Choosing a private sperm donor, is it the right decision?

So you have come to the decision that you are not going to meet Mr Right any time soon, or in the case of lesbian couples you have already met Mrs Right and you really want to start a family. Is a fertility clinic right for you... What are your options you may ask? A fertility clinic seems to be the right option but something is niggling inside of you saying 'do I really have to pay thousands of pounds or dollars to get a child of my own?' 'do I want to pick a sperm donor from a long list just based on eye colour or haircolour' 'what if I met him and I didn't even like him' or 'I really don't like the idea of spreading my legs in a fertility clinic!' or if you are in a lesbian couple you may have talked about 'wanting the conception to be a joint loving experience'. Finding a sperm donor through the internet... Well you are certainly not alone in having these thoughts, as many more people are turning to the internet and sperm donor websites to find their ideal genetic material for their future child. Leading connection website Pride Angel now has been than 36,000 members registered worldwide. So the web is certainly giving options to people, which they never previously had. Are private sperm donors safe... The concern many people have is that of how finding your own donor works and ultimately is it safe? We are often bomarded by the media about how bad and dangerous it is to find a donor from a website. With messages being given to us about 'sperm donors only being interested in sex' and 'prolific sperm donors having hundreds of children' or 'sperm donors carrying sexually transmitted diseases and genetic disorders' These negative messages breed fear and lead us running back to the safety net of regulated fertility clinics. Benefits to choosing your own donor ... So are these fears justified or is it just media hype. The truth is that there is always an element of risk in every choice we make, but armed with this knowledge it is possible to benefit from all advantages of finding your own donor and at the same time limit the possibility of anything going wrong. So what are the main benefits of finding your own donor and how can you keep yourself and your future child safe at the same time? Firstly finding a donor through a website puts you in control of picking the characteristics and personality traits of your donor and 50% genetics of your child. It means that you can keep in contact if you choose, and your child can get to know more about them before they reach age 18. If you prefer not to stay in touch, at least you have more info to tell your child as and when they ask questions. It means you can use fresh sperm (better chance of getting pregnant) and be flexible with your donor and fit around your fertility window. With the added benefit that it may certainly save you a packet of money which you can spend on your child instead. Read more about how you can help minimise the risks of using a private sperm donor by getting health screening and legal advice. Start your search of thousands of sperm donors for free now Article: 20th May 2015 www.prideangel.com

Sperm donor's experience of donating to lesbian friends

The first time I saw my baby daughter, my initial reaction was surprise. It was as if someone had taken a knitted version of me and shrunk it in the dryer. Despite the family resemblance, I didn't feel a paternal connection; instead, I was happy I had been able to help my close friends start a family. On the day my friends, a lesbian couple, asked if I would donate sperm, I was delighted. I didn't think about the reality of what that would entail; I just impulsively said yes. In fact, I was grateful to be asked. Incredibly, my friend became pregnant on that first attempt. I was overjoyed. As a gay man, I had been programmed to believe that this wasn't part of my narrative. Now, though, this pregnancy was exploding the myth that I could never be a father, and it was wonderful. But five months later, my friend miscarried and I felt responsible, as if it was my fault. We sat down and had a lovely talk where they reassured me and we decided to wait before trying again. It took me three or four months to allow myself to say I had lost a baby. As the donor, I didn't know if I had permission to grieve: they had been watching their baby grow, while I was peripheral. It was a growing-up moment: life had been all fun and games up till then, and now I realised there were consequences to my actions. A few months later, we all felt ready to try again. It took longer for my friend to become pregnant this time, and I worried that it wouldn't happen; that I'd lost my powers. We settled into a monthly routine and I became less embarrassed about the process. I'd go round to my friends' house, we'd have some tea and a chat, which we called our pillow talk, and then they'd go for a walk and leave me to it. But I did grow tired of having to dash round as soon as I received a text saying my friend was fertile, so after a while she'd come to my home instead to pick up the donation, wrapped in a brown paper bag. It felt like a drug deal. To keep the sperm at the right temperature, she'd store it in her bra for the journey home. I used to try to hide what I was doing from my partner, Matt: the text would arrive and I'd slope off to the bathroom, saying I was just brushing my teeth. He'd always guess, though. I'd met Matt just when we began the process, and meeting someone when you're starting a family with someone else is complicated. It took a while before we could talk about what was going on. Finally, my friend conceived and the pregnancy progressed well. Just before the birth, my friends held a baby shower, which I found unexpectedly painful. Despite the efforts of the mums to include me, and despite being thanked by the grandparents, I found myself sobbing on the floor afterwards. I was still an outsider; it wasn't about me. I was physically having a baby, but I wasn't part of it. On the day of the birth, last October, I was like a father from the 1950s, but instead of pacing the corridor, I was walking on the treadmill at the gym. After the baby was born, I couldn't tell people without welling up. I never thought I would be announcing to everyone, "I have a child." It was also time to tell my parents, because they hadn't known they were going to be grandparents. They had written off having grandchildren, so they were over the moon. I think they also felt relieved. As parents of a gay child, they had worried I would struggle, but now that I am a father, I must be OK. We also have a new topic of conversation, one I never thought I'd be party to. It has been a rollercoaster two years, but writing a comedy show about it has been good therapy. I'd be willing to do it again if my friends wanted another child. The baby is now 10 months old, and although I see her regularly, I'm certainly not "Dad". I'm Shawn. But we will always be open about my connection to her. I don't want a "Darth Vader moment" when she's older. It's important for her to know that she was born in a special way, and that her arrival helped to change ideas of what a family can be. Article: 19th August 2013 www.guardian.co.uk

