think about this nature versus nurture right like how much of things is because of an upbringing and how much of it is really in my DNA right even down to the likes and preferences

SPEAKER_02: 27:19

because like this is besides the blood that we share she he's a stranger across the country. So, you know, it's, it's easy to look for things in common to kind of make sense of all of this and make these connections meaningful. You know, when you tell people like, Hey, I have like a crazy amount of siblings and we're like from a sperm donor, you know, some people will be like, that's so cool. Like you have siblings everywhere. And other people are like, that's not what makes a family. And,

SPEAKER_01: 27:54

you

SPEAKER_02: 27:55

know, to each their own but like what makes a family is just that connection in my opinion and so sometimes you almost resort to trying to create those connections just to like validate that relationship in your head the term like blood is thicker than water it's very straightforward for most families but for my situation I do I share blood with a lot of people and that's not always true unless you want it to Right.

SPEAKER_00: 28:26

Can you tell me, for example, if you or any of your siblings are really negatively affected by this situation and decided to take a court case against your sperm donor, what do you think the outcome would be? Are there any laws now to support this kind of situation, to support you guys in this situation? I

SPEAKER_02: 28:49

think that there's still kind of that gray area there. To my knowledge, none of my siblings have even thought about it. Yeah. Yeah. protecting their anonymity in a lot of cases like you can never meet your donor he is 100 anonymous your whole life but a lot of that has changed since you know the the creation and the popularization of like dna tests

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

even

SPEAKER_02: 29:44

within my sibling pod everyone has a different experience with how they found out about him etc etc i think if anything we might have something there related to the sperm bank itself. But I think that at this point, our sperm donor is pretty untouchable.

SPEAKER_00: 30:03

That's just so sad or so scary to think about. If he actually did have a medical history and he's had like 80, 100, 150, 200 kids and it's being passed down to majority of them, you have basically affected a massive population of people. It's weird to me that something like this is not even a point in the court. Just the fact that, you know, the lack of transparency in something like this, where there are very, very obvious ethical concerns.

SPEAKER_02: 30:36

Even if, let's say, our donor found out that he had a medical condition like today, let's say that happened, there's no way to contact everyone who is his biological child. There's no registry that has everyone born to a certain sperm donor. So even the sperm banks don't know this. You don't have to report when you get pregnant from a sperm donor. It could just not work out. Like you just don't get pregnant and you go to a different sperm donor. There's no way to count everyone. So even if he was being transparent, there's... not, like, a contact situation. And, you know, some donor-conceived children, like, don't, just don't know they're donor-conceived at all. Maybe go their whole life without knowing. I follow this, like, donor-conceived person on social media. Not related to me. But her name's Laura High. She does, like, stand-up comedy about her experiences. She raises awareness and she has, like, gone to D.C. to try to make, like, institutional change. I don't know how successful that has been, because I think, politically, the nature of this issue is more focused on like, should this be a thing? Because like, like, is this natural? Or is this unnatural? It's more about just the ethics of conceiving a child in that way in the first place, rather than the rights of the donor conceived people to have that transparency there.

SPEAKER_00: 32:50

Would you call this an addiction? If a reg for years on end and just consistently doing this, is it possible that it could be an addiction?

SPEAKER_02: 33:05

I think it's possible. 100%. I think. I'm not going to speak about my case specifically in this instance, but I think there's some people who get off on this. The sperm donation industry is rooted in eugenics and spreading the seed of white men. It almost feels like how when you breed dogs to have certain traits, this whole thing happens. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 34:04

It's very possible because, I mean, I think a lot of people, when you do ask individuals, like, why do you want to have children in the first place, right? They want to pass on a legacy, you know, whatever their ideology is that they want to have kids that can, you know, that they can spread that message to. And, you know, I guess at some point for someone who's donating, it's just like a power play, right? It's to be able to say that, like, look, like I've got so many of, you know, me's around, you know, and like, I have the power to sort of control that, you know, the fact that it's not right. In that documentary that I watched, he'd actually even flown to different countries around the world in Asia and Africa. And I think they have a demand for, you know, the white man. And so he was, he was going internationally. And again, if you're talking about within the US, it not being regulated enough, there can be in the same city, two or three different centers that are not communicating with each other as to like, how many, then imagine that around the world. Like, it's just, yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 35:04

it's like, I think this there's something that is inherently sexualized in my experience about like the concept of donor conception as a whole I think that a lot of sperm donors like this is like a weird thing that they're into but at the same time like I've had experiences especially as a donor conceived woman where I've told people that I've been like donor conceived and they've completely like sexualized this scenario and they've been like oh well if i am pregnant you how will that work and it's just like there's very gross misconceptions and very gross sexualization of donor conceived people in general that you know we didn't sign up for i'm sure that our parents who had us through donor conception didn't consider this happening either because why would that happen not a only do a lot of donors sexualize this whole system but a lot of like outsiders also do which is I think very odd and very gross

SPEAKER_00: 36:16

yeah have you heard of any stories of siblings meeting each other in some interesting weird ways

SPEAKER_02: 36:23

Nothing like too weird. Like I know two of my sisters like ran into each other in a mall once. And that was the first like instance I've heard of like siblings meeting in the wild. And it really like opens your eyes to like how possible this could go poorly. Like let's say they happen to be attracted to each other. Like that's like there's so many ways this could go wrong. And even though for a while when people would be like, have you ever dated a sibling? And I would be like, that's a weird question the second I found out that I was working with a sibling I realized that you can meet these you can meet siblings in the wild

