Psychosocial aspects of donor insemination. Sperm donors--their motivations and attitudes to artificial insemination.

STUDY OBJECTIVES

To examine sperm donors' motivations and emotional reactions to the role of donors and to measure their willingness to provide information about themselves to recipients and offspring.

DESIGN

A prospective trial in which the 26 subjects who were actively functioning as sperm donors in our fertility clinic at the time of investigation were asked to fill in a questionnaire and return it anonymously and voluntarily.

MAIN RESULTS

8% of the donors stated purely altruistic motivation, 32% purely financial and 60% a combination of both. The acceptance rate for providing non-identifying, phenotypic, descriptive information to recipients is 76%, for providing medical information it is 60% and the provision of psychosocial information is accepted by 28% to 40%, depending on the item. 20% of donors are willing to continue donation if the present rules of anonymity are revoked.

CONCLUSIONS

Most donors do not seem to feel any close relationship to donor offspring and at least 60% found anonymity to be essential for their further functioning as donors.