Should you opt for anonymous or open sperm donors?

Should you opt for anonymous, or non-anonymous sperm donors? And should you tell your child how they were conceived? For most it’s an agonising decision, writes Helen O’Callaghan. “Anonymous means the donor will never know who you are and you will never be able to contact or communicate with him. A non-anonymous donor will never be able to track you down but your child can make contact through the sperm bank when they reach 18,” explains Declan Keane, senior embryologist and director of ReproMed. Last year his clinic (most Irish clinics source sperm mainly from Denmark) saw a 49% increase in women going for IUI (intrauterine insemination) using donor sperm. Of donor sperm cycles, three out of four involved lesbian couples and single women. “The majority of single women and lesbian couples go for known donors. They want their child to at least have the choice to communicate [with donor in future]. Fifty percent of heterosexual couples reserve that choice too — the other half say ‘no, this is our child’.” Ann Bracken, counselling psychotherapist at Sims IVF — where 157 women used donor sperm last year — says those opting for non-anonymous donors want to give the adult child choices in the future around accessing their genetic heritage. “Some parents feel there’s nothing to hide.” Helen Browne, co-founder of NISIG (National Infertility Support and Information Group) hopes most parents of donor-conceived babies tell children about their origins. She recalls the mum who envisaged secondary school science sufficiently advanced 12 years hence for her daughter to discover the truth in the classroom. “She could take her father’s and her mother’s hair from the comb and do DNA at school,” this mother told Browne. “She’s so right!” exclaims Browne. “This is why honesty is so important.” So why don’t parents tell? “They fear rejection as a parent. They fear their child will be picked on at school. There’s an element of getting on with life and ‘putting it behind us’. They’ve carried the baby, it’s part of them and they forget,” says Browne, who believes it’s in the child’s best interests to be told “and so it’s not a secret that parents hold all their lives”. In the UK, anybody born through donation after April 2005 is entitled to request and receive their donor’s name and last known address, once they reach 18. Read more... Alternatively many more people are choosing to find known sperm donors through connection websites such as www.prideangel.com