Across Europe, a lot of women turn to Danish sperm to get pregnant. Here's why

With her biological clock ticking louder and louder, and a partner whose wish for children had already been fulfilled, Kim, a 37-year-old woman from the Netherlands, decided in June 2020 it was time to start seriously looking into the possibilities of satisfying her desire to become a mother. 

Because she had never had any particular attachment to the "traditional" family, she eventually up at a Dutch fertility clinic, where she was offered the choice between a sperm donor from a Dutch sperm bank or from commercial Danish sperm banks.

She opted for the latter because they offered a wider variety of donors and more information about them. 

"Whereas Dutch sperm banks only allow you to select for four external traits, being hair and eye colour, ethnicity and posture, Danish sperm banks provide you with much more extensive profiles, including a baby picture, handwriting, and voice sound," she told Euronews.

This altogether gave her a good impression of the personal character of the sperm donor, something she deemed important for her future child. 

"I wanted my child to be able to trace back her origins and stimulate the potential curiosity for her biological background," she said.

After a thorough decision process, Kim ended up choosing a sperm donor with Portuguese descent that she found in the database of Denmark's Cryos International, by its own admission the largest sperm bank in the world. 

She made the order on a Tuesday and her fertility clinic called on the Thursday to inform her that three straws of deep-frozen sperm had arrived. Quite unusually, the insemination that followed, about a month later, was an instant hit.

Across the whole of Europe, women like Kim are pregnant or have conceived children from sperm donors