Woman sent C&D after trying to track down sperm donor online

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-finds-sperm-donor-after-using-dna-test-raising-questions-about-donor-anonymity/

A moo tries to track down sperm donor father of her kid. Instead of getting a Kodak moment reunion, she gets slapped with a cease and desist and other legal action because OOPS! Contacting the donor or his family was against the contract she signed with the sperm bank. I guess she didn’t think it applied to her because “think of the children!”

Of course the article tries to paint this as a tragedy for the moo and her daughter, but all I see is a warning against anonymous sperm/egg donation or closed adoption. Nothing can be kept secret when DNA tests are just a mailbox away.

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"Not every ejaculation deserves a name" - George Carlin

Comments in some other forums express suspicion that the girl has health problems and the moo is trying to get money, maybe support, from the donor or his family.

This smacks of a similar situation in a Massachusetts court case in 2009. In that one a single moo who had been artificially inseminated using a sperm bank discovered a few years later that the resulting twins had a serious genetic malady. She sued the sperm bank to force it to reveal the donor's name, at first because she wanted health and genetic info from the donor. Later she admitted she wanted child support from him as well, to defray the twins' medical costs.

The whole story was complicated because she had spent time in Britain, raising questions of possible court jurisdiction there, and she had also claimed she never signed the sperm bank's agreement protecting the sperm donor and his anonymity. The state courts threw out her case.

In this new report, the sperm bank acted decisively. It is blocking her from access to the other vials of sperm from the same donor that she paid for. She's blubbering about that too, saying she wanted to have more children. I wonder if, like some parents of autards, there is something wrong with the daughter and moo planned to try to have a normal kid to care for the girl later in life.

Hmmm...her reasoning for doing this in the first place seems a bit fuzzy. Finding out the loaf's ancestry and possible medical issues? IMO not a good enough reason to be bothering the family of the donor.

I suspect she looked into it because she wanted some money from him. I also find it laughable that she contacted a family member of his and says, "We're here, we're out there..." The guy obviously has NO desire to contact the products of his donation. It doesn't matter that she's doing this supposedly for her daughter. I think she wants to do it for herself, to try and nail him with child support payments so she can have her cake and eat it too.

I hate the fact that sperm banks even exist, but I do think that the bank is doing the right thing here. If they want to keep those sperms coming, they'd better ensure that the moos out there aren't able to weasel money out of their donors.

I was gonna post this story also. I would never do these ancestry tests in a million years. I don't want to find "missing' people by accident. I dont need a long lost sister because maybe my dad impregnated someone and the girl never told him. I dont need to find out me and a serial killer have the same DNA.

Wouldn't she have known about her daughter's possible genetic predispositions to health issues and ancestry when she bought sperm? Isn't that information the donor provides to the bank? Isn't it also information that helps wanna-Moos decide whose spunk to buy? I thought sperm banks were super picky about these kinds of details.

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The donated sperm had come from Northwest Cryobank, which offers donors anonymity, but Teuscher said the apparent relative she found on 23andMe listed themselves as open to messaging.

I don't think this extends to offspring conceived via donated sperm. That's a little different than trying to fill out your family tree. The 23&Me thing is kind of a double-edged sword - on one hand, it can provide valuable genetic information in regard to ancestry and health, but at the same time, I bet it's broken up a lot of families when people find out that their kids aren't their biological offspring or that they have half-siblings conceived through affairs and such floating around out there somewhere

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Moo
"Devastating. I mean ... I was shocked, I was crying for days, I could barely eat," Teuscher said. "I felt embarrassed almost. Here I thought I was doing this thing I thought was in the best interest of my daughter ... And then it just came back on me in just such a harsh way that made me feel like I did something terrible, like I was a criminal."

Oh shut the fuck up, Moo. The 23&Me testing was fine to do and would have given you some information, but your efforts to learn more needed to stop there. Instead, you chose to violate your contract with the sperm bank by trying to contact your anonymous donor and his family. You did do something terrible and your attempts to contact this man could seriously fuck with his life. If he wanted to be contacted about children conceived with his sperm, he wouldn't have donated - he would have had kids with women he knew.

