Pride Angel

Natalie gamble Associates (NGA) has been contacted by UK patient organisations trying to clarify the implications of the High Court’s ruling, which has allowed two sperm donors to argue in court that they should have rights of contact with their biological children. NGA has been representing the lesbian mothers in this case.

The ruling received a lot of press attention yesterday (including on the front page of the Daily Mail, and in the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and BBC). Natalie spoke to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the British Fertility Society, the National Gamete Donation Trust and the Donor Conception Network – all seeking further information about what to say to patients, donors and donor conceived families who were contacting them.

The HFEA and the BFS have issued press statements in response to the ruling. We thought it would be helpful to provide a clear summary of what the ruling means for these organisations and others concerned about this:

- The ruling only gave the two donors the right to argue their case in court. It is not yet know whether they will be given any rights of contact with the children.

- The reason for the decision was very fact specific, a result of the fact that the donors were known to the lesbian mothers and had contact with the children in their early months before relationships broke down. The court was satisfied, on the facts, that the donors had sufficient connection with the children to at least justify their cases being heard in court.

- The ruling is therefore exceptionally unlikely to apply to donors who have had no contact with the child – for example unknown donors through licensed clinics.

- However, the ruling could apply to other types of known donors, including known sperm or egg donors who have donated through a licensed clinic, if they can demonstrate sufficient connection with the child in practice. Although in this case conception took place outside a licensed clinic, the law which provided that these men were ‘not to be treated as the father for any purpose’ is the same law which excludes the status of other types of egg and sperm donors.

- The ruling does not in any way affect donors’ responsibilities – it does not make it possible to hold a donor legally or financially responsible for a child they help conceive.

Article: 3rd February 2013 www.nataliegambleassociates.co.uk

Read more about becoming a known sperm donor and the legal rights at www.prideangel.com

A recruitment drive aimed at gay men has contributed to a significant reduction in the waiting times for Australian women seeking a sperm donor in their bid to have a baby, according to a leading IVF specialist. But women who delay reproduction are more likely than ever to encounter difficulties, experts say. IVF Australia spokesman Professor Michael Chapman said Australian women were waiting up to 18 months for donor sperm about a year ago

The waiting time was now about eight weeks, thanks largely to imrproved supply from overseas clinics and to a local donor drive that targeted gay men. Professor Chapman said improved adherence by US sperm banks to Australia’s strict legal requirements had helped to slash times. Donors must give consent so any child resulting from the donation can make contact once they turn 18. Similarly, a recent advertising campaign by IVF Australia in the gay media had resulted in an increase in inquiries and, subsequently, much-needed donors, he said. However, the demand in Australia for donors has steadily risen as women who put off having children suddenly find themselves emotionally or financially ready, yet unable to fall pregnant as easily as hoped - if at all.

Perils of putting it off
According to a recent study of 1010 women aged 18-44 years, more of them know someone in their circle trying to fall pregnant — and failing — than don’t. More surprisingly, these women of childbearing age remained ambivalent about - or oblivious to - their own decreasing chances of conceiving, the survey by pregnancy test maker Clearblue found. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirm that women are delaying pregnancy, with the average age at which women fall pregnant for the first time rising from 27.5 years in 1990 to 28.9 years in 2010. Since 2005, more women aged 35-39 years have given birth than have women aged 20-24 years, the ABS figures show. IVF experts concur that both the number and the average age of women seeking help from fertility clinics has increased. Dr David Molloy of the Queensland Fertility Group said while the age of women seeking help getting pregnant at his Brisbane clinic had steadily risen, success rates had struggled to keep pace. "There’s a misconception that infertility clinics can cure you getting older. We can’t," he said. "Pregnancy rates drop quite dramatically once you hit 39-40, and start to reduce from 35. Certainly we can help patients get pregnant in those age groups, but the success rates are lower and there’s no major cure."