Sperm Donor fights for right to be a Dad in California

The actor Jason Patric wants to be a Dad. The mother of his biological child, 3-year-old Gus, wants him to just be a sperm donor. Who wins? If I taught family law, I’d make this case my last class of the semester, because it’s right at the edge of a frontier of parenthood that courts and states haven’t settled yet. It also scrambles the usual assumptions. Traditionally, it is fathers who have run from parental responsibilities and mothers who have tried to hold them accountable, often to win child support. I’m not talking about most fathers, of course, just the ones who essentially say they got tricked—they just gave sperm, or they just had sex, and didn’t intend to become fathers at all. In this case, Patric wants a relationship with his biological son, and it’s Gus’ mother, Danielle Schreiber, who is asking the courts to turn him away. It’s a different entry point into an old fight. But Schreiber’s stance shouldn’t change the underlying rule: Unless both biological parents agree before birth that the father has no rights at all, courts should presume that he is indeed the father, not just some guy who ejaculated into a cup. Patric and his ex-girlfriend, Schreiber, conceived Gus via in vitro fertilization. Patric says he spent time with Gus after the boy was born, until Schreiber cut him out. He has pictures to prove it. “I want my son back,” he told Katie Couric. He says he was there from the start and signed a document stating that he was Gus’ “intended parent.” Schreiber say that Gus was conceived after she and Patric broke up, and that neither of them intended him to be the boy’s father. “It's not about him having a relationship or contact with Gus. This is just about rights,” she said, also on TV. “Me preserving my right to be a sole legal parent, not having to share that with someone who has never intended to and never raised Gus.” So far, Patric is losing. A California court ruled that he has no parental rights. The judge interpreted state law to provide that if a man isn’t married to the mother of his biological child, and gives her his sperm, then the general rule is that he has no paternity rights. It doesn’t matter whether he spent time with the baby afterward—or what might be best for the child. If you think about it, that’s pretty shocking. Usually, family law presumes that two parents are better than one, University of Florida law professor Lee-Ford Tritt pointed out when I called him to talk about this case. That way, a child has two sources of love and income. The two-parent rule doesn’t apply to anonymous sperm donors—no one would donate if it did. Also, if the sperm donor is someone the mother knows, the parents should be able to contract away his parental rights if that’s what they want. Otherwise, it will be harder for women to go to men they know for sperm, and that’s not a good outcome. Sometimes children are better off knowing who their fathers are, even if the fathers aren’t legally responsible for them. The law should allow for different kinds of donors and family constellations. But if there’s no clear agreement between the parents, then the law should go back to presuming that the genetic father should be treated as the real father. The judge who ruled against Patric did the opposite. He’s saying, in effect, that Schreiber gets to decide to bar Patric from any kind of parental involvement. We’re not talking about whether Patric gets to raise Gus—that’s a separate custody issue—just about whether he has any leg to stand on in court proceedings about Gus at all. Why should this decision about Gus’ parenthood be up to his mother alone, without any consideration of how Patric behaved toward Gus, and whether Gus would be better off with Patric in his life? Courts should, and often do, ask a different question: Has the father “held out” a child as his own? That’s the legal term of art for a test that looks at the father’s relationship to the child. Did Patric spend time with Gus or pay for any of his care? Did he acknowledge him as his son? “Holding out a child as one’s own is huge in the courts for determining parental rights,” Tritt says. That’s not how current California law works, however. It provides that a sperm donor, to a bank or for IVF involving a woman other than his wife, “is treated in law as if he were not the natural father of a child thereby conceived, unless otherwise agreed to in a writing signed by the donor and the woman prior to the conception of the child.” Article: 14th August 2013 www.slate.com

TV company wants to hear from sperm donors and recipients, can you help?

