How Can the Donor-Conceived Find Genetic Connections?

Searching for a long lost sibling, donor, or birth family can take its emotional toll on donor-conceived children and their families. But the Donor Sibling Registry has many tools in place to ease the process and provide the needed information.

The DSR advocates that children born through embryo adoption, clinics, egg donation agencies and cryo-banks (or embryo, egg or sperm donation) have the social acceptance and legal rights to their biological origins and identities. Founded in 2000, the Donor Sibling Registry now has a membership of more than 55,000. It provides tools to connect families and a safe place for the donor-conceived to research their genetic backgrounds without the secrecy and shame that often shrouds donor conception.

So far, the registry has helped connect more than 14,700 individuals with half-siblings or their donors.

The registry’s website offers dozens of success stories to let the donor-conceived know they are not alone, a link for news items, blogs and videos, and a library to conduct additional research. This allows families to learn about industry issues specific to reproductive medicine and to find reports on medical issues pertaining to donor families. There also is access to archived donor lists, recommendations for DNA testing, and sample letters to find a donor number or get a response from a clinic or sperm bank. Members can add a posting, make contacts, view news pages and find peace in completing their families.

Because genetic connections are so important to a child’s identity and developmental growth, many donating and adopting families are now open to knowing more information about each other. Couples who choose to donate their embryos through an embryo adoption program are able to choose the family who receives their embryos. They are encouraged to have a level of communication between the two families for the sake of their children. While infant children are not concerned about their genetic origins, adult children are. Embryo adoption allows both the donor and adopter families to prepare a communication conduit for their children’s future.

Learn more about embryo adoption and donation at EmbryoAdoption.org.