New research
Research published over the weekend suggests that babies conceived using commonly available fertility treatments are almost 50 per cent more likely to have a birth defect than those conceived naturally. In the most comprehensive study of its kind in the world, researchers from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute compared the risk of major birth defects for each of the reproductive therapies commonly available internationally, including IVF, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and ovulation induction. "The unadjusted risk of any birth defect in pregnancies involving assisted conception was 8.3 per cent, compared with 5.8 per cent for pregnancies not involving assisted conception," said Associate Professor Michael Davies, the lead author of the study published on Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The risk of birth defects for IVF was 7.2 per cent, while the rate for ICSI - a procedure used to overcome male infertility in which a sperm is injected into an egg - was even higher at 9.9 per cent (139 defects).

No substitute for good planning
Dr Molloy said Queensland had led the country in pioneering such recent technology such as oocyte (egg) freezing and AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone) testing - "a measure of how many eggs you have left" - but they were no substitute for good planning and prioritisation. "It doesn’t get around the problem of reproductive ageing completely," he said. "What you don’t want to be is 39 with 39-year-old DNA in your eggs and not many eggs left. "And you don’t want to be 31 and thinking you can delay getting pregnant. At 31 you have lovely DNA but if your egg stocks are very poor it’s still going to be harder to get pregnant and you mightn’t be able to fit your two children in. "The DNA ageing that goes on between 35 and 45 still happens, but if you’ve got fewer eggs then you’ve got a double whammy and your back to the wall." Professor Chapman said the average age of the patients seeking help at his New South Wales fertility clinic was "now 37 years of age, so half of them are over 37". He said while the news that more than half of women trying to have a baby were now aged over 30 was alarming enough from a scientific perspective, "more importantly, the percentage of women over 35 trying to have babies has climbed quite dramatically". "More women are putting off faster than science is able to reverse it. The sad part is that we don’t know how to reverse the inexorable decline in egg quality over time. That’s the conundrum," he said. "The truth is, even with multiple attempts, with all the technology that we have, less than 50 per cent of women over 40 will end up having a baby."

It takes time
Professor Chapman said a large number of women failed to realise that falling pregnant often took time, the very thing hindering the chances of a woman over the age of 37 conceiving. "What we haven’t been able to get through to people is that getting pregnant doesn’t happen the day you want to be pregnant," he said. "The human body at its peak in the mid-20s produces a pregnancy rate of only around 15 to 20 per cent a month. To actually have a good chance of getting pregnant, you have to keep going for a number of months - 12 months - before you maximize your chance of falling pregnant naturally. "In women who are older, that natural cycle rate drops. At 35, it’s probably more like 10-12 per cent and by 40, that rate per cycle of falling naturally is probably around 5 per cent. "Cumulatively, a rate of 5 per cent over 12 months gives you a better than 50-50 chance of getting pregnant at 40, but if you’re the 50 per cent that hasn’t gotten pregnant, another year has gone by - another year of decline in the quality of your eggs and the number of eggs has occurred."

Why women struggle with fertility
Professor Chapman said the most common reason he saw for women not getting pregnant after 38 was the quality of their eggs. As a result, he said, more people were using fertility treatment. Despite the repeated warnings from experts, the Clearblue survey found that only 4 per cent of women currently in their best childbearing years saw having a baby as a top priority in their lives. Job security and income was the main concern of 48 per cent of those surveyed, with only 5 per cent admitting to significant stress at the thought of not being able to conceive. Yet nearly half of Australian women have experienced difficulty in falling pregnant — and there are more than twice as many women (450,000) trying to conceive as are pregnant (190,000), according to the study. And seven out of 10 women admit to wanting to have children in their life — when the time is right. Ninety per cent of women could see the benefits in having kids early, however the sentiment was outweighed by the reasons for delaying motherhood.

Of those surveyed:

•74 per cent felt the need to be financially secure;
•50 per cent wanted to be in a loving relationship; and
•51 per cent wanted time to travel and fulfil life experiences free of children.

