sperm bank

This is a good place to start your journey towards successful insemination. There are a few choices you can make after first learning your options - so basic definitions are required.

Artificial Insemination (AI)
Artificial insemination (AI) is a common procedure lesbians use to become pregnant. In AI, sperm is injected into a woman's cervix, uterus, fallopian tube, or ovarian follicle. Sperm is typically selected from a sperm bank or from a known donor. This may be done at home.

Sperm Bank

As they grow and mature, children want to know about their biological origins. That is why Rainbow Flag Health Services allows the sperm donor (not the legal parent of the child) to be known to the child. Utilizing this unique service, it's the only sperm bank to tell the mother who the donor is when the child is three months old. The mother is asked to contact the donor by the child's first birthday. This is similar in concept to open adoption, where the birth mother is known to the child although she is not the child's legal parent.

California is a fantastic place to experience surrogacy. Women can become a parent by going to a sperm bank and undergoing artificial insemination. Men use a surrogate, either through artificial insemination or through two women, one to donate an egg, and the other to serve as surrogate.

Our friends at the Human Rights Campaign have listed sperm banks in the United States. These banks were found welcoming to many lesbians (although not necessarily to gay men who wish to donate sperm).

Analysis is mandatory for semen donated for fertilization.

What are doctors looking for during a semen analysis?

"For the most part, if a woman purchases anonymous donor sperm from a sperm bank, the donor will not have any legal rights to the child. This is the safest way for a single woman or a lesbian couple to assure that no one other than them will have parental rights." So says Deborah H. Wald, a San Francisco Bay Area attorney specializing in family formation law, as she explains the legal parameters of lesbians having babies.

If you are considering donor sperm insemination as a way to build your family, consider the following questions:

• Does the clinic have its own sperm bank? If not, which sperm banks does the practice or clinic use?
• Does the clinic provide a list of sperm banks?

If the clinic provides the donor sperm, ask the clinic the following questions:

• Does the clinic use samples from a commercial sperm bank or does it have its own donors?