Tyler Sniff took a home DNA test at 32 years old and unexpectedly learned that the man who raised him was not his biological father. When Mr. Sniff shared the discovery with his siblings, they asked their parents for an explanation. Their parents revealed that they had used an anonymous sperm donor in order to conceive their six children.
The realization that his parents had kept his origins a secret from him stunned Mr. Sniff, now 34, an environmental lawyer who lives in Atlanta. He began researching the rules surrounding donor conception. There were federal regulations about blood tests donors must take and state laws addressing that the parents and not the donor are recognized as responsible for the child. But when it came to Mr. Sniff’s right to know his own genetic background, the government was mostly silent.
Mr. Sniff, who has since co-founded an advocacy group, recognizes that his parents’ decision to use an anonymous donor is responsible for his existence. “I am grateful for my life,” he says. But as an adult, he felt his right to...
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 03.25.2025
Aggregated News
On June 24, 2022, the same day the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I received a call from the fertility clinic where I’d been undergoing in vitro fertilization, informing me that seven of...
By Nick Cumming-Bruce, New York Times | 03.13.2025
Aggregated News
A United Nations commission on Thursday accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza that provide reproductive services, including an I.V.F. clinic where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what it called an effort to prevent Palestinian...
After struggling for eight years to have a baby, Shannon Petersen and her husband decided to try in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2022. Their fertility doctor recommended a test that sounded like exactly what they needed. It promised to help...
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