A short history of sperm donation

People were making families with a little help long before anyone opened a sperm bank. The bank, the catalog and the donor number are newer than most of us think. Here’s how we got here, in three rough eras, and where Just a Baby fits.

Before 1900: curiosity, and secrets

1677. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looks at human semen through a microscope he built himself and sees tiny moving “animalcules”. He writes to the Royal Society in London about it. He’s one of the first people ever to see sperm.

The 1780s. The Italian scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani artificially inseminates a spaniel. She has three puppies.

Around 1790. The surgeon John Hunter helps a linen draper and his wife have a baby, using the husband’s own sperm.

1884. In Philadelphia, Dr. William Pancoast sees a couple who haven’t been able to conceive. While the wife is under anesthesia, he inseminates her with sperm from one of his medical students. She isn’t told, and she never agrees to it. Her husband hears later, and the secret is kept. The world only learns of it in 1909, when one of the students who watched writes a letter to a medical journal. It’s generally counted as the first documented donor insemination.

So that’s where it begins. The first woman wasn’t even told. For a long time after, secrecy stayed the habit. Parents kept quiet, children often never knew, and nobody talked about it much.

The bank era, from the 1950s

1953. At the University of Iowa, Raymond Bunge and Jerome Sherman find a way to freeze and thaw human sperm. Three women become pregnant with their husbands’ frozen sperm, and the births make the news in the spring of 1954. Frozen sperm can be stored and sent somewhere else. That’s what a bank needs.

1971. New York’s first commercial sperm bank opens. More follow through the 1970s, among them Xytex in 1975 and California Cryobank in 1977.

1978. Louise Brown, the first baby conceived through IVF, is born in England on July 25.

Put those dates together and commercial sperm banking turns out to be about 55 years old. Many people now picture it as the way this is done: a clinic, a catalog, a number instead of a name. But it’s a recent arrangement, not how families came together for most of history. Clinics and labs bring real safeguards, and a doctor still belongs in the picture. They’re just not the only way to begin.

Meanwhile, the doors open

The mid-1980s. Sweden becomes the first country to end anonymous sperm donation. A child conceived this way can find out who the man was once they’re old enough.

2001. The Netherlands becomes the first country where two men or two women can marry, and new adoption rights for same-sex couples come with it.

2005. The UK ends anonymous donation for new donors. A child conceived from then on can learn who the donor was once they turn 18.

Home DNA tests. Then the spit-in-a-tube kits arrive. Donor-conceived adults find half siblings, cousins, and often the man himself. A promise that a man will stay anonymous for life is very hard to keep now.

The direction is plain. We’re moving from secrecy toward honesty. Families that used to be kept quiet, with two moms, a single mom by choice, or co-parents in two homes, are simply families now. Which makes it a good time to look again at the whole idea, starting from the people.

Now: meeting the person

More recently, people have started finding each other directly, online, person to person. That’s where Just a Baby sits. It’s where people meet before a clinic or a bank, and get to know each other first.

Just a Baby doesn’t provide anyone, and it doesn’t pair anyone off. People meet, talk and decide for themselves. The men here are unpaid and known. A name and a face, someone the family knows, and someone a child may one day want to know too.

A baby takes sperm and eggs, and the people who bring them. Neither can do it without the other, and nobody is doing anyone a favor. What they make together is something beautiful, and it belongs to all of them.

When two people know what they want, that’s when the professionals come in: a lawyer and a doctor where you live, and the clinic of your choosing if you want one. We’re all for it, and if we can help you find your way there, we’ll do our best.

The names are theirs

Sperm donor is the phrase people search for, so it’s the one on this page. It comes from the secret years, and it doesn’t have to be the only word. Families call the man known donor, or dad, or his first name, or a word they invent that fits nobody else. Some are happy with donor. We’re not the ones to decide. Call it what you like.

Your part of the story

That’s a few hundred years in a few minutes. The next part isn’t written yet. The story of your family starts now, with who you meet.

Sources: Lens on Leeuwenhoek, read 2026-10-28; Wikipedia, Artificial insemination, read 2026-10-28; Donor Sibling Registry, A brief history of donor conception, read 2026-10-28; Psychology Today, A brief history of donor conception, read 2026-10-28; Little Village, How two UI scientists bred the first sperm bank, read 2026-10-28; The Village Voice, October 29, 1971, read 2026-10-28; Xytex, About Xytex, read 2026-10-28; Wikipedia, California Cryobank, read 2026-10-28; Science News, 40 years after the first IVF baby, read 2026-10-28; Umeå University, When donor-conceived offspring obtain the identity of their donor, read 2026-10-28; PinkNews, The Netherlands celebrates 20 years of same-sex marriage, read 2026-10-28; Mail & Guardian, UK sperm banks struggle after donor anonymity lifted, read 2026-10-28; Santa Clara University Markkula Center, Direct-to-consumer genetic testing and sperm donation anonymity, read 2026-10-28