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In the years that followed, research in the field progressed steadily. By 1953, the technique of cryogenic freezing had been perfected, allowing semen to be frozen in glycerol and stored for long periods of time. With the advent of sperm banks in the early 1970s, private fertility clinics began appearing. Armed with the legal precedent of confidentiality and anonymity, the banks flourished, regulating themselves with their own guidelines. Donor insemination is now commonplace; 90,000 procedures occur in the US every year, resulting in 40,000 actual pregnancies.

Sperm banks and fertility clinics have carved out a stable niche in the United States for a number of reasons. First, legal precedent has kept donor insemination out of the political spotlight, and clinics have capitalized on the policy and distanced themselves from other controversial reproductive procedures such as abortion and embryonic research. Second, the practice is sold as a therapeutic measure aimed to help infertile couples overcome infertility. The term “donor” is misleading, since sperm samples in clinics are referred to as “product” for sale. In this context, genetic material has become a commodity.

No concrete federal regulations control the collection or sale of these objectified “goods,” though most sperm banks follow guidelines set by the American Association of Tissue Banks and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Donors are put through a rigorous array of tests, which gather information on the donor’s age, height, body weight, family history of disease, as well as drug, blood and urine tests. In addition, adopted individuals, gay men, and those who have exceeded a maximum number of sexual partners are screened out for fear of HIV. Ironically, the qualifications are strict enough that a prospective mother can learn more about the biological character of her donor than most women would ever discover (or care to know) about their own husbands.

In addition to this scrupulous screening process, banks make their product more appealing by providing supplementary information about the donor such as his physical appearance, level of education, ethnicity, and family background. So strict are some of the conditions that a newspaper article claimed that “being accepted as a sperm donor can be as difficult as entering Harvard.” According to the Journal of Social History, it’s not just as difficult—it’s harder.

If donors provide the goods, it appears that the means of production are kept a trade secret by the sperm banks. Though product records are well documented and classified, contact information is denied to couples and their children. Customers never meet their donors and are often discouraged by clinics from seeking them out. Sperm banks acknowledge, however, that paternal identity could become an issue for children, so they keep a photograph or a recording of a donor’s voice should a couple or child become interested. The development of DNA fingerprinting in the mid-1990s has instigated a new controversy surrounding DI. By comparing the DNA sequences of a donor and his children, a match can be easily confirmed using genetic sequencing. With new genetic fingerprinting technologies donors have suddenly realized that their anonymity may not be as safely guarded as they previously thought.