Donor conceived man wants to change his birth certificate

An Adelaide man, who was conceived with anonymous donor sperm, believes the "donor-conceived community is perhaps the last group of disenfranchised people" after a court ruled he cannot change his birth certificate.
Damien Adams, 40, who wanted to have his father's name changed to "unknown" on his birth certificate, said the laws preventing the change were discriminatory and should be reviewed.
Mr Adams does not know who his biological father is and wants his birth certificate to be as honest as possible.
"So it wasn't just for me, it was also for my children and my descendants. So if anybody ever conducted genealogy in the future, that they wouldn't be led down the wrong path," Mr Adams said.
"So it's not about anything untoward, my dad who raised me who I love very much; it's just a matter of having something that is truthful and accurate."
Earlier this year a magistrate ruled she did not have the authority to make the change.
"I don't obviously hold anything against the magistrate; she can only do what she's entitled to do by law, but I find that it's highly discriminatory that everybody else in South Australian society is allowed to rebut paternity except donor conceived people."
The problem is a law in South Australia deems the husband of a woman who received the treatment as the legal father.
Mr Adams has conceded he has limited options left open to pursue the case.
"One is that I can try and appeal and take my case to a higher court, to see if they have the power to do what I am seeking. Although that is obviously going to be very cost prohibitive. Or the only other option is to try and seek a change in the legislation.
"I think that law is very anachronistic; it's part of the bygone era.
"When it was originally set up so that the man who was the husband of the wife or the partner couldn't shirk any responsibilities later on if he decided he didn't want anything to do with the child.
"But particularly as an adult myself of 40 years of age, there is none of that sort of welfare issue to be dealt with.
"It's a matter of not hiding or concealing the truth, because at the moment we basically enshrined deception into the law."
Mr Adams said governments needed to be doing more to address the problem.
Read more...
'This begs the question whether there should be a change in the law, to allow the ability to add the sperm donor or egg donor details as well as legal parents details. Or in the case of co-parenting, the ability to add three legal parents to the birth certificate, for example the two mums along with the biological father?' Pride Angel

Do genes matter? Daughter of a donor discusses

On Thursday, I went to an event entitled Do Genes Matter? Families and Donor Conception. Organised by the PET (Progress Educational Trust) it promised to look at what genetics means for our understanding of family in light of donor conception. On materials promoting the event, the questions to be covered were laid out as follows: • What does it mean to have a child through donor conception? • What is donor conception like for the non-genetic parent? • How do grandparents feel about having a grandchild who is conceived with the help of an egg, sperm or embryo donor? • What is the role of the internet in finding donors or connecting with half-siblings? • How many parents can a child have? However, in my eyes, the vital – and missing – question that needed to be asked was: • What do genetics mean for the ‘donor’ conceived person? This was the glaring great hole in the whole event. Chaired by Walter Merricks from the Donor Conception Network, a panel of speakers included academics, fertility lawyers and campaigners. Interesting people with differing expertise and interests in ‘donor’ conception. But, were there ANY ‘donor’ conceived people themselves present on the panel? People who could speak to their OWN experience of the practice and their own feelings on genetic connections. As you may have guessed – no. Lack of representation To me, this really just sums up the entire problem with the social dialogue around ‘donor’ conception. That the voice of the ‘donor’ conceived is missing from this type of event speaks volumes. Because the rhetoric around ‘donor’ conception springs from the mouths of those wanting the answer it provides, or those promoting it as an answer, hearing from the product of this practice is not necessarily a great fit. As always, I am aware that there are many ‘donor’ conceived people who say – or at least purport – that they are uninterested in genetics and also many who are very much at peace with being conceived by a ‘donor’. I respect that perspective. But that there is a significant group of ‘donor’ conceived people who feel very much interested in genetic connections – whether they are at peace with being ‘donor’ conceived or not – should, in my view, be acknowledged in the public discourse about the practice. Is it not crucial to hear from the ‘donor’ conceived at an event about the ‘donor’ conceived? I think this is what it must have felt like for women before they had the vote – silenced, voiceless, talked over, written about and unconsidered. This may seem over the top, but I feel that for my voice to be heard here, in this type of debate, is as much part of a historical struggle as female suffrage once was. Read more... Article: www.daughterofadonor.com

Friends who met at college discover they have the same sperm donor father

Mikayla told the Tulane Hullabaloo that she first made contact with Emily last summer while searching for a possible roommate on Facebook. 'There was an online survey, and we were both interested in Wall [Residential College],' Mikayla said. 'I was looking at the survey, and I was looking at Emily’s answers and I saw that we had a lot in common.' By then, Emily had already secured a roommate but the two continued to talk and became fast friends when they met in person on the New Orleans, Louisiana campus this fall. Both quickly figured out that they were conceived by a donation from an anonymous donor. But neither thought much of it, even when they figured out that both of their donors were Colombian. Mikayla's lesbian mothers Heidi and Debra Stern-Ellis used an anonymous sperm donor to have their daughter two decades ago. When the girls went home for winter break, Mikayla told her moms about her new friend with whom she had so much in common. Mikayla's mother Heidi remembers looking through the donor list two decades ago and while there were some 1,000 donors on the list, she doesn't remember any others with Colombian ethnicity. After seeing pictures of Emily, and remarking on how much she looked like her own daughter, she told Mikayla to text the girl asking for the sperm donor's number. Emily sent the number and it was a match, completely taking the two girls by surprise since they had been joking to schoolmates that there was a '25 per cent chance we're sisters'. Following the life-changing realization, the interests the girls shared before make much more sense. Both will perform in Tulane's upcoming production of the Vagina Monologues which means they may be taking after their father who listed drama as one of his interests on his donor profile. They also share the same mind when it comes to fashion, both buying the same fleece sweater without the other one knowing on Black Friday. For Mikayla, finding her half-sister in a college friend is proof that she's at the right school. 'For me Tulane just felt right, and this is one of the many things that proves I made the right decision,' Mikayla Stern-Ellis said. 'We thought [going to Tulane] she’d just find an education, but she found a sister,' mother Debra Stern-Ellis said. The two have since changed their Facebook profile pictures to an image of them hugging. After posting the picture on her profile, Mikayla wrote: 'An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, and circumstance.' Article: 21st January 2013 www.dailymail.co.uk

