THE BUZZ!
Woman born via sperm donor discovers she has 65 siblings: ‘You can definitely see the resemblance’
This 20-year-old girl in Maryland, conceived by a sperm donation, suspected she had other brothers and sisters. She took a DNA test and discovered she had about 13 siblings. Somebody added her to group chats, where she found out she has even more siblings – 65 so far.
And they are all over California, Michigan, Texas, Florida, and New York, and six here in Maryland.
As for her newfound family, she says she thinks of them as a support group. Whenever she has a problem or something she wants to share, she texts the family group chat, and they give her advice, she said.
According to the director of the Donor Sibling Registry, people frequently discover they have dozens of half-siblings after taking a DNA test. She attributes this to a lack of donor limitations. Although sperm banks first said that each donor would only have up to ten children, this is rarely the case. One issue, she believes, is that sperm banks do not keep detailed records of the offspring generated by each donor, which explains why there are so many half-sibling groupings with more than 100 or even 200 members. Also, big sperm banks ship sperm to clinics across the country and, on occasion, the world.
