“Asking me what it's like not to have a father is like asking me what it's like to have both a father and a mother.”

BarcelonaMaria Sellés (Barcelona, 1990) is one of the founders of the Association of Daughters and Sons of Donors, whose goals include ending the anonymity of gamete donors, which is protected by law, so that those born from these donations—like Sellés—have the option of knowing their genetic origins. Her mother told her from a young age that she was born through artificial insemination, "without the euphemisms that some families use," and she had always had questions about who her biological father was. Until adolescence. "When I realized that I couldn't know who my father was, I stopped asking."

This didn't stop the concern and pain she has felt since childhood regarding this issue. During high school, she fantasized with her friends that somewhere—"I don't know why, for me it was in Madrid"—there was a file with that information. "We had the fantasy that we would escape and sneak in there to find out," she recalls. Now she sees that "she wasn't that far off the mark." After a process she describes as a scavenger hunt, she has managed to get the sperm bank involved at the time to provide her with some information about the donor, without revealing his identity.

If I could find out who he is, I would like to meet him. "I'm curious to see his face, and he has a lot of information that's important to me. I have a feeling he's a asshole tremendous, because to sell sperm you have to be one, but I prefer to know it than not to know it."

She clarifies that she does not necessarily want to establish a link. "This is not about family. When I was little, when they asked me what it was like not having a father, they would say things like "How are you doing?" For me it is a question that makes no sense, it is as if I asked "How are you doing with having a father and a mother?"". Even today she finds a "contradiction" in some positions that defend the anonymity of donors: "Many people do not understand that I do not have a father, they ask me if he has died or has abandoned us. When they find out that I am the daughter of a single mother and that there is an anonymous donor, then they question why I want to meet him, they think I am playing a trick on my mother."

Before obtaining the little information she has about the donor, Sellés spent years dodging the subject with her mother. adopted children. I was afraid of disappointing my mother or that she would think I didn't love her enough." At 29, she wrote her a letter that at first left her "shocked," but within days she gave her her full support and helped her get information about the donor.

Sellés sent this same letter to The Direct, and there one of the other founders of the Association of Daughters and Sons of Donors, Miquel Roura, read it and contacted her. "It was like finding a brother. Finally, someone like me, who is going through the same things as me." Roura and Sellés contacted other children of anonymous donors until they formed the association in 2023. In their attempts to force a change in the regulation of gamete donations, they have found the complicity of bioethics committees, but silence from political groups. "I think there is a perception that assisted reproduction is linked to progress and equality, because it is sold as the only possible model for founding a family for single women and lesbian couples. I would like to put forward a proposal beyond that, and the only group that has approached us is Vox. We haven't even responded to them," I think I misinterpreted.