Woman feels deprived of the identity of her sperm donor dad

The film Delivery Man, about a sperm donor who unwittingly fathers more than 500 children, has been panned by the critics. Its cloying sentimentality, clumsy symbolism and implausible plot certainly grate; but for me, as a donor-conceived adult, it is important that the feelings of people like me have been brought to light. In the film, the donor's offspring get their happy ending: a warm and loving relationship with their biological father (and plenty of hugs, shared sunsets and burger-flipping opportunities too). In the UK, the reality is that donor-conceived people born before 2005 have no right to know the identity of their donor. All I know about my father is that, one day in August 1971, he went into an office in Harley Street, masturbated into a bottle, was paid and left. In all probability that is all I will ever know. Not for me the chance of asking for his details, as would be the case if I were adopted. The doctor who facilitated my conception is now dead, and in any case he claimed, when contacted years ago, that all his records had been destroyed. My mother's husband was infertile. I called him "Dad" for 15 years, until I discovered by chance that my two siblings and I were donor-conceived. "Donor-conceived" is a clumsy term, because, in relation to me, the man in the clinic was not a donor. He gave something to my mother, but nothing – less than nothing – to me. He is, or was, my father, but by co-operating with my artificial conception, he deprived me forever of the possibility of knowing him. I do not know his name, what he looks like, what his personality is, what his voice sounds like. I do not know my paternal grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins. I did not know, until I lost it, how much my sense of identity was rooted in my knowledge of who my parents were. Incidentally, discovering I was donor-conceived was in many ways a relief, since by that point "Dad" had been imprisoned for indecent assault of a child; but even though I was liberated from a genetic link with him, I was also cast adrift from who I thought I was, and from all the stories that make up a family's sense of identity. My sense of exile was all the more acute because, ironically, I had spent several years researching my family tree. It turned out that I had nothing to do with those illiterate peasants in Leicestershire after all. The peculiar thing about donor conception is that on the one hand it privileges genetics: the fertile partner gets to be a real, biological parent. On the other hand, it says that genetics do not matter for the other half of the gametes, and that as long as a child is "wanted", he will have everything he needs. Unfortunately, that is not true. I do not have a relationship with my father, and not just because of my mother's husband's criminality; I do not have a father because my mother, with the help of the medical establishment (and the law) deliberately deprived me of one. My mother claimed that her infertile husband was my father, so my birth certificate perpetuates a lie. Until I was married, my non-father was my next of kin. I do not have a father, or the sense of identity that goes with one. I do not have any knowledge of half of my roots, my father, my medical history … so every time a doctor asks me, "Any family history of …?" I have to tell them I do not, and cannot, know. And this deprivation, though diluted for my children, persists for them too. When my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer at one year old, I wondered whether this was another unthought-of consequence of the casual trade in gametes 40 years ago. My mother was assured, I presume, that only healthy young men were used. Certainly things were different in those days. My mother told no one of our origins, and planned never to tell her children either. She insisted on family likenesses to a degree that is embarrassing in hindsight. I suppose this shows that she knew that origins mattered, even though ours were based on a falsehood. Nowadays it is deemed to be an acceptable lifestyle choice for a woman to choose to have a baby using donor sperm, whether or not the baby will have even a semblance of a father figure. Birth certificates can even legally ratify the fantasy that a baby can have two women – or two men – as her two parents. Apparently it is enough for someone to want a child: that wish demands to be fulfilled, with scant regard for what the child might be deprived of. I, and others like me, beg to differ. There is no Hollywood happy ending in sight for us. Article: 16th January 2013 www.theguardian.com

