Lots of people want a baby, but some sperm banks are running out of resources.Women are joining groups through the unregulated Facebook social network to find willing sperm donors, without the need for intermediaries, according to an article published in The New York Times.These men are flying everywhere.They ship their sperm with new vial systems and take the latest DNA tests because that's what women want.Sure, they can talk on the phone, but they say it has to be quick because they're driving to Dallas or Kansas City or Portland, Maine, in time to take advantage of an ovulation period, and they already have day jobs.“People are fed up with sperm banks,” said Kyle Gordy, 29, who lives in Malibu, California.He invests in real estate, but spends most of his time donating his sperm, free (except for travel costs), to women.He also runs a private Facebook group of nearly 11,000 members, Sperm Donation USA, which helps women connect with a list of hundreds of approved donors.His donor sperm has fathered 35 children, with five more on the way, he said."They realize this is no longer taboo," Gordy added.If you're one of the 141 million Americans whose body produces sperm, the stuff probably sounds plentiful and cheap.For the rest of us, it's neither.That has always been true, especially if one is perceptive.But now, the coronavirus pandemic is creating a shortage, according to sperm banks and fertility clinics.Men have stopped going as often to donate, though demand has held up at some banks and increased rapidly at others.“We have been breaking sales records since June all over the world, not only in the United States, but also in England, Australia and Canada,” said Angelo Allard, compliance supervisor at Seattle Sperm Bank, one of the largest sperm banks. from the country.He said his company was selling 20 percent more sperm now than a year ago, even though the supply has dwindled.The sperm is prepared for shipment from the Seattle Sperm Bank, where sales are up 20 percent from the previous year.Michelle Ottey, COO of Fairfax Cryobank, another large sperm bank, said demand for access to her catalog for online sperm purchases has increased because “people are seeing that there is potential for more flexibility in their lives and in their work."I also think part of the cause is that people are trying to find some hope right now," she added.Scarcity has people on edge.Many are upset.“Are there new donors soon?” someone with the username BabyV2021 recently wrote on the online forum for California Cryobank, one of the world's largest sperm banks.“Looks like the donor supply has been running low,” someone else wrote, using the username sc_cal.And so, in the capitalist crisis, the Sperm World—the world of people who buy and sell sperm—has gone wild.Donors go directly to customers.They meet moms-to-be at Airbnbs to deliver in the afternoons;Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members have sprung up.The reason I know all this is quite simple: I'm 32 years old, my partner is a woman, I'm stuck at home and I'm scouring the market for the best sperm possible.'People want sperm from men who have gone to college'When I started talking to sperm banks last spring, they were already concerned about the supply.In the World of Sperm it is difficult to find reliable numbers.The researchers cite data collected in the 1980s to estimate the number of children born through donor sperm in the United States, ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 a year, though advocates reject even that range, saying there are no numbers. reliable because there is no regulation.Sperm banking itself was a nearly $4 billion industry in 2018.There have always been infertile heterosexual couples who need donor sperm, but with the legalization of same-sex marriage and the rise of elective single motherhood, the market has expanded in the last decade.About 20 percent of the sperm bank's clients are heterosexual couples, 60 percent are gay women, and 20 percent are single mothers by choice, the banks said.To meet this demand, men provided sperm at a steady rate for years, some banks said.But the coronavirus changed everything.Existing donors were afraid to go.LSign-ups of new donors were halted for months due to the lockdown and never picked up at some banks.Several banks said they had plenty of frozen sperm in storage, but couldn't keep it forever.“Donor recruitment 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 sperm from smart men.That's why some big banks are close to elite universities.They have sperm collection centers in Palo Alto, California, near Stanford University, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard.College kids are one of the most reliable groups to see the potential chaos of creating maybe 50 biological children around the world for nearly $4,000 over several months, and decide it's a good deal.A donor would typically go to a bank once or twice a week for months to produce enough sperm to sell to dozens of families."A lot of their recruiting is taking place around fraternities, but fraternities are not meeting," said Rosanna Hertz, chair of women and gender studies at Wellesley College and co-author of Random Families, a book about donor conception."People want sperm from college-educated men."That's why the banks were getting desperate.One recruiter told me that she had started advertising on the outdoor trails since the gyms were closed.A sales representative for another sperm bank said he hoped management would offer