Seneca Productions is a television production company based in London, UK. We specialise in high-end documentaries, the most recent of which was All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry. We're developing an observational documentary on private sperm donation, in which we'll follow donors and recipients through their experiences, while getting insight into the community and its motivations. We want to speak to as many British donors and recipients as possible. We'd like to have a telephone conversation with those who reach out to us, rather than send out a standard questionnaire. Individuals can be as open or anonymous as they like during this informal chat. Do you have something to say about sperm donation? Do you have an interesting story to tell? If so, get in touch. We want to tell people's story as it is. If anyone wishes to know more about the type of programmes we make please take a look at our recent Channel 4 documentary, 'All in the best possible taste with Grayson Perry' “A fabulous work of television.” (The Guardian) “A terrific series.” ***** (The Times). Available on 4oD. You can contact Pride Angel for more information, or email Marcus direct - marcusplowright@senecaproductions.com or give Marcus a call on +44 (0)20 7324 6079. Many thanks for all your help. Article: 22nd February 2012 Seneca Productions

Landmark High Court ruling on sperm donation and same sex parenting

The High Court has today made a landmark ruling, allowing two civilly partnered sperm donors the right to ask for contact with their biological children (against the wishes of the children’s respective lesbian mothers), but also warning that it will consider the need to protect the lesbian families carefully before a final decision is made. NGA is representing the mothers in the case of Re Z, one of the two connected cases and the one which brought the novel legal issues to the attention of the court. The ruling has significant implications for same sex parents and families created through donor conception. It is the first case to test rights for same sex parents introduced by Parliament in 2008, which give lesbian mothers the same legal protection following sperm donation as opposite sex parents. Under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, the mothers in this case, as civil partners, are the legal parents of their children. The biological fathers, like sperm donors through clinics, are expressly excluded from being treated as the legal fathers ‘for any purpose’. Relationships broke down after the men each sought more involvement than the mothers agreed. They applied to court, and the court has now ruled that they can have their cases heard. The court’s decision opens the door to legal claims from sperm donors who want involvement but have no legal parental status. But the judgment also makes it clear that every case will be considered carefully. Donors will not simply be treated as fathers, and protecting the primary family’s autonomy is also a ‘material consideration’. Donors will only be able to seek redress on the basis of the the particular facts, where this is justified. In Re G and Re Z, the fact that the donors had had early contact with the children was what persuaded the court that they should at least be allowed to have their cases heard. However, although the court has given the donors ‘leave’ to apply, it does not necessarily follow that they will actually be given any rights of contact, and the court has warned that the underlying legal framework will be a significant consideration, and that any expectation of very significant contact is likely to be ‘wholly unrealistic’. Mr Justice Baker suggested that there was no principle being created of automatic rights for donors to lesbian couples: “I endorse the submissions that the policy underpinning these reforms is an acknowledgement that alternative family forms without fathers are sufficient to meet a child’s need… Thousands of children in this country are being brought up happily and successfully by same-sex couples.” Going forward, there are some significant lessons for same sex parents (and anyone conceiving through known donation): Lesbian mothers need to understand that being named on the birth certificate does not give absolute protection. Conceiving with a known donor will always carry some level of risk if things don’t work out as intended, so mothers should be very careful about giving any level of contact unless they are absolutely sure. Gay fathers who act as known donors need to understand that their legal position may be more fragile and uncertain than they think. Men who want to be fully involved fathers will not have any automatic rights if there is a dispute. Everyone going into known donation or co-parenting arrangements should be crystal clear about their expectations from the outset. Setting the strongest possible foundations at the start is the best way of avoiding later problems. One way to do that is to put an agreement in place, but the real key is good communication – an agreement is a means to that rather than an end in itself. There is more from our blog on How to Avoid a Known Donor Dispute. At NGA, we provide leading specialist advice to parents conceiving through known donation, including same sex parents, both male and female, and leading representation to those in disputes. We have worked at the cutting edge of the law, pushing boundaries, for many years, and were instrumental in helping create the rights for same sex parents in the HFE Act 2008. There is more information on our website about known donor disputes and about planning known donation for mothers and for fathers. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest updates on our work and campaigns.

Sperm donor or Dad? what is the law regarding known donors?