Reality show winner meets children he fathered 24 years ago as a donor

He is best known for as the villainous winner of the reality series Survivor, and subsequently going to prison for tax evasion. But before he rose to fame bagging the $1million prize on the show, Richard Hatch was a young college student who needed to make ends meet. On a recent episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now? Hatch talked about his younger days as a sperm donor, and meets up with two of his biological children who had got in contact with him. Emily and Devin, both 24, found their biological dad through the Donor Sibling Registry and their meeting was filmed for the show broadcast on Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network. However, it had already been revealed back in 2011 before he served jail time for tax evasion that his two children had come forward. But Hatch, 52, has now revealed that he was paid approximately $40 per donation around three times a week for two years, admitting: 'there are probably more.' 'I'm open to, interested in, would be excited about meeting any of them who were interested in meeting me,' he says. Considering the possibility of how many more children that are his, he said: 'I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how many children I may have fathered.' Hatch added: 'I have no way of knowing. I will never have any way of knowing. It seems kind of fruitless to me.' The former reality star also talks about adopting a son named Chris in 1998 and later serving jail time for tax evasion, which he claims he did not do. Hatch was freed from prison in December 2011 on a tax evasion sentence tied to his $1 million Survivor winnings. The star was released from prison for violating the terms of his supervised release in the long-running case. He first brought up the subject of his sperm donation shortly before entering prison, admitting that he had met a 22-year-old biological son who is living in New Jersey. 'It was additionally challenging to be wrongfully imprisoned knowing that these children were coming forward,' Hatch said at the time. 'I told the court that beforehand. I explained this is a fascinating time in my life when I was at a place where I wanted to get to know these people who are my children who have come forward and want to get to know me.' Oprah: Where Are They Now? airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on OWN. Article: 30th July 2013 www.dailymail.co.uk

Anonymous donor conceived want the right to know their biological parents

It is undeniable that we humans have an innate desire to know from whom we came. Many people who are adopted or have only one parent will tell you that they feel they are missing a piece of a puzzle. Genealogy websites like Ancestry.com exist because of our fascination with our genetic ancestors. Every time I see an ad for Ancestry.com, a place where you “Find your ancestors’ stories” and “Discover yours,” I feel that tug to find out more about my grandparents and great-grandparents. My daughter’s junior year project for high school was a presentation and paper on the immigration of both sides of her family to America. Now imagine if you were purposely denied one half of your story by a powerful industry that runs on anonymity. And what if when you pointed out the intentional injustice, you were told that you should shut-up and simply be grateful for your life. This is the experience for many a child conceived from anonymous donor gametes. The following is a excerpt from testimony that Alana S. Newman, founder of AnonymousUs.org, gave to the California Assembly Committee on Health regarding AB460, a bill in the California legislature that would require insurers to offer coverage for infertility treatments regardless of the relationship. Alana is bravely standing up for the rights of those intentionally denied what she believes is a fundamental right: the right to a relationship with one’s biological parents. She writes: The facts of my conception are that my father was paid to abandon me. There is no dignity in that. I suffered from debilitating identity issues, mistrust of the opposite sex, hatred and condemnation of the opposite sex, feelings of objectification – like I only exist as a play – toy for others, and feeling like a science experiment. If people can take away something so precious as a mother or father and make us feel like we should be grateful for the loss, what else can people take away from us? How do you expect the next generation to fight for things like freedom, democracy, clean air, clean water, when something as precious and basic as your mother or father is stolen from you? Removed by the state… Removed by a fertility industry that forces you into existence and then doesn’t return your calls when you grow up and start banging on their doors asking for records… Removed by a commissioning parent, often your other biological parent who vowed to protect and provide for you, but only on the contingency that you show gratitude for your life and don’t ask questions about the other missing parent…. One of the United State’s most famous civil rights leaders was Malcolm X. The “X” he used to replace his last name was a direct criticism of slave – owners removing slaves from their spouses, parents and children, and being disconnected from their ancestry and heritage. “Who do you think you are” is a popular TV show where celebrities have their genealogy investigated. Rosie O’Donnell herself expressed a craving to “discover her family as fully fleshed out people and learn about their journeys”. The sheer existence of a term and concept like genealogy demonstrates that it is unfair to minimize and marginalize donor – conceived people’s curiosities about our genetic kin, and dismiss our desire for connection….. Having a bloated industry where medical and legal professionals profit from separating children from their biological parents is problematic. Very few people like to hear that their choices have devastating consequences for others. If there is a place where voices like Alana’s need to be heard, it is the fertility machine. Both infertile couples and the fertility industry must hear what she is saying. The desire for a child does not trump the right of a child to know his or her biological parents. Article: 14th June 2013 www.lifenews.com

