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A semen bank or cryobank is a facility that collects and stores human sperm from sperm donors for use by women who need donor-provided sperm to achieve pregnancy.
Sperm donated by the sperm donor is known as donor sperm.
The introduction of the sperm into the woman is called artificial insemination, which is a form of third party reproduction.
A pregnancy achieved using donor sperm is no different from a pregnancy achieved using partner sperm, and it is also no different from a pregnancy achieved by sexual intercourse.
Sperm banking enables greater control, in relation to the access and timing of pregnancies.
Provides formerly infertile couples or single women the chance to have babies.
Donors father children for others and usually take no part in the upbringing of such children.
Coupled lesbians can use sperm banks in order to have their own biological children.
Donors may not have a say in who may use their sperm.
Women may choose to use an anonymous donor, or they may choose known donors who may be contacted later in life by the donor children.
Women may choose to use a surrogate to bear their children, using eggs provided by the woman and sperm from a donor.
Sperm banks can provide services to enable a woman to have subsequent pregnancies by the same donor, or by a number of different donors.
Sperm banks sometimes can enable a woman to choose the sex of her child.
Men who choose to donate sperm to a sperm bank are helping women or childless couples to have children in circumstances where as the biological father, do not have any legal or other responsibility for the children produced from their sperm.
A donor must be a fit healthy male, normally between 18 to 45 years of age.
A donor must be willing to undergo testing and be willing to donate his sperm so that it can be used to impregnate women who are unrelated to and unknown by him.
The donor must agree to relinquish legal rights to all children which result from his donations.
The donor must produce his sperm at the sperm bank, enabling the identity of the donor, and also enabling fresh samples of sperm to be produced.
Sperm banks screen donors for a range of diseases, including genetic diseases, chromosomal abnormalities and sexually transmitted infections.
Donor specimens are quarantined by frozen storage techniques for at least 6 months after which the donor will be re-tested for the STIs.
Children conceived through sperm donation have a birth defect rate of almost a fifth compared with the general population.
A sperm bank provides relevant information about individual donors.
A sperm bank guarantees the quality and number of motile sperm available, selecting men as donors who are particularly fertile and whose sperm will survive the freezing and thawing process.
Samples are often sold as containing a particular number of motile sperm per milliliter.
All sperm is frozen and stored for a minimum of 6 months before being released for sale and use to ensure that the donor remains healthy.
Donors are subject to tests for infectious diseases such as human immunoviruses HIV (HIV-1 and HIV-2), human T-cell lymphotropic viruses (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2), syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, Hepatitis B virus, Hepatitis C virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV), Trypanosoma cruzi and Malaria as well as hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Sickle cell anemia, Familial Medit2242anean fever, Gaucher’s disease, Thalassaemia, Tay-Sachs disease, Canavan’s disease, Familial dysautonomia, Congenital adrenal hyperplasia Carnitine transporter deficiency and Karyotyping 46XY.
A sperm donor may also be required to produce medical records and those of his family, often for several generations.
A sperm donor’s blood group may also be registered to ensure compatibility with the recipient.
Sexually active gay men are prohibited or discouraged from donating.
Some sperm banks also screen out some potential donors based on height, baldness, and family medical history.
The majority of sperm donors who donate receive some kind of payment. although this is rarely a significant amount.
There is a requirement for a two-day celibacy period before donation.
A sperm donor usually donates sperm to a sperm bank under a contract, which generally ranges from 6–24 months depending on the number of pregnancies which the sperm bank intends to produce from the donor.
A sperm donor generally produces and collects sperm at a sperm bank or clinic by masturbation in a private room.
The sample is usually washed to extract sperm from the rest of the material in the semen.
Unwashed sperm samples are used for intracervical insemination (ICI) treatments.
Donor sperms are available to all women who, for whatever reason, want or need them.
In general, donor sperm is readily available to a woman if her partner is infertile or where he has a genetic disorder, and the categories of women who may obtain donor sperms is expanding, with its availability to single women and to lesbian couples being now more widely available.
Increasingly, donor sperm banks are used to achieve a pregnancy where a woman has no male partner, including among lesbian and bisexual women.
Men may also store their own sperm at a sperm bank for future use particularly where they anticipate traveling to a war zone or having to undergo chemotherapy which might damage the testes.
Sperm from a sperm donor may also be used in surrogacy arrangements and for creating embryos for embryo donation.
A cervical cap conception device allows the donor semen to be held in place close to the cervix for between six to eight hours to allow fertilization to take place.
Alternatively, donor sperm can be supplied by a sperm bank through a registered medical practitioner who will perform an appropriate method of insemination or IVF treatment using the donor sperm in order for the woman to become pregnant.
Sperm banks maintain lists of donors which provide basic information about the donor such as racial origin, skin color, height, weight, color of eyes, and blood group.
Known donation is permitted.
Potential recipients typically prefer in donors include: height, college educated, and with a consistently high sperm count.
Sperm banks make information available about the sperm donors to enable customers to select the donor whose sperm they wish to use.
Information include race, height, weight, blood group, health and eye color of the donor, and sometimes information about his age, family history and educational achievements will also be given.
If a woman intends to have more than one child, she may wish to have the additional child or children by the same donor, and banks will usually advise whether sufficient stocks of sperm are available from a particular donor for subsequent pregnancies.
Some sperm banks enable recipients to choose the sex of their child, through sperm sorting.
One of the processes used is the ‘swim up’ method, whereby a sperm extender is added to the donor’s freshly ejaculated sperm and the test-tube is left to settle. After about half-an-hour, the lighter Y chromosome sperm will have swum to the top, leaving the heavier ‘x’ chromosome sperm at the bottom, thus allowing selection and storage according to sex.
Sex selection is not permitted in a number of countries.
A sperm bank may onsell sperm stocks to another entity.