These sperm donors are among profiles that are active on the members-only French Internet forum Donneur Naturel Natural Donor. It is one of at least a dozen platforms β including websites, Facebook groups, smartphone apps and WhatsApp chats β that fuel a thriving underground market for sperm in France.
Aside from the danger of letting a stranger into your home, Faget highlights the enormous health risks that selecting a donor from these platforms entails. Although the vast majority of online donors claim to be in perfect health, have a high sperm count and offer to provide up-to-date test results, the women have no guarantees that their documents are authentic.
This means that if the donor was infected recently, he might not be aware of it. And it might not show in his test results. Faget says the main reason some women are still willing to take such risks is financial: They simply cannot afford a medically assisted insemination in a foreign country where the procedure is legal for single women and lesbian couples. So who are these anonymous donors flooding the internet?
And how come they are so willing to give away their semen when France's national sperm bank only registered donors in , the last year for which official figures have been published? The donor, who says he belongs to the first category, claims to have fathered dozens of babies and now moderates a 1,member closed Facebook group that connects single and lesbian women with donors in France.
He says he has seen a clear increase in both the number of donors and the number of women seeking donors on the Facebook group lately. But he has also noted a rise in inappropriate proposals, especially when it comes to donors seeking free sex, or a financial reward for their services. Once a woman has selected her donor online, there are three ways to carry out the insemination.