The single women who wish their sperm donor children knew their fathers

There is no doubt Freya McCallin was a wanted child. That she will always be loved unconditionally by her mum and large extended family is also incontrovertible. But there is another significant truth about Freya: she will never know her genetic father. Indeed, as Freya’s mum Jessica travelled to Copenhagen from her home in South London to be inseminated with the donor sperm that produced her daughter, this omission from her child’s family tree was the one concern that preyed upon her mind. For sperm donors in Denmark — unlike those in the UK who may be contacted by their offspring when they reach 18 — have a legal right to remain anonymous. Men who donate sperm there can’t be traced by any potential offspring. This explains why the sperm donation industry in Denmark is the largest in the world, and why increasing numbers of British women are travelling there to undergo the quick and relatively inexpensive procedure that endows them with the greatest gift of all: creating a new life. It also helps to explain why, because of seismic shifts in Britain’s fertility landscape — highlighted in last week’s Femail magazine cover story — the shape and make-up of our nation’s families is changing irrevocably. 'My concern is that the need to know who your father is, even if he has no meaningful role in your life' Today, in part two of our investigation, we examine some of these new ‘diverse’ families, and speak to the single mothers — all professionals with degrees — who are raising donor children without fathers. In last week’s dispatch, we interviewed educated women who have remained childless; either from choice or because they deferred motherhood in favour of their careers, only to find out they had passed the age of fertility. As our report showed, the consequences have been dramatic: middle-class Britain is having fewer and fewer children, with larger families increasingly the preserve of the poorer and disadvantaged. But the rise in middle-class women remaining childless is not the only factor at work here. Since 2008, when the law changed to allow single women to be donor inseminated, small, self-contained and fatherless family units like Jessica and Freya’s are burgeoning. There are now two million lone-parent families in the UK — they account for one in four of the nation’s families — and rising numbers of them are headed by educated, middle-class women. Many of these, forced by the ticking of their biological clocks and their failure to find the right partner, have procreated by non-traditional methods such as sperm donation, egg donation and IVF. Because typically these women are deferring motherhood until they are 35 when their fertility is in perilous decline, they are often having just one child. It is also financially very exacting to raise a child alone. That is another reason why Middle England is producing fewer offspring. And why, conversely, poorer households — because benefits rise in line with the size of their family — who have relatively little to gain from limiting their fertility, are growing. But what will be the emotional fall-out for this new generation of donor children who grow up without knowing their fathers? This is one of the great imponderables in this brave new world of diverse families. ‘The urge to discover our roots and our relationship with those who have provided half of our DNA is elemental, says Adrienne Burgess, joint CEO of the Fatherhood Institute. ‘The literature is clear: some donor children are haunted by their situation and go searching.’ Jessica McCallin, a writer and broadcaster from South-East London, chose a Danish donor for her daughter Freya because her family originates from the north of England, an area conquered by the Norsemen, and it seemed reasonable to assume she had Scandinavian ancestry. She knew it would also be helpful to her child if she shared her blonde hair and blue eyes — as indeed Freya does. 'Not a day goes by when I don’t agonise about the consequences of my actions' Whether her daughter will be troubled by not knowing her father’s identity, she cannot say. Read more... Article: 8th May 2013 www.dailymail.co.uk

Being: The Donor Conceived Perspective

Another full house for the final event of Progress Educational Trust's 'When it Takes More Than Two' series. This time attendees were invited to consider gamete donation from the perspective of the donor conceived. Two donor-conceived people were on the panel and they answered the questions from an engaged audience in an honest and open way. First to speak was Jess Pearce, a donor-conceived adult who only found out about her origins when she was 28. Jess was told by her mum when she was considering starting a family of her own. Her father's vasectomy reversal had been unsuccessful and her parents turned to IVF using donated sperm. Although members of the extended family did not know about the donation, Jess took comfort in the fact that her parents never lied to anyone about her birth. She also knew that as a donor-conceived child she must have been 'really, really wanted'. She referred to her non-biological father as her 'social father' and explained that their relationship has remained largely unchanged by the revelation. Luckily for Jess, she had access to her donor number, but so far had had no luck in finding her donor father. Services like UK DonorLink had been a 'godsend', she said, for her to make friends and discuss her situation with other people on a similar quest to her own. Jess understood her mother's reasons for not telling her, and was grateful that she found out eventually. Although she still hoped to find some information, she understood that it was unlikely she ever would. Christine Gunter spoke next, worried that she might be adding a bit of 'doom and gloom' to the evening. In fact, Christine's talk wasn't as negative as all that. Christine is the Coordinator of UK Donor Link, which is designed to help people who were donor-conceived or who donated before donor anonymity ended get in touch with one another, if they so wish. Christine made the point that it's not just the donor-conceived who have an interest in their genealogy. The success of programmes like 'Who Do You Think You Are?' attests to the broad appeal of tracing ancestors. Similarly, in Christine's experience, the donor-conceived are simply curious about how they came to be, although for some donor-conceived people the revelation can leave them very distressed. Christine found that this was particularly true of those born via donor insemination (DI) in the 1940s and 50s. These people's parents would be unlikely to tell them about their donor and they may have found out in less secure ways. In such cases, said Christine, the confusion and lack of answers can seem to occupy every waking hour of a person's life. Further complications arise when one considers that at this time, there was no limit to the number of donations one could make. In some case, hundreds of children could have been born from one donor. Accidental incest and genetic sexual attraction remain exceptionally unlikely for the offspring of such donors, but can be a real fear. One donor-conceived adult who was struggling with the information about his conception commented that 'my parents never met, and if they did they might not like each other'. This is a common worry for older donor-conceived adults, Christine said - they don't like the idea of a 'medicalised' conception, and would prefer a traditional relationship between their parents. Dr Tabitha Freeman spoke next, and provided useful insights from her work at The University of Cambridge's Centre for Family Research. Tabitha's research concerned children who are donor conceived, and she found that the nature of their conception had very little noticeable psychological impact. More important to their development was the environment that they grow up in – the warmth of the family and quality of parenting. The same was true for children born to single mothers and gay couples; children did not seem to be negatively affected because they were donor conceived. Tabitha believed it helped that the children were obviously wanted, and the parents were likely to be involved and committed. Read more... Article: 4th March 2013 www.bionews.org.uk

