DENVER — Three months after Colorado’s first-of-its-kind sperm donor regulations went into effect, state lawmakers are weighing whether to unwind some of those requirements amid concerns that the new rules have chilled donations for would-be parents who need them.

But the proposal, House Bill 1259, is opposed by the former legislator who sponsored the regulatory law back in 2022, as well as by a coalition of people conceived with donated sperm and eggs. They have accused the bill’s supporters of seeking to deregulate a multibillion-dollar industry that, they contend, needs tight oversight.

The bill — which also would explicitly enshrine protections for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, in state law — comes at a time of upheaval and broad anxiety about the state of reproductive health care in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning national abortion protections. It has pit advocates — and one large industry player — who want to make fertility treatment as accessible as possible against a community of people who say they’re living reminders of why regulation is vital.

Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat sponsoring the bill with Rep. Kyle Brown, said they “are tremendously sympathetic to donor-conceived people and their challenges and what they’re asking, what they wanted in that bill.”

But, she argued, the industry has reformed and improved, and she was focused on ensuring families have access to donors.

The bill passed its first full House vote Thursday over Republican opposition to the IVF provisions. It would not roll back the most significant change from the 2022 law — a prohibition on anonymous sperm and egg donations.

The law passed three years ago but went into effect Jan. 1. Spurred on by concerns about an unregulated industry, missing records and surprisingly extensive webs of half-siblings among donor-conceived people, the law ended such anonymous donations and instituted a licensure system for donation clinics.

This year’s proposal also would keep the law’s cap on how many families could use a single donor’s sperm.

But HB-1259 would strike a requirement that clinics reach out to donors every three years to update the donors’ contact information, and it would loosen rules around educational materials that clinics must provide to donors and families. Those facilities also would not be subject to on-site inspections by state health regulators, and the bill would reduce financial penalties for violating the regulations.

Froelich and other supporters of the bill say those changes are necessary and that the 2022 law has made both clinics and donors wary. One clinic representative told lawmakers last month that recent donor applications were down 50%.

“We want people to be able to have medical information — if donors do want to connect with recipients, that is all great,” said Kristina Shaw from the nonprofit Colorado Fertility Advocates. She has three children conceived with donor gametes, the technical term for sperm or eggs.

“But the amount of restrictions — it’s really putting unnecessary restrictions around that, unnecessary laws around that,” she added. “So you’re almost creating a law around how a family should be created.”

Checkered history

But opponents counter that the law has only been in effect since the beginning of the year — not nearly long enough, they contend, to have already had a negative impact on the industry.

Indeed, though one large national sperm bank is backing the bill, three others signed a joint letter saying the regulations haven’t negatively impacted them. They said they’re all pursuing licensure in the state.

“It feels like they’re trying to blame (the 2022 law) for things it’s not doing — and even if it is causing some decrease in donor numbers, I don’t think that’s a bad thing if it ultimately means better health and happiness for the resulting families,” said Sarah Jeffers, a Boulder resident.

Jeffers was donor conceived, and she knew there was a chance she had half-siblings somewhere. Then an aunt with a genealogy kick gave Jeffers a DNA test, and she found roughly 30 relatives — including her biological father. The count has continued to grow as she’s checked registry records and genealogy websites.

According to a spreadsheet she maintains, Jeffers has at least 42 half-brothers and -sisters.

Another donor-conceived person, Christina Spencer, told lawmakers that she’s battled a neurological illness her entire life and only learned several years ago that she was donor conceived. Had her biological father not been willing to communicate with her, she said, she’d have no access to her biological history.

Jeffers supported the 2022 law creating the regulations, which were the first of their kind in the country. That bill was carried by then-Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat.

Fenberg, who was term-limited and left the legislature last year, has opposed this year’s attempt to unwind some of the regulations. He called the bill a “hot mess” and said donor-conceived people hadn’t been consulted in its drafting.

He and Jeffers argued that the proposal was intended not because of a dire shortfall in donations but to cut regulations to benefit a large clinic — California Cryobank. That company is owned by CooperSurgical, which is formally supporting the bill and did not respond to a message seeking comment. Other local clinics did not respond to interview requests, and neither did the clinics that signed the joint letter expressing lukewarm feelings about this year’s bill.

Fenberg said donations have dropped for other reasons — primarily because anonymous donation is no longer possible due to the growth of genealogy services and commercial DNA testing.

“They made that claim (about donations dropping) before the bill went into effect. Empirically, you never could have said this bill reduced the amount of donors because it didn’t happen yet,” Fenberg said. “… I think donor participation has been going down steadily because people know that 23andMe exists and there’s no such thing as anonymity anymore. It’s not that the law changed, but that reality changed.”

Inclusion of IVF protections

Jeffers said she was conflicted about opposing the bill because she supported adding IVF protections into state law.

In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through IVF were children under the law, which not only complicated the fertility treatment but also established a precedent of fetal personhood that has far-reaching implications for reproductive health care more broadly. That ruling had no direct impact on Colorado, but it sparked a nationwide debate about the potential for similar decisions sprouting elsewhere.

Colorado has robust abortion-rights laws that would likely not allow a court here to deliver such a ruling. But reproductive health attorney Kyriaki Council told The Denver Post that more explicit language would fully eliminate that possibility.

Fenberg accused the bill’s sponsors of inserting the IVF provision into the bill to ease its passage — because, he said, “no Democrat wants to vote against IVF protections.”

Froelich, who has long worked on reproductive health measures in the Capitol, rejected those critiques as “cynical.” She said the bill had been amended to ensure clinics have a plan to keep their records permanently, even if they’re sold or go bankrupt.

The bill also would now encourage donors and clinics to communicate if a donor or recipient has a “clinically significant” medical issue — both for the donor’s own medical awareness and so that donated sperm can be taken out of circulation.

More fundamentally, Froelich and other supporters said, the industry has changed and improved. Genetic testing has increased, anonymity is gone and caps on the number of families that can use one donor’s gametes are common.

What’s at risk now, Froelich argued, is prospective families’ access to fertility treatment.

“I have a much more positive view of the need for donation and the motivation of people who want to donate,” she said, “and I have much more zest or vigor for fighting for folks who want to form families. And I fundamentally think that there isn’t as much of a need to right the wrongs of 20 and 30 and 40 years ago.”

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