Spenderkinder is the organisation representing donor conceived adults in Germany – with more than 200 members aged between 18 and 55. Founded in 2009, it campaigns for legal amendments to protect the rights of donor conceived people. In the year 2013, one of Spenderkinder’s members received a landmark ruling at the Regional Court of Hamm. The court ruled that a doctor must provide information to the child about their genetic father. In 2017, the German parliament passed a law to initiate the sperm donor registry.

By sharing our experiences, we intend to convince parents to choose a sperm donation only after considering the effects on the children, and to disclose their origins to them as early as possible.

To search for half siblings and our genetic parents, we use the genetic testing service Ancestry. Until 2025, we have had more than 60 child parent matches and identified more than 80 groups of half siblings.

Spenderkinder’s political demands

• Donor conception and the respective genetic parents of a person should be recorded on the birth certificate, as is the case for adoption, to effectively protect donor conceived people’s right to receive information about their ancestry.
• The sperm donor registry (which was initiated in 2018) should also connect half siblings, if they are interested, and file data on embryo donations. It should also includa data on sperm donations precious to 2018.
• Donor conceived people shall have an explicit legal claim to receive information about their ancestry. T
• Donors shall be protected retroactively from claims to child support and inheritance claims. In Germany, a sperm donor faces the risk of having to pay child support for the children he fathered if (1) a child initiates a legal action that he is the father and (2) the child does not have a legal father (any longer), e.g. because the child has challenged the fatherhood of his legal father. The law does not frame any difference between a sperm donor and a man fathering a child in a one-night -stand. Until now, such a situation has only occurred for private donations without the involvement of a doctor or a fertility clinic. However, the fact of this being possible is frequently brought up in order to justify donor anonymity and also one of the major obstacles of past sperm donors disclosing their identity to their offspring.
• Donors should not be paid, but only receive a remuneration for their efforts of about 30 Euro. It is painful for many donor offspring to imagine that their genetic father´s primary motivation for the donation was financially based.
• One donor should not create more than six families. Currently, there are no legal rules in Germany on how many children may be fathered by one donor. As regards self-given professional standards, the doctors’ chambers put up the number of 10 children for negotiation – the association of reproductive medicine 15 – but neither figure can be enforced, as there is no national donor registry. Donors may donate at several clinics, and even the doctors lack knowledge if a treatment resulted in the birth of a child, as many of their patients do not get back to them.
• Intended parents shall undergo a mandatory independent counselling before receiving a sperm donation. The counselling shall also inform about the child’s right to information about their origin, as well as the challenges of having a child, which is only genetically linked to ine parent. It should also provide advice to parents on how to disclose the donor conception to the child.