U.S. Donor Conceived Council Statement in Response to “Private sperm bank admits to giving sperm samples to FBI without donors’ knowledge,” LGBTQ+ Nation, May 21, 2025
(Edited to add: Thank you to those who offered helpful feedback. We want to be clear:
We are not saying Seattle Sperm Bank never made a comment about providing sperm to the FBI. We are saying that we could not verify whether the content of the comment is true.
Our decision not to speak publicly about the comment wasn’t because we questioned whether a statement was made; it was because we did not feel comfortable doing so with information we could not verify or quote word-for-word.
We recognize our initial statement should have made this distinction clearer, and we apologize for the confusion.)
May 22, 2025
U.S. Donor Conceived Council (USDCC) is aware of the LGBTQ Nation article published May 21, 2025, and recognizes that it raises questions and concerns within our community. While we were contacted about the article prior to its publication, we did not provide a comment due to our collective lack of certainty about specific language used and speaker identity, and, most crucially, our inability to confidently speak to the accuracy or truthfulness of the comment made by Seattle Sperm Bank.
In the wake of the event, USDCC took several steps to look into the validity of that comment, including investigating multiple industry entities, escalating the concern to regulatory bodies, incorporating information about possible implications of commercial use of gametes into the Colorado educational materials, and engaging in collaborative work and ongoing monitoring with other advocacy groups. To date, we have been unable to find verifiable proof regarding the accuracy or truthfulness of the statement, nor have we been able to identify any donors who have come forward as victims or affected parties.
While we cannot speak to the accuracy or truthfulness of Seattle Sperm Bank’s comment as reported in LGBTQ Nation’s article, what we can say with absolute certainty is that every donor and recipient parent should be able to provide true informed consent — free from coercion, confusion, or exploitation. We stand firmly on our support for good faith efforts to bring truth to light and hold the fertility industry accountable.
The 2022 stakeholder meeting was organized after USDCC successfully passed Colorado’s “Donor-Conceived Persons and Families of Donor-Conceived Persons Protection Act” (DCPPA). The meeting’s purpose was to encourage ongoing dialogue between advocacy organizations, mental health professionals, ART professionals, and industry members regarding the need for additional industry-wide changes.
We continue to take actionable steps to pass and implement legislation that ensures, among many things, informed consent by donors and recipient parents, as well as protections for marginalized communities. Some examples of how we’ve been doing exactly that:
- Investing countless volunteer hours to successfully prevent a multi-billion dollar, pro-industry corporation from overturning the DCPPA, which provides some of the country’s only protections for donor conceived people (DCP) and their families, including the required provision of DCP-centered educational materials so that donors and recipients can give truly informed consent.
- Providing feedback on non-USDCC sponsored legislation to ensure it does not undermine reproductive autonomy, healthcare access for vulnerable communities, etc., as well as supporting legislation that aligns with these considerations, and suggesting amendments when legislation does not.
- Working to actively oppose practices and proposed legislation that will harm our community.
- Connecting people to necessary resources and support when they come forward as having suffered harm from, or exploitation by, the gamete donation industry.
- Filing reports with IRBs, the FDA, and the ASRM Ethics Committee about research studies that raise ethical red flags for our community.
- Individually meeting with industry entities to develop custom tailored, DCP-centered practices.
- Meeting face to face with legislators across the country, as recently as this week, to teach them about the issues that plague our community and urge them to support legislation to fix said problems.
USDCC was founded to pass legislation that ensures no donor conceived person, donor, or recipient parent suffers harm due to systemic flaws with, and the lack of safeguards in, the gamete donation industry. We have not strayed from that mission or our belief that the industry is systematically flawed and needs better laws and oversight.
The reality is that accomplishing legislative change is a long, multi-factor process that requires ongoing collaboration and dialogue. USDCC and other advocates were intentionally excluded from conversations by the pro-industry actors who sought to dismantle the DCPPA. We adhere to a higher standard in our own efforts.
In that same spirit, we want to emphasize that USDCC will not be drawn into discourse that vilifies other nonprofit organizations working toward similar goals. We will continue to partner with organizations who, like us, also operate with minimal resources to do what should’ve been done by our government in the first place—protect people so that no community is marginalized or vulnerable. Our critical focus remains on advocating for industry best practices and legislation that protects everyone touched by gamete donation.
We so badly want to live in a world in which everyone is protected by the laws and institutions responsible for their wellbeing. We’re not going to ask you to simply trust that USDCC continues to fight for our community; we’re going to continue working to prove through change, results, and actions that our obligations to the DCP community remain the driving force behind our work.
We continue to invite and encourage constructive criticism and feedback on how we can continue to best serve our community.
With humility and resolve,
Melissa Bornico
President & CEO
On behalf of the USDCC Leadership Team