Colorado lawmakers consider rollback of sperm donor disclosure requirements adopted in wake of scandals

The state legislature is considering whether to roll back Colorado’s first-in-the-nation transparency requirements for sperm donors and banks aimed at helping families and donor-conceived children be more informed about their genetic lineage. 

The data collection and disclosure rules were adopted by Colorado in 2022 after a wave of scandals rocked the nation’s fertility industry. But some say they discourage men from donating sperm.

House Bill 1259 would eliminate a mandate that sperm banks update donor records every three years. It would also let banks prohibit families with donor-conceived children from sharing information about a sperm donor with relatives and friends or publicly, such as on social media.

Finally, the measure would remove a requirement that recipients of donor sperm be informed about the implications of a donor’s medical history or that other people may be conceived using the same donor’s sperm. 

Supporters of the measure say the rules are an impediment to families seeking access to assisted reproduction, including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, by reducing the availability of donor sperm. They are pitching the legislation as another way to protect reproductive rights, which broadly include abortion access. 

“Every donor, every clinic and every advancement in reproductive technology is vital to those who are trying to conceive,” Kristina Shaw, a member of the LGBTQ community who used sperm donation to have children, testified at the Colorado Capitol last week. “The more we restrict access, the more families will be forced to seek costly, out-of-state options or lose a chance to have children altogether.”

Light filters through the dome of the Colorado State Capitol as the 2022 legislative session opened Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

But opponents of the bill say the regulations were put in place to prevent the psychological damage that can happen when someone conceived through sperm donation learns who their biological father is and that they may have many half-siblings. They claim it’s disingenuous to lump the measure into the reproductive rights conversation, especially since donated sperm isn’t always used in IVF, arguing that’s a political tactic to persuade Democrats who control the legislature to vote for the bill.

“I have discovered over 40 half-siblings so far,” Sarah Jeffers, a Boulder woman who was conceived through donor sperm, told lawmakers last week. “I will never know how many siblings I truly have.”

The growing popularity of consumer DNA testing as part of ancestral research has uncovered scandals where doctors used their own sperm to impregnate dozens of patients. DNA testing has also led people to unintentionally discover they were conceived via donor sperm, meaning their biological parents aren’t who they believed they were. 

That’s why lawmakers in 2022 passed a bill enacting new rules for sperm donors and banks. In fact, the measure made Colorado the first state in the U.S. to ban anonymous sperm donation.

But the issue has proved tough to legislate, given how physically and emotionally complicated assisted reproduction can be. 

“We don’t want to have a situation in which no one wants to donate”

State Rep. Meg Froelich, an Arapahoe County Democrat, began pursuing legislation to shore up IVF and artificial insemination access in Colorado after the Alabama Supreme Court last year ruled that frozen embryos in that state should be considered “unborn children.” 

The decision effectively shut down access to fertility treatment in Alabama, as health care providers worried about their liability. It also stoked fears across the country that the interpretation could catch on elsewhere. 

“We wanted to make sure that IVF and assisted reproduction are generally shored up in Colorado, to make sure that we remain a world-class destination for the whole range of reproductive issues,” she said. 

State Rep. Meg Froelich, center, an Arapahoe County Democrat, at a reproductive rights rally in Denver on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)

In the process, however, Froelich said she heard from fertility providers that sperm donors in Colorado were becoming harder to find. They blamed the problem on the 2022 measure, Senate Bill 224, which passed with broad bipartisan support.

That’s how House Bill 1259 came to be.

“We heartily acknowledge that 20, 30, certainly 40 years ago in this space, it was unregulated — the Wild West and a lot of anonymous donations,” Froelich said. “In a world of 23andMe, that’s going away by just the nature of technology. But also we feel strongly that anonymous donations are not the way to go, and we would never move off of that position.”

Still, Froelich said, sperm donors deserve a level of anonymity. 

“We don’t want to have a situation in which no one wants to donate,” she said, “or, even worse, where people go off market and are going on Craigslist, which is happening. We would like Colorado to be a really healthy ecosystem with protections in place for donors, for donor-conceived people, and for the intended parents.”

She called House Bill 1259 a “modest course correction,” citing how the legislation removes a provision from state law allowing state regulators to travel across the country to inspect sperm banks that send sperm to Colorado.

