09/11/2024
Coast to Coast Donation (“C2C”): A Next Generation S***m Bank - a message from our Co-Founder, Darlene Pinkerton
Every week brings more scandalous stories about deception in the fertility world. We’ve heard of s***m donors with a thousand offspring and genetic origins kept secret, revealed only by a home DNA test. Sadly, many of these reports are true but they are sensationalized, leading to mistrust of the fertility industry. This further stigmatizes donation and the good that results when people seek the help of a trusted s***m donor to create their families.
Traditionally, s***m donation has been mired in secrecy and a lack of transparency, woefully lacking in forethought on the impact to donor conceived people. Donors and their contribution are seen as ‘inventory’ and having vital information, like donor profiles, are often limited to baby photos and few details about who the donor is as a person.
We now know how damaging that is. Every donor conceived person deserves to have vital information about their medical and genetic history. Their creation story should never be a secret.
The approach to s***m donation needs to change.
Through my 25+ years of experience in egg donation and surrogacy through A Perfect Match, I’ve learned that earning the trust of my clients is the number one factor in not only my success, but the positive outcome of a fertility journey.
Together with Tom Pinkerton, a 35-year reproductive attorney and pioneer in this field, and Kaitlin Locher, our daughter via surrogacy, who is the CEO of Coast to Coast S***m Donation, we founded C2C to set a standard for a new approach to s***m donation. Our mission is to serve the needs of recipients and donor-conceived persons who want a connection to and a commitment from their s***m donor to provide opportunity to the adult donor-conceived person to know who he is.
Don't the people who are born through donation deserve access to their own history? Absolutely!
This is why 70% of C2C donors will meet recipient parents via video or phone to answer questions, and 100% of our donors agree to releasing their information to the donor-conceived person at the age of 18.
For many of our donors, limiting the number of families they help is their number one reason for donating through Coast to Coast instead of a s***m bank. C2C agrees to limit the number of families who will match with a donor to no more than 10 family units, worldwide.
Trust. Transparency and a commitment to donor-conceived people is what makes Coast to Coast Donation different - the next generation s***m bank.
If you know me, you know I won’t settle for anything less.