What happens when you have a baby with a sperm donor who is known to you? An old friend maybe, or a friend of a friend. Sarah Wood-Heath from fertility lawyers Natalie Gamble Associates looks at the recent change in the law and how it could affect you. “So, what do you think? I want a baby and if you’re happy to help that would be great. I don’t want anything from you, no money, involvement... although if we did have a baby I would like him or her to at least know you. I think it’s important for them to know their origins but I certainly would not want you to be part of their life, I will be their mother...” says Linda. Mark replies: “Sure, it sounds great. I’ve known you for so long I would be happy to help. I’m not ready to be a dad and am not even sure that is something I would ever want to be. I certainly don’t want to be known as dad or anything or have any involvement in their life. May be I could just see them a couple of times a year”. And so the stage is set. More often than not known donation arrangements like Mark and Linda’s are entered into with the best of intentions. One party desperate for a baby, the other happy to help as long as there are no strings attached. Assurances are made all round that the mum will not seek financial assistance and the donor will not have substantial involvement . Many known donation arrangements are very successful, particularly where the adults spend a long time considering their wishes and feelings and thrashing out between them what they each expect in terms of a relationship. However,sometimes things do not go so smoothly, and an underlying mismatch of expectations and the arrival of someone so cute and adorable can spell disaster. Suddenly the donor realises that he helped to create this little person and feelings which were entirely unexpected begin to brew. He thinks “Maybe, just maybe, I do want to be dad!’. So arrives Benny. Mark says “He is so cute. I can’t believe I made him and he is mine. When can I see him next? I can pop over tomorrow if that is ok. Don’t forget, when you need a rest I’m here. Maybe he could stay overnight with me on Saturday?” Linda says “Hang on, this isn’t what we agreed. You didn’t want to be a part of his life. I never expected this and it is not the way I wanted to bring Benny up. He will only have limited contact with you so he knows where he came from”. When positions are so far apart how do you unravel the mess? Bitter disputes such as these often end up in the courts where judges have to decide whether there should be contact between Mark and Benny as well as whether it would be in Benny’s best interests to have a full relationship with Mark (including staying the night and going on holiday). Up until now, the courts have been supportive of what everyone agreed before the baby was born and would often make a decision on that basis. However, the Court of Appeal has recently changed things with a landmark decision that a donor father should have a significant relationship with his child even though this was not what everyone had agreed at the outset. The court ruled that one cannot predict the future or account for the fact that there may be a change of feelings. If a donor father decides he wants a relationship with the child, it may not be wrong to stop this just because originally he did not want one. In fact, the relationship could be a good thing for the child. But there are no hard and fast rules to this as each case has its own circumstances and permutations. This is a sad and difficult position for everyone involved - Linda who entered the arrangement on the basis and understanding that she would be the sole carer; Mark who entered into the arrangement unaware that the little bundle of joy would evoke such feelings in him. In this case, the law could come down on the side of the Mark. I for one would not wish for the job of a judge in such disputes, having to weigh in the balance so many conflicting interests, but ultimately the decision is what is in the best interests of the child, not what the adults agreed. So, is Mark a sperm donor or dad? It seems that now, he can change his mind! Article:7th August www.g3mag.co.uk