White-collar women's expectations
Professor Chapman said that an overwhelming majority of women who sought help at his clinic were "white-collar professionals" whose driven nature and high expectations of themselves extended in the realm of reproduction. "When they get to us, they are the desperate ones, and therefore emotion gets in the way of reality. I can tell a woman that she’s got a less-than 1 per cent chance of success with IVF and she says 'I still want to go through with it'," Prof Chapman said. "They don’t want to be in a situation in 10 years' time looking back and saying 'I never tried'. They wouldn’t get to the point of coming to a clinic and then being confronted with some pretty harsh facts and [not] keep on going." He added: "Their expectation will be that they will have a baby." Dr Molloy said that apart from the career women and couples who put off child-bearing, he increasingly treated women who had simply failed to secure a commitment from partners in time. "You see an awful lot of women who invest 10 years in a live-in relationship and they say in their mid-30s 'we need to get moving' and the guy is out the door. All of a sudden they’re trapped," he said. "It takes a while to re-establish a baby-making relationship. That’s a big commitment. The interview process for that could be a couple of years. So these women do get time trapped in these relationships. In a way there’s a shame that there isn’t a higher level of commitment - marriage, home and a commitment to children. "I bet you know people like that."

Sperm donor option
Dr Molloy said sperm donation was one option for women in this situation and in the face of shortages in recent years, Queensland clinics had actively targeted the gay community as a source of sperm donation for several years. "We've had the gay population coming from NSW and particularly Victoria, where the laws are draconian - you have to have a police check before you can go to an IVF clinic and donate sperm," he said. "We were the second unit in the country to import US sperm - started doing it 7 years ago." Queensland Fertility Group had also led the country in "reproductive insurance", namely egg-freezing, he said. "We've had more pregnancies from egg freezing than all the other IVF units in the country combined," he said.

Willing donors
Advertising representative Scott McKeown is among those gay men who would willingly donate sperm to a fertility clinic for use by women - "straight, lesbian or bisexual” – wanting to start a family. While Mr McKeown cannot himself donate for medical reasons, he said gay men were prime and willing candidates for sperm donation, as they were unlikely to be deterred by laws requiring a donor to agree to being contacted by the child once the child turns 18. “The difference between gay guys and straight men in wanting to be a sperm donor is, we are not going to create a complication for ourselves or a future partner and kids, more often than not," he said. “We’re not going to have to deal with a future wife or husband, and those kids, and then someone knocking on the door or making a phone call years later, because it’s less likely that we’re going to have that kind of lifestyle.” He added that for many gay men – just as it was with heterosexual brethren – “it would kind of be nice - as you get older to actually see someone, possibly see yourself in their face and actually say, well the surname may not pass on but maybe my genes will live on”. “It’s the basic human driver for both men and women - why we live, and how we came about anyway. What a nice thing to leave,” he said.

Article: 8th May 2012 www.brisbanetimes.com.au

Willing to donate sperm to single, infertile or lesbian couples? register here for Free www.prideangel.com

The following recent article by the Daily Mail highlights the risks both physically and emotionally of sleeping with a sperm donor met online. As a single woman any donor would be classed as the child’s legal father and could be held financially responsible. For this reason many donors may try to conceal their true identity, which adds a greater risk for the recipient, of not having adequate identification for CRB checks and health screening tests. Not to mention the importance of any child not being able to trace their biological routes when they are older.

Erika from Pride Angel states ‘ There are many advantages for personally meeting a sperm donor and having them involved in their child’s life’ ‘Making sure that both parties have the same views regarding their parenting and level of involvement is imperative to any successful arrangement’

‘It is also important to consider the risks, getting legal advice and full health screening tests before attempting to conceive’ ‘Using a regulated clinic is the only real way of being certain about any health risks and gaining fertility treatment through a clinic also clarifies the legal position for both the donor and the recipient’ .

For these reasons Pride Angel unlike many other websites, has strict terms and conditions regarding donors not donating by natural insemination, no payments being offered and anonymous donation is strongly discouraged. Profiles are monitored constantly and users are able to ‘Report’ any concerns they have regarding other members.

Article: Frances Benning, 29 has chosen to conceive with a sperm donor. She has scheduled the event meticulously; planned every detail with military precision — for her sole purpose is to become pregnant. But the man she has chosen to be the father of her baby is neither her husband, nor her partner nor, even, a long-term friend. In fact, he is Toby, a sperm donor she met for the first time just a few hours ago.

Toby, 30, who is affluent and handsome with a glamorous job in the film industry, and Frances — attractive, articulate and privately-educated — were introduced via a website that matches potential sperm donors with would-be mothers. After she singled him out as a prospective father, they corresponded before arranging to meet.

