Giving or giving back: new psychosocial insights from sperm donors in France

International audienceDespite the growing importance of the international scientific literatureconcerning donor insemination, studies of French samples are rare. Werecently had the opportunity to conduct a nationwide study on psychosocialissues related to semen donation in France. In this article, we present the mainresults of an analysis of the narratives of 33 sperm donors. We examine themeaning they attribute to this experience, their motivations, the socialramifications of their action, and their perspective on the principles of spermdonation in France. We highlight our results by comparing them to thosederived from other recent international studies in different legislative contexts.Finally, we suggest a hypothesis regarding donor motivations based on recentliterature in social sciences regarding the fundamental role of gift andreciprocity. These issues, particularly the anonymity of gamete donation, arecurrently at the heart of a national debate related to the expected revision ofthe French bioethics law