Receiving: The recipient parent perspective - London 24th January

JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor, Anatomy Building, Bloomsbury Campus, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK 24 January 2013 - 6.30pm-8.30pm The Progress Educational Trust project 'When It Takes More Than Two', supported by the Wellcome Trust, seeks to clarify public and professional understanding of donor conception by focusing on the different parties involved. This second event in the project will focus on the perspective of the recipient of donated sperm or eggs, and is free to attend, but advance booking is required. If you email Sandy Starr at sstarr@progress.org.uk then he will add you to the attendee list. • What traits do gamete recipients prefer in a donor, and what are the scientific facts about the heritability of such traits? Does preferring a tall donor (height is a widely preferred donor characteristic) or deprecating a red-haired donor (the world's largest sperm bank closed its doors to red-haired sperm donors in 2011 due to a reported lack of demand) actually give recipients any assurance as to the height and hair colour of their children? • What of more complex characteristics, such as intelligence and personality? The extent (if any) to which such qualities are heritable is a highly contentious, and yet these same qualities frequently form the basis on which donors are marketed. Donor profiles provided by clinics also include such details as pierced ears, choice of car and favourite pet - can a choice of donor made on such grounds be meaningful, and if so how? • To what extent is it necessary or desirable to seek a 'matching' donor, whose looks resemble those of the recipient couple (at a generic level such as skin colour)? Is this important to avoid inviting questions about a child's provenance, or should we aspire to put such thinking behind us? Are such questions rendered moot by the limited availability of sperm and egg donors in the UK, which can make matching difficult or impossible? • Following donor conception, what are the challenges (if any) involved in raising donor-conceived children? Is it always incumbent upon parents to inform their children of the fact that they are donor conceived, in line with official support for the principle of openness? In what circumstances might parents inform family, friends, colleagues or teachers of the fact that their children are donor-conceived? And what if this is disclosed inadvertently? • What are the specific challenges (if any) faced by non-traditional families, which involve same-sex couples and/or co-parenting arrangements, when it comes to donor conception? What is the impact on such families of being less readily accommodated by established social conventions and institutions? And is this changing? Speakers include: • Dr Nicky Hudson Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University's School of Applied Social Sciences • Olivia Montuschi Cofounder and Practice Consultant at the Donor Conception Network • Sue Moore Senior Fertility Counsellor at the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust's Assisted Conception Unit • Professor Marcus Pembrey Founding Chair of Trustees at PET and Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Genetics at University College London's Institute of Child Health • Caroline Spencer Co-Active Coach and Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist at Successfully Single Chair: • Juliet Tizzard Head of Policy and Communications at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and former Director of PET Article: 22nd January 2012 www.progress.org.uk

Pride Angel part of the National Donation Strategy Group

The UK’s regulator of fertility treatment, the HFEA, undertook a wide ranging public consultation last year, which looked at the barriers and motivations to egg and sperm donation in the UK. The review uncovered numerous barriers to donation, some which could be removed through regulation and others which could not be as easily tackled. It is these issues which sit outside of traditional regulation that have led the Authority to set up a national strategy group to find new ways of tackling obstacles to sperm and egg donation. The HFEA aims were to use their unique position as the national regulator to bring together a wide range of experts to come up with new approaches to raising awareness of donation and improving the care of donors in the UK. About the group The group will operate over an initial two year period, after which time the terms of the group will be reviewed. The three core objectives of the group will be to: 1. increase awareness of donation and the information that donors receive 2. improve the ‘customer service’ that donors receive when they contact clinics 3. help donors provide better information about themselves for future families The HFEA aims to bring together a group of people with diverse experiences, including non-licensed donation services, people with experience of blood, organ or tissue donation, as well as those with experience of sperm and egg donation. This includes people with interest in the welfare of donors, patients and donor-conceived people. We are pleased to announce that Erika co-founder of Pride Angel has successfully achieved a place on the group. Erika says ‘We are delighted to be part of these consultations whereby we can make a real difference to the future of sperm and egg donation and the effects upon donors, future parents and ultimately the donor conceived children’. We would really like to hear from any donors, future parents or donor conceived to pass on their views to the donation strategy group. Please get in touch with any ideas you may have at info@prideangel.com or contact us. Click here to read the members of the group

Mail on Sunday would like to hear from Children raised in same-sex families

A Features Writer for the Mail on Sunday is looking for anyone who might be able help with a positive feature they are working on for this Sunday’s newspaper. They are looking to speak to young people, aged between six and 30, about their experience of being raised by same-sex parents. (They would also like to speak to one of their parents as well, if possible). The tone of this article would be 100% positive. It is in response to Sir Elton John’s concerns this week that his son Zachary will have a ‘very difficult’ childhood because he is raised by same-sex parents. 'We want our case studies to say why this isn’t the case' said Laura. Ideally, they would love them to talk a little about their childhood and highlight why it was a positive experience and they wouldn’t change it at all. Laura the features writer would be really grateful if you’d get in touch to laura.powell@mailonsunday.co.uk and liz.sanderson@mailonsunday.co.uk. Alternatively, their office line is 020 3615 3239. Many thanks. or if you just want a little more information please contact us at Pride Angel.

Donor conceived story 'My dad was a sperm donor'

Sperm donation is often seen as a gift to thousands of infertile couples, who find joy and completion in a child that might not otherwise exist. But their children sometimes find that joy bound with longing, loss and lifelong confusion about their true identity.
Narelle Grech knows the details by heart: his code name is T5. He is brown-haired and brown-eyed with O-positive blood type.

He's probably in his 50s and attended university. He stands about 173 centimetres. His surname starts with T and he is likely to be Maltese.