Calendar date - Insem 6:30pm

We’d had it pencilled in the diary for three months. Our first insemination. In fact we hadn’t pencilled it in at all: there was just an ominous unmarked weekend on the calendar; a question mark by Days 11 and 13 on my chart; a pair of affectionate parentheses in my diary, embracing nothing. There’s an element of trying to be discreet – when I jot down the time of my next dental appointment, I don’t want Brenda on the surgery reception to glance across and see…well, what? What would you write? “Man we met on internet coming to masturbate into cup 6.30pm”. Clearly that’s far too convoluted, but the five-syllable “Insemination” doesn’t seem much shorter – “Insem 6.30pm perhaps? At least its obscurity would tick the box for discretion – it sounds like a business meeting with a software company. It was fortunate I’d been at work during the designated day. Despite occasional surges of excited panic, my mind had been distracted from the evening ahead. My partner, however, had been at home, which was useful in the sense that she was able to review the instructions and put together a checklist, scatter a few candles about in our bedroom for ambience, and place a specimen cup in the spare room (with a bottle of water and a tube of Smarties as light refreshments). Meanwhile without the distraction of work, her brain had been free to muse on our plans. “What are we doing?!” she asked, on my return from work and I felt the bile of panic rise. There were two things going on here: 1. We return to that ‘man we met on Internet coming to masturbate into cup 6.30pm’, but with the added entry of ‘Insert product of said masturbation into me.’ 2. To continue in diary entry style, ‘Sacrifice next 20 years of life to child/ren At that moment, an hour before our donor was due to arrive, it all felt so rushed. It felt like we had just decided on a whim, to have a baby, and having recently read that your nine months start from the first day of your last period, I realised that I was feasibly already two weeks pregnant, and we hadn’t even done it yet. I had to remind myself that we’d talked about this. For, ominously, nine months, we’d talked about this. We had to rely on the fact that whatever panic we felt in this moment, we’d made a careful, considered decision. The familiarity of the sound of the doorbell was strangely comforting, amid the chaos of my mind and the impending awkwardness of “when he arrives”. Unfamiliar with the etiquette of receiving a sperm donor, since we’re English, we resorted to the offer of a cup of tea, which, to our relief, was gratefully accepted. Thence an hour of polite conversation before he suggested perhaps it was time he got on with it. Meanwhile, leaving him in privacy upstairs, the two of us headed down to the kitchen and nervously completed a week’s worth of housework in about fifteen minutes (‘nesting ‘, I’ve decided, is actually just a fevered release of nervous energy encountered by expectant parents). Anyway, just as we got the iron board folded back up, he popped his head round the door and was ready to get off home; we all knew it was advisable not to leave the stuff lying around cooling down for long. My partner put the sample bottle down her bra for warmth while I prepared to be bedbound for an hour or two, by gathering personal possessions like someone about to be deposited on a desert island for ten years. I arranged myself on the bed, with my hips propped up on a pile of pillows in a position which I very much doubt is listed in the Kama Sutra, and my partner used my tummy as a handy table for her list of instructions. I closed my eyes and waited to feel the squirt of the syringe, but when it happened, I felt nothing. I opened my eyes and we smiled at each other in nervous collusion. After twenty minutes lying on my back, I rolled over and did five minutes on each side, and then on my front, like an obedient sausage turning itself on the grill. Then, nicely browned on all sides, I watched as my partner snuffed out the candles and, exhausted, we settled down to sleep. Somewhere very nearby, a million or so little beings had just woken up and were starting to have a look around… Article: 3rd August 2012 by Lindsey, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom To read more personal experiences click here.

How to avoid a dispute when using a known sperm or egg donor

The courts are all talking about same sex parenting disputes. The Court of Appeal has this week been hearing from a donor applying for contact with his biological son against a lesbian couple who say they feel “bitterness and betrayal” (the case has not yet been decided but you can read the coverage in the Telegraph here). This follows the decision just a few weeks ago by High Court judge Mr Justice Hedley (in P&L (minors) 2011, available here in full) which dealt with a very long and bitter dispute about the role of gay donor dads to two children (aged 10 and 6) being raised by their lesbian mothers. The courts are feeling their way with what they call new models of alternative parenting, and trying to develop an approach for these types of cases, which are far from traditional family law disputes.
Having advised many same sex parents (both at the planning stages and those who end up in dispute) we see some wonderfully successful co-parenting arrangements. But where they go wrong, they go horribly wrong. What is interesting, though, is that parents always seem to fall into one camp or the other. I can honestly say that none of the clients we have advised at the planning stage has ever come back for legal representation later. Equally, not one of the clients we have represented in disputes took legal advice at the outset.

So here are our tips on how to make your co-parenting or known donation arrangement a successful one, and how to avoid ending up in court:

Talk, talk, talk (and more importantly listen, listen, listen)

Don’t rush into trying to conceive. Get to know each other, have honest conversations about the roles you will have and how much involvement you all want. Be as clear as you can about your expectations and be honest with each other and yourselves. If things don’t feel right, have the courage to walk away. There are always other options. You could find another donor or co-parent, or choose unknown donation (as mums) or surrogacy (as dads) if what you really want is parental autonomy.

Understand what roles you will all have

Justice Hedley was keen to “stress the importance of agreeing the future roles of the parties before the first child is born“. And this fits with our experience. Almost all the cases we have seen which have ended up in dispute are ultimately about status. Is the biological dad a father or a donor? Are you equal co-parents, or primary and secondary parents, or parents with another adult role model? Make sure you talk about how you see yourselves and each other, as well as the day to day practicalities of managing your child’s care.

Understand how the law works

The law on parentage is complicated, and who will be the legal parents (and what goes on the birth certificate) depends on the facts, including how you conceive and the birth mother’s marital status. There may be all sorts of different options, both for choosing who the legal parents are and for giving some parental status to the other co-parents if you want to, and problems can often arise where parents have expectations (for example about what goes on the birth certificate) which can’t be met. Take legal advice, or check out the free information on our website about this.