cash bonuses to attract donors, but his bosses were concerned about setting a precedent.Another reason banks have struggled is that they follow strict Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.Sperm have to be quarantined for six months after a donation, and men have to come back every time a batch is released and have blood tests done.Most banks have limits, so a donor cannot give sperm to more than 25 or 30 families, to avoid widespread genetic problems in the future.The donors are always unknown to the recipient families, identified by numbers.Now almost all banks offer photos of when men were children.Some have adult photos.In countries like England and Australia it is illegal to pay sperm donors significant amounts of money.In the United States, the FDA does not set a financial limit, but it does regulate sperm donation as it does all tissue donations.A donor must consent of her own free will, without coercion.Banks follow the American Society for Reproductive Medicine guidelines that payment should not be a donor's primary motivation.“We are not paying them for their sperm, as human tissue cannot be bought or sold,” Allard said, adding that the payments are technically reimbursements for time and travel.Allard said the Seattle Sperm Bank was doing everything it could to make it safe for the men still around.Only six are allowed to donate each hour, compared to a dozen or more who might have appeared earlier.They are given a temperature check and the standard battery of COVID-19 screening questions.Everyone wears a mask, although men can take it off when they make their deposit.Despite supply problems, the demand for babies during the pandemic seems insatiable.I wrote to Kindbody Fertility Center, which has six locations across the country and specializes in IVF, or in vitro fertilization."Kindbody's patient volume is up more than 30 percent compared to pre-COVID-pandemic levels," wrote Rebecca Silver, director of marketing.She said the company knew from feedback from female applicants that sperm from donors they liked was out of stock or on a waiting list.Allard said that she had recently offered 35 bottles produced by a particularly handsome man with blue eyes and black hair, which is a rare combination.“I had it ready at 6:30 am, and there was nothing there by 10 am,” Allard said."We've never seen that before."I winced a bit at this, knowing I might have missed out on some excellent sperm.I check the banks a few times a day, but not that often.The price of sperm is still high.Each jar from a premium bank can cost up to $1,100.The bank guarantees that one vial will have 10 to 15 million motile sperm in total.Every month, during ovulation, an expectant mother (or her doctor) thaws a vial and injects the sperm.The recommendation is to buy four or five bottles for each desired child, since pregnancy can easily take a few months.And, because donors run out quickly, if a woman wants to have two children with the same donor, she needs to be ready with about $10,000.“A lot of people have been waiting for their lives to slow down to start their family, and now it has,” Allard said.“Some of them might be thinking that it will be easier to raise a child while working from home.However, I have three children and I can tell you that it is not easier”.Direct contact with suppliersWhile people have been competing for the sperm left in banks, thousands of women have tried to find another way.In the last six months, many have joined Facebook groups to seek out independent mega-donors, the kings of sperm.These men do not impose limits on the number of families.They don't pay much attention to FDA rules.They can also give prospective parents something that sperm banks can't: their names.Although most banks don't reveal identities until the boys turn 18, if they do, these men are "known sperm donors."Almost all of them offer their sperm for free.The change started to happen a few years ago.Technology had already revolutionized the way the world of sperm and egg donors worked, with cheap and popular DNA tests making donor anonymity a farce.Now social media and the convenience of simplicity of Tinder and Uber ushered in another revolution in avoiding sperm banks altogether.Apps appeared to find donors, such as Modamily and Just a Baby.The Known Donor Registry was also created, where almost 50,000 members organize the donation and reception of sperm.Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members, where men post photos of themselves, often with their own children, began advertising themselves to interested parties.In these Facebook groups, particularly handsome men are bombarded in the comments by dozens of women.Three hours after a 5-foot-2 28-year-old male nurse made a post stating that he had "English descent, but was tanned like a Greek," Megan had already written to him: "Hi Jack, we've sent you a message. message".And also Lindsay communicated with him: “Hi Jack, I have sent you a message”.Sonia was not far behind: "Hello Jack, I would like to chat with you."