I Wanted To Get Pregnant With My Gay Friend's Sperm. I Had No Idea Of The Fight We Were In For.

The author in 2018, around the time when she'd received a surprising call from her nurse. By then, I’d already paid thousands of dollars to have my eggs removed and frozen; my friend had endured the discomforts of, for instance, donating sperm in a clinic back room furnished exclusively with heterosexual porn — videos and magazines with titles like “Everybody Loves Bri!” placed there primarily to aid married heterosexual male patients — and attending awkward interviews where he was required to say aloud what the clinic administrators already knew from his intake form: Was he sexually active? “I just want to have my baby.” “I’m sorry,” she answered ― and I believed she truly was, though nothing, it seemed, could be done. “Indemnify the clinic — accept all risk.” As it turned out, though, there wasn’t any risk. Instead, sperm banks still decline to accept gay donors, citing the same FDA policy that had challenged me and that my fertility clinic had eventually found a way — at least with respect to my “known donor” — to work around.