Stockholm is buying Danish sperm to address a persistent shortage of local donors, but the cross-border supply raises questions about Sweden’s limits on how many families can have children using the same donor.
More than 2,000 people seek fertility treatment through Region Stockholm each year. Around 355 of them require donated sperm, while only about 25 people donate in the region annually, according to the Swedish local newspaper Mitt i.
The shortage has led the regional healthcare authority to purchase sperm from commercial banks in Denmark. Tekla Lind, chief physician and acting head of reproductive medicine at Karolinska University Hospital (Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset), said the measure was necessary to meet current demand but was not a sustainable long-term solution.
Stockholm needs more sperm donors
Region Stockholm would need around 80 active donors each year to become self-sufficient, Lind told Mitt i. The current number is less than one third of that target.
She said recruitment has become more difficult after advertisements seeking donors disappeared from the Swedish healthcare portal 1177 and from student publications. Karolinska is therefore trying to raise awareness of the shortage through other channels.
People donating sperm through Karolinska must be physically and psychologically healthy, aged between 23 and 45, and free from known hereditary diseases. The screening process includes medical examinations, infection tests and a psychosocial assessment.
Donors provide samples between eight and 14 times. Swedish rules also require healthcare providers to retain identifying information about donors so that people conceived through donation can later learn about their genetic origin.
Under Sweden’s Genetic Integrity Act, donor-conceived people who have reached sufficient maturity have the right to access the donor information recorded in the hospital’s special medical file.
Danish sperm purchases raise legal questions
The main concern surrounding Danish sperm imports is the number of families that may use material from the same donor.
Swedish regulations allow one sperm or egg donor to contribute to children in no more than six families in Sweden, except in narrowly defined circumstances. The restriction is intended to limit the number of genetic half-siblings created through a single donor. The Swedish parliament has confirmed that healthcare providers are responsible for ensuring compliance with this rule.
Commercial Danish sperm banks, however, distribute donations across several countries. Lind told Mitt i that this could mean a donor becomes the genetic parent of children in as many as 25 families in total.
The figure is not a uniform Danish legal ceiling. Different banks apply different international limits. Copenhagen-based European Sperm Bank, for example, says that its donors help an average of 25 families worldwide, while its standard global ceiling can be higher. Other Danish providers advertise a maximum of 25 families.
The difference does not necessarily mean that Stockholm is exceeding Sweden’s domestic six-family limit. It does, however, create a broader question: the same donor may comply with the limit in Sweden while also being used by families elsewhere in Europe.
Sweden’s government has acknowledged that the absence of coordinated national and international registers makes cross-border controls difficult. In 2025, it asked the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) to prepare proposals for a national register of gamete donors.
Donor-conceived children may face a complex process
Cross-border purchases may also complicate the right of donor-conceived people to learn about their origins.
“Stockholm children will be forced, as adults, to trace their origins across national borders through Danish companies,” Lind told Mitt i.
Swedish clinics keep donor records for at least 70 years, but information connected to imported sperm may depend partly on the documentation and procedures of the foreign supplier. Region Stockholm could therefore become dependent not only on an international commercial market, but also on companies located outside the Swedish healthcare system.
The shortage affects egg donations as well. Stockholm currently has around 20 egg donors a year, compared with an estimated need for 40. Waiting times can reach one year, although the region has not yet followed private clinics in purchasing donated eggs abroad.
For Region Stockholm, Danish sperm offers an immediate way to maintain fertility treatments. The longer-term issue is whether Sweden can recruit enough domestic donors and develop stronger cross-border rules without restricting access to assisted reproduction.