These scant points are Narelle's only information about the man who is her biological father, a man who has occupied Narelle's thoughts and deeds for much of the past 13 years since her parents revealed that she was conceived with sperm donated to a fertility clinic.

"When I was a teenager, I carried that information around with me on a scrap of paper, the way other kids carried a photograph of their dad," she says. "It was my way of keeping a link to him because I had nothing else."

Narelle remembers her parents sitting her and her older sister down at the family dining table one Sunday afternoon, her mother telling her that she was conceived with the help of another man's sperm and how much they loved her.

At first, she laughed it off, thinking it was cool to be different. "But, later that night, I was washing my face in front of the bathroom mirror and I realised that everything I thought I knew about myself had vanished," she says.

"The man I thought was my father wasn't and half the family I thought was mine wasn't related to me. I started crying uncontrollably. Almost from that moment, I wanted to find him. Not because I wanted another father, but because I wanted to discover who I really am."

Narelle is one of the hidden generations of Australians given life by our ever-expanding technological and scientific expertise. She was born in 1983, at a time when donor conception was still in its relative infancy and donors gave their sperm anonymously. She is one of hundreds of people Australia-wide who are today searching for their biological antecedents, but may never find them.

At the heart of the dilemma is a delicate balancing act between the competing rights of offspring and their donors. Offspring feel they have an emotional and medical right to know their biological history. Yet, while many donors are happy to be contacted, others gave their genetic material in a spirit of goodwill to childless families, in the belief that their identities would remain anonymous.

Rightly or wrongly, they fear a knock on the door might tear their families apart or lead to claims on their estates. There is another even more pressing reason why Narelle needs to find her biological father.

In May, doctors diagnosed her with advanced bowel cancer, which doctors say may kill her within the next five years. Her cancer, discovered after she suffered severe abdominal pain one morning, is the most aggressive kind and, though she is just 28, is already classified at stage four.

"The galling thing is that doctors suspect the cancer is genetically linked," says Narelle. "My mother's family has no history of cancer. The possibility is that I've inherited a genetic predisposition from my biological father." The diagnosis is a nightmare come true for Narelle. For more than a decade, she has sought, without success, the identity of the man who helped her parents conceive her.

While that has eluded her, she has discovered something else, something that now keeps her awake at night. She has, she says, eight half-siblings scattered around Victoria and possibly Australia, all created with her biological father's sperm. "I have eight brothers and sisters out there who I've never met, but who all share some of the same genetic building blocks as me and that terrifies me," she says, curled up on a sofa in her suburban Melbourne home.

"Each one may be a genetic time bomb waiting to go off and it's probable that they don't know anything about it." An unfortunate combination of disparate, sometimes contradictory laws across state boundaries, poor record-keeping and bureaucratic inertia means that Narelle and others like her may never find the answers they are seeking so desperately.

Article: 5th October Australian Women's weekly aww.ninemsn.com.au

This story shows how important it is for donor conceived to be able to receive more information about their donor, something which Pride Angel strongly supports. If you are considering conceiving using donor sperm or eggs, why not think about the option of finding a known donor through a connection service. This will not only enable you to discover more details about the donor such as their characteristics and personality, but most importantly you will have more information to pass onto your child and even have the ability of maintaining a level of contact, between donor and child.

Two sets of twins 2000 miles apart share same sperm donor

Twins Jonah and Hilit Jacobson love sushi and bite their nails. Over 2,000 miles away, twins Jesse and Jayme Clapoff also love sushi and chew their nails.
All four teens look ­incredibly similar with the same brown hair, full mouth and great athletic ability. A coincidence? Not at all. All four are the offspring of the same sperm donor and if it wasn’t for a new website that unites ‘donor siblings’ they would never have met.

Jonah and Hilit, now 16, were born and raised in ­Atlanta, Georgia, US, by Eric and Terri ­Jacobson. When the couple started trying for a baby they discovered they had fertility problems. Tests showed Eric had a condition where he didn’t produce sperm. “When you want to have a baby and you can’t, it’s hard,” says Terri, 47. “You try it all and it costs money.”

The couple’s options included ­adoption – in the US it would cost $25,000 (just over £16,000) – or donor ­insemination. ­They chose the latter. And from a brochure at a fertility ­clinic they ordered sperm from ­donor 1096. “We saw he was Jewish, ­6ft tall, healthy, bright, ­smart, sporty and worked in industrial design. He came from California,” recalls Terri. “When Eric and I found out we were pregnant, we were both ecstatic, thrilled beyond belief. “I was ecstatic to learn I was ­having twins and to find they were a healthy boy and girl. It took five years to have them so the thought of raising two was a ­blessing.” Unbeknown to them, ­several other would-be-parents liked the sound of donor 1096, too.

In California, 2,300 miles away, devoted career ­woman Janis Clapoff was heading for 40 and ­her biological clock ­was thumping. “I really wanted to have children,” she says. “But there was nobody in my life at the time.” So she decided to use a ­donor and liked the sound of a tall, sporty, clever, handsome donor. ­Donor 1096. And in a year, along came twins, Jayme and Jesse, both now 16.