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"My daughter is an actual living, breathing, feeling human being who did not sign that contract," Teuscher said.

Yes, but that doesn't give you a right to violate the one you signed. You don't get to use your child as a scapegoat to do precisely what you agreed not to do.

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But Teuscher said with the loss of her vials, the promise of more children could be ended for her.

"They literally took my babies. My future babies," she said.

No it wouldn't. She can buy other sperm or she can get knocked up the old-fashioned way. The promise of more children that will be full biological siblings to her current one is ended for her, but hey, she proved she couldn't be trusted to not bug the donor of her first child, so the bank wasn't giving her the chance to do it again. They did not "literally take my future babies" - she violated her contract and they simply took back what was theirs because she can't be trusted to not contact the donor's relatives again.

My guess is having a kid is much more expensive than she thought and now she wants her sperm donor to pony up. Considering how much a lawsuit could cost her, she'd be smart to knock this shit off now and understand that she's not getting a cent out of the donor.

talk a bout obsession. baby rabies is positively the worst. the only thing I can hope for honestly is, if enuf of these slug brained placenta addled assholes pursue this, maybe donations will fall waaaaay off. leaving the infertile myrtles really bitchin

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

Dysfunctional relationships almost always have a child. The more dysfunctional, the more children.

The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

Some mistakes cannot be fixed, but some mistakes can be 'fixed'.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. Leo J. Burke

Adoption agencies have strict criteria (usually). Breeders, whose combined IQ's would barely hit triple digits, have none.

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Moo
And then it just came back on me in just such a harsh way that made me feel like I did something terrible, like I was a criminal.

Um...you are a criminal? You violated the terms of a legally binding contract. You were trying to invade someone's privacy. How is that different from trying to stalk someone, really? (And WOW, all about her, isn't it? "Came back on me"="my actions had foreseeable consequences and I don't like that"

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"They literally took my babies. My future babies," she said.

Smacks of pro-lifism...sperm are babies now? The possibility of having a child=a child? Fucking insane.

Genetic tests will tell you if you have a predisposition for a number of medical issues without needing to reach out to relatives found via the same testing. I had this done and can 100% state this is true.

As others have stated here, she attempted contact for the potential of freebies: money and babysitting most likely. Always thought sperm/egg donation are bad ideas because laws are mutable and DNA evidence can be used to force child support.

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Cambion

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Moo
"Devastating. I mean ... I was shocked, I was crying for days, I could barely eat," Teuscher said. "I felt embarrassed almost. Here I thought I was doing this thing I thought was in the best interest of my daughter ... And then it just came back on me in just such a harsh way that made me feel like I did something terrible, like I was a criminal."

Oh shut the fuck up, Moo. The 23&Me testing was fine to do and would have given you some information, but your efforts to learn more needed to stop there. Instead, you chose to violate your contract with the sperm bank by trying to contact your anonymous donor and his family. You did do something terrible and your attempts to contact this man could seriously fuck with his life. If he wanted to be contacted about children conceived with his sperm, he wouldn't have donated - he would have had kids with women he knew.

No it wouldn't. She can buy other sperm or she can get knocked up the old-fashioned way. The promise of more children that will be full biological siblings to her current one is ended for her, but hey, she proved she couldn't be trusted to not bug the donor of her first child, so the bank wasn't giving her the chance to do it again. They did not "literally take my future babies" - she violated her contract and they simply took back what was theirs because she can't be trusted to not contact the donor's relatives again.

My guess is having a kid is much more expensive than she thought and now she wants her sperm donor to pony up. Considering how much a lawsuit could cost her, she'd be smart to knock this shit off now and understand that she's not getting a cent out of the donor.

After reading this questioning the sanity of this moo. Crying for days because someone legally contracted to remain anonymous doesn't want contact....crazy much?
I agree, STFU moo.

so many of these rabid women crrryyyyy.
oh f'in boo hoo moo hoo. cry me a river.
mostly people do it for the money (donate sperm/eggs). just wish they'd stop and then the infertile myrtles would really scream and rant about how selfish people are not to donate so they can moooooo

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

Dysfunctional relationships almost always have a child. The more dysfunctional, the more children.