No money would change hands but, at the end of their brief encounter, Frances fervently hoped, Toby would have bestowed on her the priceless gift of life.

After that, she planned to embark on life as a single mum. She figured she could manage perfectly alone: she is resourceful, financially secure and owns her own house outright. But as is often the case with even the best-laid schemes, Frances’ went awry. For a start, she failed to factor emotions into her plan, and had not reckoned on the impact of seeing the father of her future child face-to-face.

‘When I first met Toby I thought, “Wow!”,’ she recalls. ‘He is 6ft 5in, dark-haired and blue-eyed with lovely broad muscular shoulders. He looked even better than he did in his photos. Under different circumstances Frances, a legal secretary, and Toby, whose job as a researcher takes him round the world, could have been made for each other.

They enjoyed an afternoon of sightseeing then dinner together; chatted amicably and shared a few drinks. And even though she had convinced herself the intimate act that would ensue would be nothing more than a clinical, emotionless contract, Frances found herself fantasising about a future with Toby.

‘It crossed my mind what an idyllic family life we could make,’ she admits. ‘But I tried to force these thoughts away. I kept reminding myself that this was a transaction. I told myself it was a bonus that I got on so well with him and found him attractive and interesting. I took consolation in the fact that our baby would have such good genes.’

In these days, when the traditional nuclear family is fast becoming a rarity, Frances’ decision to become pregnant by sperm donor is no longer exceptional. Perverse as the idea may seem, Frances believes her baby — she is now four months’ pregnant with a daughter — will be happier knowing she was conceived ‘naturally’ rather than artificially.

‘I wanted to be able to tell my child that I did share an intimate moment with her father. That was important,’ she says. ‘I think donor children find it far harder to grapple with the idea that they were conceived by IVF, in a petri-dish, as if they were somehow the product of a mere scientific process. ‘She’ll also know she was very much a loved and wanted baby, which cannot often be said for babies who are born as a result of one-night stands. ‘Some of my friends asked me why I didn’t just go out and get pregnant by someone I met at a bar. But I felt it was dishonest and unfair to impose fatherhood on a man who hadn’t chosen it.’

Short-lived: Frances and Toby, who she did not want to identify, arranged to meet to conceive naturally and then fell in love. But he later decided he did not want a relationship

To many of us, it may sound shocking that you can go online and, seemingly, with one click find not just a man willing to donate sperm, but that men and women are willing to meet and have conceive naturally with strangers solely to fulfill this desire to be a parent. Donors on the site — primarily used by lesbians — offer women the option of artificial or natural insemination, in other words sex. But why did Frances, an attractive and intelligent young woman who was not encumbered with fertility problems, take such a contentious route to parenthood? Why not, instead, simply find a man she loved and share the joy and responsibilities of raising a family with him? She had, she explains, been unlucky in love and her urge to have a child was pressing; too urgent, it seems, to wait for a man she loved to come along and pursue the conventional route to parenthood.

‘I’d been engaged three times and none of the men were what I wanted for myself, let alone to be the father of my child,’ she says. ‘They’d been duplicitous, unfaithful and unreliable. Yet, for years, I’d wanted to be a mum, and the yearning became very strong after the break-up of my last engagement.

‘I had a miscarriage without even realising I was pregnant. This broke my heart and I realised that I wanted a child more than ever.’ So, impelled by the ticking of her biological clock, she convinced herself time was running out. She told herself, too, that she would rather raise a child alone than in an unsatisfactory relationship — she is, herself, the only child of divorced parents — and she resolved to detach herself emotionally from the whole business of finding a father for her child.

‘I decided to find a donor who wanted little or no contact with the child,’ she explains. ‘My idea was to find someone who would be happy to receive photographs at birthdays, maybe have the odd visit. I was hoping I could treat him as an uncle figure until the child was old enough to have his role explained.’

She concedes the process was fraught with huge risks: ‘It felt like a strange version of internet dating. As with all such meeting sites, you do encounter a lot of weirdos. There were men who were at best rude and barely literate, and others who were downright perverts. ‘Some were clearly in it to make money. I worried, too, about the risk of encountering sex offenders. ‘Then there were married men whose wives were infertile; you name it, every kind of aberration was there.

