Goals and Philosophy of

1) Summary of Goals and Operations

The Free Fertility Foundation believes that all adults have the right to start a family, regardless of medical issues, financial issues, or marital status. Unfortunately, women who have infertile husbands, are single, or are in lesbian relationships are unable to start their families without help from fertility doctors and sperm banks. These providers

1. are very expensive
2. often impose obstacles (many prohibit unmarried and lesbian women)
3. provide little information about the males used to produce the sperm

All of these issues place the women mentioned above at a great and unfair disadvantage compared to married women with fertile husbands.

The Free Fertility Foundation helps women who want to start families by providing free medical services and other services designed to overcome the problems discussed above. Currently, the Foundation provides free sperm bank services, using sperm from its single sperm donor and the services of an outside sperm bank. More specifically, the Foundation addresses the problems mentioned above because

1. the Foundation's services are absolutely free
2. the Foundation does not discriminate on the basis of marital status or ability to pay for the Foundation's services
3. the Foundation provides extensive information about its tissue donors

The Foundation hopes to expand its activities in the future to include additional sperm donors and/or in-vitro fertilization (IVF) services and egg donation services.

Read below for details.

2) The pain of childlessness

People who want children but cannot have them often suffer an emotional pain and longing that is difficult for people who have no trouble conceiving children to understand. This emotional anguish is documented in these articles: .

• http://www.stronghealth.com/services/.../emotionalconcerns.cfm
• http://www.integramed.com/consumer/support.htm
• http://sharedjourney.com/emot.html
• http://www.childbirthsolutions.com/articles/.../index.php

3) Costs of sperm bank services

Married people of normal fertility conceive children without medical costs and emotional trama. In contrast, married couples with male infertility, single women, and women in lesbian relationships must pay exhorbitant sperm bank fees in order to conceive a child.

These links show the price list from some commercial sperm banks:

• http://www.thespermbankofca.org/fees.html
• http://www.zygen.com/pdf/FeeSchedule2003.pdf

The key numbers are that women must pay $50 for registration and $540 per insemination cycle (at 4 vials of frozen sperm per cycle). The fertility literature reports that women typically require 20 cycles of artificial insemination with frozen donor sperm to achieve pregnancy. This means typical cost is

  $50 + 20*4*$185 = $14,850

to achieve one pregnancy. Thus, the cost is a prohibitive impediment for low income women, and a significant impediment for middle income women. These costs are almost never covered by health insurance, because fertility services are "elective", "non-essential" medical expenses.

By providing free sperm bank services, the Foundation places these women on a more equal footing to women in fertile marriages, by removing cost of achieving pregnancy as a significant factor in their child-bearing decision.

4) Sperm donor fees

Married people of normal fertility usually conceive children because both parents want the children and both parents want the best for their children. In contrast, the biological father of a sperm bank child is usually motivated mainly by desire to receive the $100 fee for his sperm donation. The Foundation believes that the biological father of children should be motivated by humanitarian concerns and not by desire for money.

Commercial sperm banks typically pay their sperm donors between $50 and $200 per ejaculate. For example, these links show rates paid by several commercial sperm banks to sperm donors.

• http://www.thespermbankofca.org/spermdonor.html
• http://www.zygen.com/coinfo2.htm#becoming

Sperm donors are usually recruited from among college students who want to make a little extra spending money.

In contrast, the Foundation wants to be sure that its sperm donors are motivated by humanitarian concerns and not monetary concerns, and therefore does not pay its sperm donors. If the Foundation has egg donors in the future, it will probably be necessary to pay them as the discomfort and inconvenience of egg donation is substantial.

5) Information about sperm donors

Before married people of normal fertility conceive a child, they have usually known each other for years, and gotten to know everything about each other and each others' families. They usually have chosen their spouse from among other possible alternative spouses using the extensive knowledge they have gathered by dating and possibly living together. In contrast, women who must use a sperm bank usually can learn only a few superficial qualities about their sperm donor, such as appearance, race, height, and major in college. The Foundation believes that this is grossly unfair, and that women needing sperm bank services deserve to know as much about their prospective sperm donors as married women know about their husbands. This ideal is probably unachieveable, but nevertheless, the Foundation provides as much information about its sperm donors as possible via its website.

These links show entries from sperm donor catalogs of some commercial sperm banks.

• http://www.thespermbankofca.org/dcp.html
• http://zygen.com/donorlist1.htm

As can be seen, the information is very superficial. In contrast, the Foundation provides extensive information about its sperm donors via the Foundation website, including university grades, professional career history, lists of published papers and patents, list of awards, 3 generation history of family, photos of sperm donor starting from baby, throughout childhood, and into adulthood, extensive medical and health information, information about personality and likes and dislikes, and photos of other children conceived using sperm of sperm donor.