The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

Some mistakes cannot be fixed, but some mistakes can be 'fixed'.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. Leo J. Burke

Adoption agencies have strict criteria (usually). Breeders, whose combined IQ's would barely hit triple digits, have none.

Just reading on the net that now one-half of all americans can be linked in DNA bases. If you want to hide from outsiders who want to infiltrate your family, it's getting harder and harder. So if your dad impregnated someone on spring break, she kept the baby but didnt even know his last name to tell him about the offspring, your half sibs are gonna be knocking on your door someday. Same w/ your husband, just random people that might not even know your name, from a lifetime ago. I'm just so uninterested in this possibility.

My husband was telling me that he heard a story on the radio, where a woman did a DNA test and found out that her father wasn't really her father. It turned out that her mother had an affair with some asshole, and HE was the father. She had met the guy and she hates him. Her non-bio dad, who she loved, had died a couple of years ago. Needless to say, she feels sick inside that she shares this loser's DNA.

I'm glad that I have NO interest in doing this kind of shit. It wouldn't change my life or circumstances, and what I uncover could make me insanely upset.

I also believe that the woman in this story is crying and crying, because she wants to feel like SHE'S the victim, when in actuality, she's victimized someone else by breaking a contract. She's just a victim of herself and her greediness, because I feel that she wanted to find the donor to get money from him.

This makes me increasingly ambivalent about doing a test like this. I've considered doing the Ancestry dot com thing but now I'm not so sure. I'm an American mutt whose family has been here for countless generations so I'm naturally curious (especially since I've always been told I'm English/German but I tan a deep brown so) and I'd be curious to meet new relatives, but I can see where it could turn out badly. Plus I'm freaked out about being in a "DNA database". Feels like people's every move now is being databased and I don't feel comfortable with that.

I'm still on the fence about doing this. On the one hand, I'm not a fan of corporations/government/etc having access to my DNA. On the other hand, it would shut-up a lot of idiots in my family doing the "we're (pick ethnicity of the month)". On my father's side of the family, my great-grandfather couldn't keep his pants on so I know there are cousins that I have never met out there. It would be good to finally get some closure on that part but, the jury is still out on me putting out my DNA.

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"It is better not to look like what you are; it is better to look like a bourgeois woman because then all the doors are open for you and then you can just go and make hell." - Marjane Satrapi

I didn't care about the ethnicity as much as I wanted the health information. (One of my family members is also REALLY into it and wanted to find more relatives.)

Ancestry stopped people from doing this, but when I did it you could take your raw data, pay $5 and load it into something called Promethus. It links the genome to all the studies out there. It also showed you how you will react to certain drugs. Some drugs are not going to be effective on me and that saves everyone a lot of money and time. I also am susceptible to autoimmune issues, as if I didn't know that.

One family member has the "big boob" gene. It was pretty fascinating stuff. Of course you have to take it with a grain of salt and consult a medical professional yada yada. I also know many doctors fought the idea that concept of self testing, i.e. people were too stupid to have their own medical results. (But OF COURSE IF INSURANCE COMPANIES CAN HAVE IT, that is GREAT.)

I agree a lot of people are stupid, but some are not, and I find it offensive to hear these arguments couched in these terms because we all know what the real motivation is: money.

I know my ancestry and the ancient family names.

I've considered doing the DNA lookup thing. You do have a choice as to whether you want your information put into their publicly searchable database. if i decide to do this in the future, I will tell them that i do NOT consent to be put into their searchable database, that the information is for me only.

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cfuter
I was gonna post this story also. I would never do these ancestry tests in a million years. I don't want to find "missing' people by accident. I dont need a long lost sister because maybe my dad impregnated someone and the girl never told him. I dont need to find out me and a serial killer have the same DNA.

Same here. And I don't need to do an ancestry DNA test either.

IMHO sperm banks, egg banks, IVF, should all be done away with. This rock is severely overpopulation, fuck, where I live, truly severely overpopulated on the Suncoast.

The fewer people, the better.