‘There was also no guarantee, either, that the men were even fertile; or that they did not have sexually transmitted diseases. I encountered one man who had apparently fathered more than 20 children, yet when I asked if he could prove he was not carrying any STDs, he told me no clinic would issue a certificate since, as a prospective sperm donor who frequently had sex with strangers, he could become infected at any time.’

All of which, of course, begs the question: why wasn’t this enough to deter Frances from this emotionally hazardous and potentially physically dangerous method of conception? There are a multitude of well-regulated IVF clinics with carefully vetted donors supplying sperm that has been screened for STDs.

But this is her explanation: ‘I worried about the failure rate of IVF and how traumatic it is to go through. ‘Besides, I wasn’t keen on the fact that you never got to meet the donor. And it was important for me to do so; especially as my child would have the legal right to meet him on reaching the age of 18.

Unusual conception: Frances said she will tell her daughter, pictured here at the first scan, where she came from when she's old enough ‘I didn’t want someone with a glowing paper reference who in real life was an anti-social, inarticulate geek. Let’s face it: anyone can write themselves a good reference. But to me the issue of personality was vitally more important than what eye colour the child might inherit.’

Small wonder, then, when she spotted a donor as personable as Toby — a man who not only possessed all the physical and intellectual attributes of an ideal father, but was also altruistic enough to donate his sperm for nothing and even meet their hotel expenses — Frances decided she had struck gold.

Toby, it emerged, had volunteered to give sperm when his GP, assessing him as an ideal candidate, told him there was a dire shortage of suitable donors in the UK. Rather than donate his sperm through the NHS, though, Toby decided he would rather be a more hands-on father, and for that reason, he’d registered on this website — originally planning to help a lesbian couple. ‘That reassured me that he wasn’t just on the site looking for sex,’ Frances explains.

But when his first attempt to impregnate Frances failed, frankly, she welcomed the chance to meet him again. This time they went away to spend a week together in Yorkshire. Slowly their mutual resolve to be detached and businesslike was evaporating.

‘We had a lovely time,’ she recalls. ‘We felt as though we were a real couple. In fact, we agreed that we were falling for each other whether we’d planned it or not.’ Meanwhile, Frances had begun to question her naive belief that life would be ‘easier’ if she were a single mum. ‘Originally, I was determined I didn’t want the pressure of an emotional relationship on top of a new born baby,’ she says. ‘But then I found myself falling for Toby and I thought, maybe I could have the fairytale ending, after all.’ So veering away from their original plan, the couple decided to try to have a relationship and see how it worked out. ‘Neither of us wanted to look back and think we could have had a happy family life if only we hadn’t been so stubbornly set on going our separate ways,’ she recalls. When, a couple of weeks after their trip to Yorkshire, Frances discovered she was pregnant, Toby was present at her home in Canterbury, Kent, to share her jubilation. ‘I’d asked Toby to be there when I took the home test, and when it was positive I ran through the house laughing with delight. Toby broke into a huge smile and said: “Wow! It worked!”.’ For a while, it seemed, their relationship would, too.

Indeed, Toby and Frances even made plans to sell their respective houses, pool their resources, and make a home for their baby daughter, like any other conventional couple. ‘Toby did everything he could to convince me he was going to stay,’ she recalls. ‘He told me he loved me and wanted a family with me. It seemed dreams I’d long since given up on were coming true.’

But then, four months into her pregnancy, he had a dramatic change of heart. He decided he wasn’t actually ready for fatherhood; indeed, perhaps he wasn’t even ready for a serious relationship, either. ‘I was devastated when it ended,’ confesses Frances. ‘He didn’t give any kind of explanation, it just seemed he’d got cold feet. ‘It hurts that I trusted him and got burned. I try not to get upset, but this just confirms my belief that you should not follow your heart — in the end you always get hurt.’

