THE Anonymous Us website collects first-person accounts of the reproductive industry. Here is a letter from a person conceived with an anonymous sperm donor. It reads in part:

Dear Father,

I thought I saw you the other day.

I was standing in the hall of the DMV office, waiting for someone, when a man walked past me to reach the door. And, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

This had never happened to me before. Mainly, I had never seen anyone in public who was so close to your height, but this man was very tall, like you. He was naturally tan, like you. And he was young, like you. I had never seen anyone who could have so easily been you.

So I stood there for a moment, not breathing, and waiting for something, though for what I don’t know. He disappeared around the corner of the door, but the tears that had begun were still there as I stared at the spot he had occupied. It scared me slightly, this encounter, because he could have been you. It scared me how easily any man could be you.

And of course I want to see you, meet you. Any human being endowed with the slightest bit of curiosity would want to know what their father looks like. They would actually want to know more than that, but that is not an option for the children of donors.

And, putting you aside for a moment, what about my siblings? I was overwhelmed with jealousy at the girls who made national news. The two had been living in the same state and had been friends, both eventually attending the same college out of state. It was there they discovered that they were sisters, that they shared the same donor father. I couldn’t help the jealousy I still feel. Something like that does not happen twice. [cont.]

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