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A few years after her marriage broke up, Aisha Jenkins started thinking about having a baby on her own. She used a leading sperm bank whose catalog contained hundreds of potential donors from which to choose. But when Ms. Jenkins, who is Black, narrowed the search down to Black donors, only six remained.
“That can’t be right,” said Ms. Jenkins, a 46-year-old project manager for a software company who lives in the Washington, D.C., metro area.
When she realized how difficult it is to find a Black sperm donor, Ms. Jenkins said she expanded her search, adding, “I knew there were other colors in the spectrum that would give me a brown child.” She now has two daughters, ages 7 and 2 1/2, using different donors—one with Egyptian ancestry, the other with Indian ancestry.
Industry experts say that Ms. Jenkins’s experience isn’t unusual. There has been a shortage of Black sperm donors and all donors of color for years, industry experts said. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem as young professionals and university students, a major pool of current and...