This could’ve been where the story ended. Two sets of twins, living thousands of miles apart. But ­curiosity and a new website meant the twins would eventually meet. Mum Terri had always wondered whether they had other siblings. She has always been open about the circumstances surrounding ­their conception. “Eric and I used the word donor from the time the twins could talk, so it ­was a natural ­introduction for the children,” ­she explains. But while Terri wanted to know more about the twins’ ­biological father – and any ­siblings – Eric was ­less keen. “My husband didn’t want to know the wider connection,” she says. In 2000, when her twins were five, Terri joined the Donor Sibling ­Registry, a way for sperm donor family members to connect in a way they hadn’t done before.

In order to find their half-siblings — if they have any – members use the ID number of the sperm donor. After typing in donor 1096 in to the webpage, Terri found her twins’ first sibling when they were eight. A girl called Maddi, whose mum Mara – a single mum – lived in New York. However, Maddi looked just like her mum and didn’t share physical traits with the twins, or donor 1096. But Maddi was athletic like her ­half-sister Hilit. “There was fondness between them,” Terri says.

During this time, Terri toyed with having another baby and bought more sperm from donor 1096, but she failed to get pregnant. However, after spending a tiring day with her 18-month-old niece, she realised having her twins was enough. Meanwhile, Janis Clapoff also decided to find out about her twins’ dad, donor 1096, and any siblings.

She too registered with the Donor Sibling Registry and the families found each other. Then, four years ago, Janis made the trip to Georgia with her twins to meet Terri’s. “The first time they were all in the same room I couldn’t believe it,” says Terri. “They had the same body type, they even have the same Mick ­Jagger-style lips.” Hilit adds: “The first time meeting Jayme and Jesse was exciting but nerve-wracking. Since my twin Jonah and I had met Maddi two years before, we were prepared. We hugged hello and went to dinner.

“We all talked about our life at home, friends, family and interests. It’s cool when half-siblings meet because you do feel a ­connection, not like just meeting strangers.” Jayme adds: “When ­we went to ­dinner, ­we all ordered the same drink, virgin Pina Coladas. That was cool.” Jesse agrees: ­“The connection was deep. We knew ­that we were ­siblings.”

In fact, the similarities were clear for all to see. As well as looking so alike, the two sets of twins are both ­athletic, outgoing, kind-hearted ­and passionate. Two years after the Clapoff twins visited the Jacobsons in Georgia, the Jacobsons returned the favour and made the trip to Hawaii, where the Clapoffs were living. “I still can’t remember any ­awkward or weird moments between us,” Jonah says. “Jesse and I love the ocean and ­discovered ­that we both wanted to ­attend the same ­uni, which is on the beach.”

It’s the ­internet that has changed the world ­for donor conceived children. ­In the US, there are already about 7,300 sibling ­connections on the Donor Sibling ­Registry and that number is ­expected to rise. And it’s estimated that ­between 30,000 and 60,000 donor ­conceived ­children are born each and every year.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/pFNEJq

Washington State USA, takes first step to end donor anonymity

As women postpone having children and face the ticking of their biological clocks, they may turn to donor eggs or donor sperm to help them have children. For women (and men) in Washington State, the fertility industry will be transformed in late July, 2011. Under a law recently signed by the governor, anyone who provides sperm or eggs to a fertility clinic in the state must also provide identifying information and a medical history. While that is, in fact, a customary practice for most fertility clinics, another part of the law will allow children born from donated gametes to return to the fertility clinic when they reach the age of 18 to request the identifying information and the medical history. Although the donor can file a disclosure veto that prevents the clinic from revealing the identifying information, the donor offspring will still be entitled to the medical information.
No other U.S. state has taken the same steps. Not only can fertility clinics destroy records long before the child turns 18, but also donor offspring are not entitled to any information about their donors and medical information is rarely updated and shared amongst donors and recipient families.

Some international laws are different. Sweden enacted legislation in 1984 that allows donor offspring the right to receive identifying information about their donor. Other countries have followed, with Austria, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and some states in Australia all prohibiting anonymous gamete donation, and also setting up systems to help people find out their donor's identity. In May, shortly after the governor signed the Washington state legislation, the British Columbia Supreme Court declared that people conceived by donor gametes had to be treated in the same way as people who had been adopted with respect to accessing information about their biological parents.

The new Washington law is an important milestone. It is, however, flawed, because it includes a disclosure veto, allowing the donors' alleged interests in privacy to trump the interests of donor-conceived offspring and the intending parents in learning the donor's identity. For many donor offspring, learning about their biological parent is much more than just learning about their medical history. The issues and concerns of donor offspring are often complex and multi-dimensional. Many feel that until they know about their ancestral, genetic heritage, they will not properly be able to form a full self-identity. As in adoption, many speak of the great desire to know their biological parents so that they can better understand themselves. After many decades of silence, and fueled by the movement towards full disclosure within families, the voices of donor conceived people are being heard round the world, and they demanding what they see as their basic human rights to know about and connect with their genetic families.

Vasanti Jadva, at the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, collaborated with Wendy Kramer and several others in a study looking at the experiences of donor offspring in searching for, and contacting, their donor siblings and donor. They recruited 165 participants through the Donor Sibling Registry, so there was already some curiosity about their origins. Among the participants, 77% were searching for their donors and listed the top reasons for searching as "Curiosity about characteristics of your donor", "Wanting to meet your donor ", "Medical reasons", and "To have a better understanding of why I am who I am."

To read more go to http://bit.ly/jkn3BH

Genetic attraction between parents and children who have never met

An article in Yahoo today describes a woman who tracked down her long-lost father in the US who is now pregnant with his child. This highlights the concern of genetic attraction between parent and child who have never previously met, because of adoption or sperm and egg donation.

