A mom-to-be paid over $80K so her kid wouldn’t have too many siblings — but her sperm donor’s contract still lets him donate to a friend

Lacob, 36, who lives in San Francisco, is chief executive of Xella Health, a women’s health company that relies on AI. She’s pregnant with a girl due in December, conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) with donor sperm. She chose a San Diego boutique bank, Coast to Coast Sperm Donation, where a base package runs about $25,000, and a donor’s sperm goes to six families at most.

Still uneasy with six, she paid another $25,000 to take three of those spots off the table, leaving just two other families able to choose him. The tab, which also covered the donor’s fee, genetic and medical screening, lawyers and his travel, hit $83,450 — and that didn’t include IVF. An inheritance from her late mother helped pay for it.

Compare that with a traditional bank’s vial, which, Bloomberg reported, can cost under $2,000, not counting storage, delivery or the insemination itself.

Why a contract only goes so far

The catch is in the fine print. Under the agreements, as Lacob describes them, the bank can pair him with no more than two other families, and he can’t give to rival banks. But he can still father children of his own or donate directly to a relative or close friend he knew beforehand, though Lacob says he told her he doesn’t expect either. She acknowledges she can’t fully control whether he donates to other sperm banks.

No single registry tracks donors, and nothing in the law guarantees exclusivity, reproductive attorney Melissa Brisman told Bloomberg. She doubts that paying to cap donations will, on its own, mean fewer potential siblings.

California Cryobank says something similar on its own site, noting that it “cannot stop a donor from donating to another sperm bank.”

Rules for donors

The rules are thin overall. A 2023 analysis by the law firm Nixon Peabody found most states don’t regulate tissue banks. The Food and Drug Administration’s donor rules center on disease.

Its regulations require testing for HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea, and draft guidance published Jan. 7, 2025 updated how banks judge donor eligibility. Neither addresses how many families one donor can serve.