Meanwhile, she has resolved to hide no detail from her daughter of the convoluted story that surrounds her conception. ‘When she’s old enough, she’ll be told the truth. I’ll explain that her daddy was a good guy and that both of us love her very much. ‘Toby says he wants to stay in touch, and I’ll never stop him having access to her. I’d love her to know his family, too,’ she says. Frances’ own mother died four years ago; there will be no maternal grandmother to support her, and while her daughter is young, she plans to be a full-time mum.

She takes solace in the fact that her father, a retired financial director — who was initially shocked by her decision to sleep with a sperm donor — has now adjusted to the unusual circumstances of his only grandchild’s conception. ‘Dad was very upset at the start,’ she concedes. ‘What father would wish this for his little girl?’ she asks, with justification. ‘He was worried there was a stigma attached to surrogacy. He said: “Can’t you just meet someone the ordinary way and fall in love?” ’ However, little by little, he has come round. Now she is convinced he will be a doting and financially supportive grandad. ‘Dad paid for my education — I went to a private girls’ boarding school in Kent — and I’m sure he’ll do the same for his granddaughter,’ she says. ‘She’ll probably go to private school, although I’d miss her too much to let her board.’

So what kind of a life is now in prospect for Frances and her much-loved donor baby daughter? Nobody can question that she was very much wanted. And Frances will clearly be a devoted and adoring mum. But will Toby be close at hand or abroad; emotionally detached or involved?

Today little is certain, but Frances remains resolutely philosophical; both about her contentious decision to sleep with her sperm donor, and about her single parent status. ‘I feel I’ve no right to moan. I chose a donor because I’d decided to go it alone,’ she says with irrefutable logic. ‘I’m pregnant with a baby girl I already love. So, in the end, I guess I’ve achieved exactly what I set out to do.’

Article: 17th February 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk

For more information about finding a co-parent or known sperm donor visit www.prideangel.com

Many more women are turning to sperm donor websites to find donors or co-parents, fuelled by the shortage of donors within the UK, along with many NHS authorities cutting back on IVF treatment. Pride Angel reports on the increasing demand by both lesbian couples and single women for ‘gay sperm donors’.

Their study looked at the number of recipients looking for gay men from their database of over 4500 members. Of the 4500 members 64% are women looking for ‘sperm donors’, with only 16% registered as ‘sperm donors’. This shows a huge shortage in the number of willing donors, compared to the demand. They found that of those recipients who requested ‘looking for’ in their profile, 51% are looking for a ‘gay single man’, with 31% looking for a ‘gay couple’. In contrast, of the registered sperm donors only 23% record themselves as ‘gay’ within their profiles. 53% of sperm donors request ‘looking for’ a single woman, with 33% ‘looking for’ a lesbian couple to donate to.

Why are lesbian and single women looking for gay donors rather than heterosexual men? There may be many reasons for this preference. Erika co-founder of Pride Angel says ‘Many women are wishing to find genuine gay men, either single or in a couple, who are willing to co-parent or donate sperm with some form of on-going contact’ ‘This may be because they feel that gay men may be more sensitive or caring, or easier to co-parent with’. ‘We would really like to see far more gay men coming forward to donate sperm.’

Pride Angel also looked at data received from a questionnaire undertaken by people attending the Manchester Pride’s Lifestyle Expo in August 2010. The questionnaire was completed by 150 people and requested individual views on ‘the level of contact’ they felt the donor should have with any child conceived from known donor conception. The results were very interesting and showed that the vast majority of people did wish for their child to have some form of ongoing contact with their donor, only 26% of women and 20% of men thought that any donation should be anonymous. 27% of women wanted some kind of active involvement from their donor, be it regular or occasional contact. In contrast 51% of men wished to have regular or occasional contact with their donor child. A significant number of women 31%, wanted for their child to be able to contact their donor if needed while growing up.

Some gay men may wish to donate simply to ‘pass on their genes’ and help a lesbian couple or single woman experience the joy of parenthood. Other gay men may like to be more involved, either seeing their child occasionally like an ‘uncle type’ figure or wishing to share parental responsibility by entering into a co-parenting arrangement. Whatever the level of involvement a donor wishes; there are many women who are looking for the same form of arrangement.