Garry Ryan, 46, was tracked down by his daughter Penny Lawrence, 28, last year. He had left Ms Lawrence's mother when she was pregnant, so father and daughter had never met.

Following the death of her mother and the grandparents who raised her, Ms Lawrence, from Los Angeles, became obsessed with finding her father, and tracked him down to Houston, Texas.

Upon meeting, they felt an instant physical attraction, which resulted in a sexual relationship. Ms Lawrence is now pregnant with her father's child.

The couple claim that their attraction is the result of something called Genetic Sexual Attraction, a term coined in the 1980s to describe overwhelming feelings between blood relatives who first meet as adults.

Speaking with The Irish Sun newspaper, Ms Lancaster said: "We are not committing incest, but are victims of GSA. We’ve never experienced a father-daughter relationship, so we’re just like any other strangers who meet in adulthood." The couple said that if the three month scan of their baby shows it does not have birth defects, they plan to keep the child and raise it together.

The couple are aware that their relationship is illegal, and are afraid the law will be used to separate them. In the US, a sexual relationship between close blood relatives is illegal, although the specifics of incest laws vary between states. A close blood relative usually includes father, mother, brother and sister, aunt, uncle, niece and nephew but may also extend to first cousins, step parents and step brothers and sisters.

Several theories surround the phenomenon of GSA, including the notion that humans are frequently attracted to faces similar to their own. It also embraces the theory that if two people who are genetically related do not meet until adulthood, the normal sexual aversion that develops between siblings during childhood is somehow switched off.

To read more go to

Telling your child they were conceived through IVF

To Tell or Not to Tell: When Your Child Is Conceived Through In Vitro Fertilization: Author Helps Parents Explain the Process
For Claudia Santorelli-Bates it seemed like the obvious choice to talk to her own children about how they were conceived through the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Bates, who is the author of "I Can't Wait to Meet You," recommends the discussion for all families that have used IVF to conceive a child, but she says, "It seems that many families haven't thought about sharing their child's conception or are often adamantly opposed to speaking about it with them. It reminds me of adoption back when families made the choice to never tell their child that they were adopted."

Bates believes think that honesty is the best policy, especially when so much time and love went into families who use assisted reproduction. "I feel the world is opening up about the topic of IVF. When I share how my children were born I always hear things like, 'oh I didn't know that,'" she explained. This type of response is frequently viewed as being negative. "When discussing IVF, I am also met with other responses such as 'we did it the old fashioned way,'" explains Bates.

However, for many couples, doing it "the old fashioned way" isn't an option. But the end result is the same -- a child that is brought into the world for all the right reasons, nurtured and loved by parents. But what about telling your child that they were conceived through in vitro fertilization? Bates feels it is a necessary part of the process and when a child starts asking questions about how they were brought into the world she has some very real concerns and suggestions.

Explaining the birds and the bees used to be commonplace. Simple to understand from a child's perspective, but clearly it is not applicable in the case of children born through IVF. In these days of delayed parenthood and assisted reproduction, simply explaining the mechanics of intercourse doesn't always answer the question of "where did I come from?" Bates believes that parents who have turned to IVF to have a child need to guide children with informed information about the reproductive process when they're ready to listen and their curiosity has peaked. The process of telling a child that they were conceived through IVF involves guiding children through IVF, donor insemination, surrogacy, adoption and the question of why some children might have more than one set of parents.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/b3t81P

Sperm donations: Rights of donor offspring to know donors identity

The debate surrounding the rights and welfare of donor offspring has been gaining momentum over the past few years, and a growing number of countries have already banned anonymous sperm donation to ensure the right of offspring to access information about their donors. In the US, however, anonymous donation is not only legal but is still the prevailing norm. With no central registry and no federal or state regulation requiring long-term record keeping, information about donors is kept by individual sperm banks and fertility clinics according to various standards and for different lengths of time.
The outcome of the current situation is that many US donor offspring will never have potential access to information about their donors (either non-identifying or identifying information subject to donor's consent to disclosure). This reality raises serious issues regarding the ethics of denying individuals the right to information about their genetic origins. It also makes it particularly important to collect data on the actual needs and desires of donor offspring, which could provide empirical support for future policy initiatives.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/blavhW

First US study of attitudes towards donor conception published

A study into the attitudes of donor-conceived siblings has been published in the US. Said to be the first empirical study of its kind in the US, the report's authors - from The Commission on Parenthood's Future - surveyed nearly 500 donor-conceived adults aged between 18 and 45 aiming to feed into international debate on the ethics, meaning, and practice of donor conception.
The report, entitled 'My Daddy's Name is Donor' (the name was taken from a controversial T-shirt slogan produced by a company founded by two lesbian parents of a donor-conceived child), shows that although 45 per cent of donor offspring agreed with the statement 'the circumstances of my conception bother me' and that half expressed concerns or serious objections to donor conception itself, well over half (61 per cent) of donor offspring favour the practice and are far more likely than non-donor conceived adults to become donors themselves.

The findings also reported unease about payment for gametes with half the respondents being disturbed that money was involved in their conception. It also found that approximately two-thirds of respondents supported the right of donor-conceived offspring to obtain information about their biological father and to know his identity.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/aEhAnp