Put in place a written agreement

Donor agreements may not (strictly) be legally binding, but they are incredibly useful. I have always advised parents that putting something in writing helps with the planning, facilitates honest conversations and sets a framework which everyone will feel morally bound by, giving clarity and transparency and setting a really strong foundation.

However, it now seems they may be more legally binding than we previously thought. Although the issue is still untested (the parents in P&L did not have a written agreement, which I suppose comes back to my point that it is not the parents with properly prepared legal agreements who end up in court) the case suggests that the court will pay attention if there is one. Mr Justice Hedley said, in the strongest indication yet, that “the court will be bound to give careful consideration and weight to any such agreement“.

There is no standard format for a donor or co-parenting agreement, but having something which is accurate and personal to you (and prepared with a solid understanding of how the law applies in your particular circumstances) will be much more helpful than any standard pro forma.

If you need help with planning a co-parenting or known donation arrangement, or if you need representation in a dispute, feel free to contact us.

Co-parenting and using a known donor: L Group families workshop, London, 3rd July 2011

Co-founders of Pride Angel Erika and Karen are enthusiastic about sharing their experience and knowledge through seminars, talks and workshops across the UK.
Their next talk will take place within the L Group families’ workshop:

Titled:
Co-parenting and using a known donor
Ever considering co-parenting or finding a known donor to conceive? How will the anonymity law affect any future children? Find out more about the practicalities, finding a donor through a website, legal considerations and treatment options available.



Talk: Co-parenting and using a known donor

Date: Sunday 3rd July

Time: 11.00 -13.00

Venue: London Friend, 86 Caledonian Road, King’s Cross, London, N1 9DN.

You can reach London Friend by:
Rail: King's Cross or St Pancras Station. Tube: King's Cross/St Pancras. Buses: 10, 17, 30, 45, 91, 93, 73, 205, 259 or 390.


If you are organising an exhibition, run a charity or support group and would like Pride Angel to give a talk at one of your seminars or workshops, please contact us at info@prideangel.com for further information. Read more about our Pride Angel Seminars.

Or if you are interested in finding out about a future talk in your area please Contact us. The more requests we get for a specific area, the sooner we will arrange a talk in that location of the UK, so please get in touch.

Visit L Group families the organisation supporting lesbian parents and lesbians wanting to become parents.

For more about lesbian and gay parenting, co-parenting and using a known donor visit www.prideangel.com

Donating sperm - Why do men choose to donate?

It takes just minutes, but the emotional consequences of donating sperm can last for years. So what makes men do it? By Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent.
Sperm is a hot commodity in 21st-century Britain. Women will travel miles to find it and pay thousands to access it. Obtaining a donation from the European Sperm Bank – which is to say pursuing the standard, NHS-endorsed option of licensed donation – can cost upwards of £2,500. That's before diagnostic testing, treatment costs, and "pregnancy slot" bookings are taken into account. That's £2,500 for three, thumb-sized vials of frozen semen – and it might not be enough.

Treatment could be unsuccessful, at least the first time around. It might be a one-off, or it might a recurring problem. It might not even be possible to buy a donation. Demand for those frozen vials dwarfs availability, and the result is a system in which eligibility is strictly regulated.

Mark Jackson first learned of the sperm shortage six years ago. Sitting at his computer, reading news of the Boxing Day tsunami, he was made aware of his own mortality. “I realised that you could be wiped off the earth without having left any impact,” he reflects. “My eye was caught by a ticker running across the screen. It said that there was a shortage of gamete donations. I didn’t even know what that was, but I clicked on the link. I realised that maybe I could make a difference after all.”

Since then, his sperm has been used to “help” two families and Jackson has become a trustee of the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT). He is one of almost 500 registered donors in the UK, sharing his sperm via the 138 licensed clinics around the country. In 2005, when British law changed to allow donors’ offspring to learn, on turning 18, the identity of their father, that number was widely predicted to drop off. Suddenly, the prospect was raised of biological sons or daughters rocking up on donors’ doorsteps. It’s a scenario soon to be played out on the big screen, thanks to US comedy The Kids Are All Right, and it would be enough – sceptics reasoned – to turn many men off their trips to the fertility clinic.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/bP4xJ2

Confessions of a Sperm DOnor

‘The nurse handed me a plastic jar and led me to a small room. There was a TV showing a porn film...’
Hospital workers hustle past, oblivious. They’ve seen it a thousand times. I’m standing outside the delivery room, a newborn swathed in a blanket in my arms. If there’s an amazed look on my face, it’s because the child is my first. The hitherto hypothetical being is now embodied in precise measurements: she weighs 8lb 1oz; she is 20in long; her head, which fits into my hand, has a circumference of 14in; she was born at 8.39pm; she is a girl. When she screws up her face against the hospital’s fluorescent lights, I instinctively shield her eyes.

