Lifestyle

Inside Facebook’s Free-Sperm Economy

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Ask anyone who still spends significant time on Facebook what keeps them there, and you’ll likely get the same response: the groups. There are groups for venting about troubled relationships, for buying and selling used baby gear, for crowdsourcing medical advice, and, as Anya Kamenetz learned while reporting this story, for finding a man who is “intoxicated” by the prospect of giving you his sperm — for free. For this riveting feature, Anya joined a number of these groups (there are dozens) and got to know the men and women who were actively participating. We asked her to find out why these women had rejected traditional sperm banks in favor of a totally unregulated, seemingly riskier path to parenthood — a choice some of us in the office were struggling to comprehend. The stories she unearthed turned out to be nuanced and thoughtful and, yes, at times a little bit wild. But at the end of them all, the result was familiar, even traditional: Toys on the floor. Diapers in the pail. A mother and her baby.

—Julia Edelstein, features editor, New York

Inside Facebook’s Free-Sperm Economy Frustrated with the industry’s high fees, some women have gone online to meet men eager to donate their semen.

Illustration: by Lily LK
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