“I didn't really come here to be a wholesale donor,” one donor recently wrote, explaining why it would be more demanding and might take longer to respond to requests.Others advertise his intelligence.John from Arizona wrote: “I have a 1400 chess rating and am an analyst.I have a peaceful demeanor and a lot of energy.I exercise regularly.I prefer to skate."Most donors specify that they will donate only through AI, artificial insemination.Some also donate through NI, natural insemination, or by having sex.The line between altruism and sex can quickly become blurred, raising questions of safety.The legal risk for both parties—risk of a mother asking the donor for child support, and risk of a donor wanting custody—is high, and the laws on this are not consistent across states.Women who turn to Facebook groups for sperm tend to be unable to afford traditional sperm banks.Some in the world of known donors can also become territorial, laying claim to certain geographic regions and kicking out new men who try to donate to women in those areas.Two of the largest sperm donor groups on Facebook - Sperm Donation USA and USA Sperm Donation - are waging a cold war with each other."You can end up developing some disturbing dynamics," said Hertz, the Wellesley professor who has studied these communities.Many of the known donors use relatively inexpensive sperm shipping tools like Natal Donor or sperm storage and analysis firms like Dadi Kit. They also use consumer-friendly DNA tests like 23andMe or CircleDNA, which offer genetic testing at As for sperm banking to assure women that the donor's genes do not have mutations.Elaine Raby Byrd, 37, a kindergarten teacher in Memphis, said she had used a donor from one of the major Facebook groups and was on her "two-week wait," the weeks after the insemination, but before an accurate pregnancy test could be done."I can choose who I want genetically instead of choosing someone I met randomly," she said.It also means, according to Byrd, that she can choose a donor who is smarter and more attractive than someone she knows romantically on a day-to-day basis."You can't force anyone to marry you," she said.“I am very independent.”Now there are influencers in the category of "known sperm donors."One of them is Kayla Ellis, 27, a stay-at-home mom to a child in the Midwest.She and her wife found her donor on Just a Baby in 2019. They talked for weeks, though she kept her location a secret just in case.She tracked her ovulation, and when it was time, they went to a (finance) bank to get a notarized agreement, then to a family friend's Airbnb that was offered to them for the occasion.There they transferred the semen through a glass."We could comfortably support the kids, but we couldn't afford the insane financial strain that IVF and sperm banking would cost," Ellis said."So we started looking elsewhere."She now has a TikTok account dedicated to explaining "how to conceive a child through private sperm donation, tracking ovulation, and talking to donors."He has more than 91,000 followers.Also, she and her wife are pregnant with her second child… They used the same donor, the same notary, the same free Airbnb."Our babies were $136 each," Ellis said.Probably the most famous donor is Ari Nagel, who has been going to meet consumers directly for more than a decade.Nagel, a charming professor from New York City, freely gives his sperm and has a handful of paternity suits to prove it.He is currently in Zimbabwe donating, and will then head to Nigeria.He said that 15 women were pregnant thanks to his sperm in the entire United States at this time.In the pandemic, everything has become bigger, "I would like to know and have the peace of mind that the child will live in a good home, instead of someone picking him up at a clinic and not knowing who he is," said Adam Hooper , founder of Sperm Donation Australia, which has 9,800 members and is a search center for well-known free sperm donors.His group has added more than 3,000 members since lockdowns began in March.Negative news about sperm banks often appears in Facebook group conversations, such as donors being mixed up accidentally or on purpose.A sperm donor may also be lying about who she is, and that's a risk someone who goes to a traditional sperm bank has to take.Every time a donor is revealed to be secretly a fertility doctor, message boards of known donors light up.Many of the donors and their interested recipients speak of loneliness.Men often don't have families of their own, but believe their genes deserve to survive.They worry that it won't happen.Many of the women are single mothers by choice.“I have a strong desire to know that my genes have been passed down,” a donor recently wrote on Just a Baby.“Like many of us, I am not in a position to do so at this time nor do I anticipate doing so in the near future.”A popular 30-year-old donor at Sperm Donation USA uses a pseudonym, Jacob San, as he worries about the impact on his career."At first I just wanted to increase my numbers," he said, referring to the number of children he could produce in the world."But after three or four, that faded away."“Now I have this vision of being 50 to 60 years old, and a big dining room table, and I invite all my children by donation to join me for dinner and tell me their stories, their travels,” he continued.“I want to hear all your adventures.That's what drives me."A donor on the Known Donor Registry told me that he used to donate to a big sperm bank, but it was all too clinical and cold.He wanted to know who was buying his sperm, and he wanted to feel that the recipients would raise their offspring well.So now he gives it away to people he talks to first.He told me his real name.He has a master's degree from an Ivy League school and a sweet smile.We have mutual friends on Facebook.At the end of the conversation, he offered me sperm.Medicine and Public HealthMedicine and Public HealthYou do not have an account?Sign up hereYou do not have an account?Sign up here