Wind back three years to April 2007. I was a single guy living in a flat by the beach. I had just bought a motorcycle. During the day I worked at a magazine, while after hours I was writing a novel. One Sunday night, I came home, switched on the computer and received an e-mail from an old friend:

“Hi gorgeous family & friends, “For the first time in my life I can’t call, e-mail or text you individually thus the group e-mail. You may or may not have heard that I’m heading to Sydney to get treatment for breast cancer on Monday. It’s stage 1 and they have caught it early but apparently quite aggressive so seems I’m in for a bit of chemo.”

I was 11 years old when we met, on a family holiday at a ski lodge in the Snowy Mountains. Tina was 13, the second of four kids. She had thick black curls above a ready smile and sharp blue eyes. Her father was a sheep farmer who, when I was 14, slaughtered a lamb in the shed, cut out its beating heart and handed it to me. By then we were close family friends.

Tina grew up to become a trader in Hong Kong, from where she sent the e-mail.

My reply felt unequal to the situation: “What a shock. Thinking of you. Will help in any way I can.”

Two days later, Tina replied: “I have no idea how to phrase or approach this so am going to come straight out with it. Would you consider sperm donation?

“I don’t want you to feel pressure to do this just because I am sick. It would have to be something in principle you felt happy to do.”

OK, there it is – right there on the table.

“It felt like a frozen pea,” she said of the first lump she’d felt on her breast early one morning, dressing for work. We were sitting on a cliff overlooking the sea. The swell was rolling in, in long, tidy lines. The sun was out. Tina smiled a lot, though her smile seemed unnaturally fixed. She’d had a lumpectomy ten days previously, and her doctors had said that she had “clear margins”, meaning they’d found no cancer in the tissue surrounding the tumours they had removed. But it was a high-grade cancer, and they were putting her on an aggressive course of chemotherapy.

I was frightened. If my oldest friends were getting cancer, why not me? And death had been on my mind anyway: my father had died suddenly of a heart attack the previous year. But I knew my fear was irrational. Tina’s wasn’t.

“I’m worried the chemo will fry my eggs,” she said. “I want an insurance policy.” The fertility specialist had told her that freezing eggs was a waste of time. Embryos are a lot hardier. But she didn’t have time to find an anonymous donor. There was (and still is) a severe donor-sperm shortage in Australia. You can spend years waiting. Her oncologist had agreed to delay the chemo only long enough for her to have one period: as soon as she started menstruating, she needed to extract the eggs, fertilise them and freeze the embryos. Then she had to start chemo.

If I agreed, she said, the possibility of it resulting in a baby was remote. First, there was the cancer: she wasn’t in the clear yet, and she wouldn’t know more until after the chemo and radiation therapy. Then, there was the fallibility of IVF: plenty of things could go wrong, especially since we only had one shot at it.

But even with the long odds, I knew it could lead to a baby. I thought about my beachside pad, the draft of my novel, my motorcycle. I valued my bachelor life. Tina said that in the unlikely event that the baby was born, she’d ask nothing of me. I could remain anonymous if I wanted to.

I meant it when I offered to help. I tried to imagine how I would be with cancer. What would be my priorities? What would I hope for?

My decision boiled down to this: baby or no baby, I knew I could live with myself if I helped her. I didn’t want to face the feeling that would follow turning down a friend in serious trouble. Plus, I was flattered.

Not that I had reason to be. She was asking me because I was single, straight and healthy – a rare hat trick in Sydney. She planned to recover, then meet a man and have babies the old-fashioned way. But just in case, knowing the embryos would be there, frozen in nitrogen, while the cancer-killing drugs polluted her body, would give her something to hope for.

Ten days later, I was in the IVF clinic. A nurse handed me a plastic sample jar and led me to a small, windowless room in the centre of the building. There was a TV showing a porn film, a side table with porn magazines and a box of tissues on it, and, aptly, a La-Z-boy recliner. A button on the wall had a sign next to it that read, “Press here when you have produced a sample and a scientist will collect it.” I felt like the king bee in the royal cell of a gender-flipped hive.

The IVF was successful. I wondered at the scientists in their lab, orchestrating on behalf of total strangers a phenomenon that usually happens in intimacy, then going to lunch. They froze three of our embryos and five of Tina’s eggs in nitrogen.