Pride Angel is the leading parenting connection sites aimed towards the LGBT community wishing to become parents. For more information on donating sperm, co-parenting, health screening and legal agreements visit www.prideangel.com

Sperm donor websites are increasing in popularity with many people searching for a sperm donor or co-parent online. Are they a health risk or a personal choice which could benefit the future of any future children?

There has been a lot of bad press recently in light of the two businessmen Nigel Woodforth and Ricky Gage, charged for not having a licence to procure gametes. The pair acted as ‘sperm brokers’ aiding in the transport and testing of sperm. They enabled anonymous donation and put women’s health at risk by organising health screening. This has brought to the attention the increased popularity of sperm donor websites which effectively connect donors and recipients looking for sperm.

Sperm donor or co-parenting websites are not required by law to be regulated, as long as they are simply bringing people together, not acting as intermediaries in the way that the two recently convicted were doing. When a site is purely a connection service a women is able to make her own choice about whether she wishes to protect her heath and legal rights by taking the donor to a regulated fertility clinic, or whether she feels that there is a level of trust sufficient for them to obtain the necessary health screening tests themselves, through a clinic, GP or GUM service. After which recipients may decide to choose home insemination as a method of conception. This later option is more applicable to co-parenting situations whereby the donor and recipient have got to know each other over a period of time and there are legal co-parenting agreements in place before proceeding.

Women wish to have choices about how they will conceive and should they not have the freedom to make those choices without regulatory constraints. The emphasis should therefore not be about removing such choices, but instead about educating individuals so that they are fully informed about any risks they are taking, enabling them to make better informed decisions, which are right for their personal circumstances and their potential child.

There has been a social and cultural shift in recent times, towards women wishing to meet a known donor. Some may say this is because of high fertility costs, or maybe the ‘shortage of donors’ or could it be that women are actually thinking of their children’s future and that they would far rather personally meet a like minded individual, who is happy to stay in touch as an ‘uncle type’ figure, rather than for their child to always long to meet an unknown donor as they grow up. There has been much research and evidence which has shown that children who know the identity of their donor and know the truth about their conception from an early age are more secure with their identity as they become adults.

The change to the anonymity law, is a good thing for donor conceived children allowing them to trace the identity of their donor at age 18, however we are still to really discover the effect this will have on the thousands of children who may be wanting to meet their biological father in the future. They may find that the donor is simply not interested in being contacted. There is also the worry that the donor may not be the kind of person the mother would wish for their child to meet, after all, she may have only received basic details such as height and eye colour, by which to choose her donor originally. There is also the real concern of genetic attraction which especially affects parents and children who have never met before adulthood. The effect of this could be potentially catastrophic.

When these effects do come to the forefront in the year 2023, 18 years after the new law was introduced in 2005, will it be decided that children where better off not really getting this information? Would it not therefore be far better for donor conceived children to have known of their donor from the beginning?

So what is the answer, surely to give people the option of finding a known donor or co-parent and for the authorities to work together with sperm donor websites to ensure that enough information is available to their users regarding health screening and the legal implications allowing the ability for them to source accessible and affordable fertility treatment?

A spokesman for the HFEA has pointed out that it is the health risks of not using a fertility clinic which concerns them most. Therefore they are advising people to only use sperm donor websites which direct their users to a licensed clinic, ensuring that complete health screening is completed and that a record of the donor’s name is kept on file.

Pride Angel the leading worldwide connection site primarily aimed at the gay and lesbian community is the only website dedicated to providing quality information regarding health screening and fertility law. Erika co-founder of Pride Angel stated ’all our profiles are continually screening to ensure users are not offering ‘natural insemination’ or requesting an ‘anonymous’ donor. Nor is payment for donations allowed to be offered or requested.’ ‘We also offer email support for users requiring help and further information.’ ‘Users should never consider using a donor who offers natural insemination, even if they offer artificial insemination as well. The health risks of such ‘promiscuous’ donors is too great’.

‘We have had so many people thank us for the service we provide, without which co-parenting arrangements would not happen and many lesbian couples and gay men would not have the chance to experience the joys of parenthood.’ says Erika

For more information regarding finding a co-parent, health screening and fertility law visit www.prideangel.com