SPEAKER_01: 37:03

and

SPEAKER_02: 37:04

that's crazy so just

SPEAKER_01: 37:05

to

SPEAKER_02: 37:07

answer your question not that I know of but there's been like degrees of separation two of my siblings have dated the same people at different points in their lives and so it's just like a little too close for comfort

SPEAKER_00: 37:21

ever since sort of like you started discovering that there are more siblings I'm sure on this Facebook group as well you are discussing like how do I approach a new stranger that I come across or meet what kind of questions do I need to ask in order to protect it just sort of having to be a part of your language every almost every time you meet someone can you tell me some of the questions that you ask people when you meet them for the first time

SPEAKER_02: 37:44

just as like a some context thankfully I haven't had to do this in a while I've been with like my same partner now for over two years now we lived together It's great. But when I first started dating, it was also weird because for a while I only dated girls. And so when I talked to someone who's not donor conceived about this fear of mine, they'd be like, oh, well, it's not like you're going to reproduce. Why does it matter? And I'm like, no, it's like, it's still a thing. I still don't want to date a sibling. I would kind of feel it out. Like my current partner is like, you know, name, name the third. And I was like, what are they odds that they would name this person like of the third not even a junior like they made it down to number three and like they're not related so like I got lucky there in the past I've tried to be subtle about it like you know and by subtle I mean a little creepy like looking up like pictures of their family on Facebook and like comparing their faces so you know you try to feel it out like subtly ask questions about their upbringing and like some small talk that I've kind of a heightened level of paranoia. One, just in general, and two, living in a geographic area where a lot of my siblings are centralized. One of my half-siblings grew up in the same city as me, the same small city in Delaware. There's no easy way to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 39:12

Can you talk to me a little bit about the reliability, validity of 23andMe? Because I'm guessing that's probably the platform that most of you guys were finding each other from. Have you been fully depending on Or do you take blood tests and stuff like after to just kind of confirm the fact?

SPEAKER_02: 39:28

I think my situation is unique because a lot of my siblings meet each other through 23andMe, but I was one of the ones where my mom knew my donor number because each sperm donor has their own little four-digit code. And so my mom could meet up with other parents who had kids from that donor that way. We don't really do any special tests after 23andMe, but I would be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that's like, what if like this is like one of us is a fluke like what if one of us got in here accidentally how does that work because i think about myself and all the relationships i've made with my siblings and if like what if one day like i find out like my mom got the number like a digit off what happens to all those relationships so to answer your question like no we don't like really go much further than 23andme or the donor registry but part Mm-hmm. it's something that I think about.

SPEAKER_00: 41:00

Damn. That's so interesting. I genuinely wonder if it was like one of those situations, like if you were to ask your father, your biological father, like actually how many times have you donated your sperm? And actually what is a possibility? Like what is the maximum possibility? Like say every single donation went through and it resulted in a baby. How many do you think we would have? Like what, what would he say to that?

SPEAKER_02: 41:26

To be honest, I don't want to know. Um, I, I don't want to know that about him because I don't really like him, but I... I've done the math before on how much money could he have made off of creating human lives. And it's a lot. If there's, let's say, 80 confirmed siblings, and you can estimate X amount of pregnancies that didn't come to term, or X amount of implantations that didn't even result in pregnancy to begin with, and then even if there's one donation, you could have triplets. all of that like there's so much money in in this industry and even like the way that sperm donation is advertised is very predatory like I'll get ads on Instagram that'll be like are you an 18 to 25 year old woman want some money just donate eggs and I'm like please please think about it a little more than that but sperm donation is much much easier than egg donation you don't have to go through injections and like

SPEAKER_01: 42:43

all that

SPEAKER_02: 42:44

so it's just like you can just like hammer it out also what if he was like I only donated 10 times and I'm like it were all these people

SPEAKER_00: 42:53

yeah exactly it's just like it's so crazy um okay final thoughts final message that you would like to get across to our listeners today anyone listening to this you know potentially looking to donate their own sperm or get into this or, you know, for someone who's ever in contact with a victim of this, what would you like to say to them today?

SPEAKER_02: 43:17

I would like to say if you're considering sperm or egg donation, please look into it first. Please do your research on the implications. Please be prepared to actually bring lives into this world and not just get some money in college. Look up the stories of donor-conceived people and how this has affected them, whether it's positively or negatively. And also to parents who are considering having children through... egg or sperm donors I don't have any problem with these people but still consider talking to a donor conceived person if you can I've talked to many people who have had their kids through you know sperm donation and like after they've had the kid and they still have a ton of questions for me and I just strongly recommend trying to find someone before you even go through that process not to dissuade you but Just so you know, just so you can answer those questions when they arise and find the best way to tell your child about how they were conceived. I think in this whole situation, transparency is key, whether it be, you know, on the behalf of the sperm donor who has to, you know, make the decision whether or not to protect his anonymity. I

SPEAKER_01: 44:42

would

SPEAKER_02: 44:42

honestly advise to very much like look into that. Consider not being anonymous because you're creating lives and those lives are going to have thoughts and questions that maybe only you can answer. Just think about the lies you're bringing into this world before you do this and consider if this is just a way to make money and if it's worth it.

SPEAKER_00: 45:08

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much friend for being on the podcast and sharing your story.

SPEAKER_02: 45:13

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 45:19

If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show, please follow and subscribe. You can rate and review your feedback on any of our platforms listed in the description. I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us. Thank you for showing us we are human. Also, a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen.

SPEAKER_02: 45:40

The

SPEAKER_00: 45:43

show would be nothing without you. I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to... Multispective.