Modern Families

For many, the pandemic brought on a desire to spread their seed or start (or expand) their innermost circle. And for those in need of sperm, the Internet provided creative ways to make a baby.

- Kristin Canning

A year ago, Anica Leon-Weil, 35, wasn’t planning for a baby, let alone using the sperm of a near-stranger she’d met online. But the pandemic spurred her to reprioritize: She moved back home to Santa Cruz, California, to be closer to her mom, and the time indoors made her want to nest. “I’d been thinking about having a kid on my own, and the way life had slowed down made it feel like the right time,” she says. All she needed was a sperm donor. After speaking with a friend who’d gone to a sperm bank, she knew that wasn’t right for her. “I was struck by how unaffordable banks are for a service that feels impersonal,” she says.

So she looked into another option: Facebook groups that connect sperm donors and those seeking donations. In one, she met Kyle Gordy, the founder and one of the group’s most prolific donors—35 biological children and more on the way—and after a brief interview and the exchange of STI information, she met with him in a hotel room during her ovulation window. She chose to have a natural insemination (meaning sex, though Gordy and many other donors typically offer their sperm in a cup for artificial insemination, or they send it frozen in the mail). Leon- Weil, a marriage and family therapist, is currently 15 weeks pregnant. “It might seem strange to some people, but I tried to think of it like this: If I had met someone at a bar and gotten pregnant at this point in my life, I would have kept it. This felt more ethical because Kyle was on board with the level of contact I wanted with a donor going forward.” Plus, the service was free.