The Colorado House chambers on Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun) on Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)

Betsy Cairo, a reproductive biologist in Colorado, testified at the Capitol last week that requiring sperm donors to provide and constantly update their personal information opens them up to doxxing when they refuse contact with their biological children should they reach out.

“Which he is entitled to do,” she said.

Cairo said the year-to-date sperm donor applications to CryoGam, a sperm bank in Loveland, are down by half, which she attributes to the 2022 law. (Much of the donor sperm used in Colorado come from out of state.)

“We only have a 10% to 15% approval rate at this point,” she said. “And if applications are down 50%, this not only hurts Colorado, this hurts all other states that CryoGam may be doing business with.”

The opponents of House Bill 1259, who include people conceived through sperm donation and their parents, argue the measure is trying to address a problem that there’s little evidence to show exists. 

Senate Bill 224, the 2022 law, only went into effect in January — less than three months ago — meaning there’s little data from which to draw conclusions. Opponents also argue that it’s likely the spreading popularity of DNA ancestry services like 23andMe, and not Colorado’s 2022 law, that are leading to reduced sperm donation.

“If they’ve had drop-off, it’s not related to this law,” former Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and one of the lead sponsors of Senate Bill 224, testified in the legislature last week. 

He’s now one of the chief opponents of House Bill 1259, calling it a “hot mess.”

Senate President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, April 17, 2024, at the Colorado Capitol. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

“It’s a mess because, in my opinion, the most impacted community that the underlying law passed in 2022 was meant to protect was shut out,” he said, referencing people conceived through sperm donation. “This bill has nothing to do with IVF. I believe — and I’m not questioning motives here — it’s put into this bill because no Democrat in America today would vote against a bill that is pro-IVF. That would be political suicide.” 

Among the provisions in Senate Bill 224 were requirements that sperm donors consent to the release of their identifying information and medical history to any donor-conceived person when they turn 18 years old, that no donor’s sperm be used to conceive more than 25 people and that donors be at least 21 years of age. 

House Bill 1259 wouldn’t affect those mandates.

House Bill 1259 would, however, change a requirement in Senate Bill 224 that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment draft literature on sperm donation that must be distributed to every donor so they understand the potential consequences. The literature must be also distributed to any donor whose sperm is used in Colorado, whether they donate in Colorado or another state.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment headquarters building is seen on Wednesday, August 11, 2021, in Glendale. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun)

House Bill 1259 would let sperm banks write the materials instead. 

“Those profiting from donation should not control the education of donors and recipients,” Dylan Morgan, chief operations officer of Cascade Cryobank in Washington state, testified before the Colorado legislature. The business is working to open a sperm bank in Denver.

There are also concerns among proponents of House Bill 1259 about a provision stating Colorado “shall not deny, restrict, interfere with or discriminate against” a person’s ability to donate sperm or receive sperm. They feel that could invalidate any regulations around sperm donation altogether.

Where the bill is headed

House Bill 1259 received its first hearing at the Colorado Capitol last week before the House Health and Human Services Committee. Lawmakers on the panel appeared torn between the need for guardrails around sperm donation and not limiting access to artificial insemination. 

A vote on the legislation was postponed to a date uncertain while Froelich and Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat and another lead sponsor of the measure, work on amendments. (Froelich was the only Democrat in the Colorado legislature who voted against Senate Bill 224 in 2022.)

The Colorado Capitol’s gold dome in Denver, Colorado, photographed on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)

Some of those proposed changes would require a sperm donor or the family of a donor-conceived person to report any major medical issues that happen later in life. Banks would then be responsible for removing problematic sperm from their catalogue. That would replace the current requirement that sperm banks update donor information every three years.

Opponents of the bill don’t like that amendment because they say it would put the onus on donors and patients when it should be on the sperm banks. 

Another amendment would soften the provision allowing sperm banks to prohibit people conceived through sperm donation from sharing information about their father. The change is still being worked out, but it would focus more on protecting donor privacy than allowing blanket nondisclosure agreements. 

The Senate lead sponsors of the bill are Democratic Sens. Lisa Cutter of Jefferson County and Lindsey Daugherty of Arvada.