Cryos, the Denmark-based, largest sperm bank in the world, has provided sperm to over 500 women in Japan since it launched its services there in March 2019.
Revealing the details in a report, the sperm bank revealed that the use of its services had increased over the past two years, but has not clarified the ancestry or ethnicity of the sperm donors used. Over half of the people using sperm supplied by the clinic were single women, and gay women made up 30-40 percent of customers. This is despite the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology stating in 2021 that public funding for IVF using donated sperm or eggs would be limited to infertile heterosexual couples in the country.
Yoshie Yanagihara, professor of bioethics at Tokyo Denki University, said to Japan Times: 'Commercial sperm banks put a price tag on men supplying sperm and sell their genetic information... I would like men, as well as women, to consider this issue ... about whether we should live in a society where people's genetic information is evaluated and traded for money.'