First Tina’s hair went. Then her eyebrows. Then her eyelashes. After four months of chemo, Tina did seven weeks of radiation therapy. Then she went skiing.

Meanwhile, I had started dating a woman and was discovering consequences to what I’d done that I hadn’t anticipated. My mother had warned me that the embryos would be an issue for other women in my life, but I hadn’t believed her. I was sure they’d see the bigger picture.

In January 2008 – eight months after I’d donated – I got an e-mail from Colorado. Tina had had her first period since the clinic. She’d beaten the cancer and she was ovulating. Her hair grew back, black and curly. She came back to Sydney and met someone. In October, she found out she was pregnant. I was off the hook.

Three months later, I received another e-mail: the baby had a chromosomal disorder. Tina had been through too much; she decided to terminate. But it cost her dearly. She went into a meltdown. The boyfriend was out of the picture. She asked if she could use her insurance policy – the embryos made with the pre-chemo eggs.

My relationship with my girlfriend had deteriorated by then, and the embryos had become a bone of contention (we split not long after). And quite apart from that, I was terrified of having a baby.

I didn’t have to do it. If I said no, Tina could try thawing her pre-chemo eggs and looking for an anonymous donor. But I remembered what the fertility specialist had said. You need embryos.

My generation is smarter, freer and probably happier than my parents’. But there is one torment unique to us, or at least half of us: all those single women approaching 40 and terrified by the prospect of never having children. Think about that for a moment. By virtue of being a man, I’ve had the time to travel the world, try one profession and then another, go back to university, and remain a bachelor as long as I like, knowing that whenever I’m ready to settle down, I can. I understood why so many women in Sydney were becoming choice mothers.

I considered Tina’s situation. She had courage and determination. She had a successful career and owned a nice house where she could raise a child. She was close to her sister, who had agreed to adopt the child if the cancer returned and the worst happened. Most of all, I knew that the baby would be born into welcoming arms and excellent, if unusual, circumstances. I thought about the amity between us and went with my gut feeling. Now I had nine months to put some order into my thoughts and decide what role I wanted to play in the child’s life.

The easiest line to take was to call it her baby. I could tell myself I’d done a favour for a friend in need, get a pat on the back and step out of the picture.

Then, there was the godfather line. Tina would parent the child, but I’d be there at the periphery. That seemed the fairest deal – she got the child she wanted and I got a bit part. Friends of mine, fathers, said, only half-jokingly, that I’d have the best of both worlds: all the pride of being a father without ever having to change a nappy.

But how far out was this periphery? The “godfather” analogy falls down under scrutiny. What was I planning to do, buy the kid a subscription to National Geographic and phone on his birthday for the next 18 years? I realised that I had nothing to pattern after.

I had to work it out for myself. Three months passed. I flipped the whole thing around and tried to imagine it from the child’s perspective. On a piece of paper, I made a list of things I would want from my father, were I a child. I wrote down “loved”, “valued”, “protected”. I wrote down the word “conversation” and stared at it a while. When I was 28, I had called my father some names in anger. We didn’t speak for years. Then he died suddenly. Conversation seemed important. Tina was now in her second trimester. Friends were intensely curious. Men especially asked, “What’s the legal situation?” The legal situation was that when the child was born, Tina would leave the father’s name off the birth certificate. If I wanted to, I could put it in later. As far as the government was concerned, she was a single parent. Still, my name was all over the IVF documentation. People suggested I get something in writing from her. I told them we had done everything in the spirit of friendship. “Friendships sour,” they said.

On the web, I found cases where the relationship between a donor and a recipient had soured. And I knew from experience that we have it in us to spit poison at one another – my parents’ divorce had been one of the most toxic events of my life.

Despite that, I didn’t want a contract. We weren’t dealing with a commodity here. The media always report it when donors and recipients turn against each other, but never when things work out. Tina and I understood one another perfectly. She had assumed financial responsibility from the start, that day on the cliff. There had never been any question on that front. She was happy for me to have as much or as little engagement with the kid as I wanted. The only thing she asked was that whatever I decided to do, I do it consistently, for the child’s sake. That made sense to me. There’s an old gag: how do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans. The baby was due in early February. In January, I fell in love.

I made sure my new partner met the woman carrying my child. If it was a deal-breaker, it was better to find out now. My partner wasn’t thrilled, but to her eternal credit, she could see the bigger picture. Her first question was, of course, what role are you going to play?

The answer came on February 9, when I arrived at the hospital half an hour after Tina had given birth. Donors are less prepared than most men for what happens to you when you meet your child. I know now that what you feel when you become a father is beyond the understanding of non-fathers. It’s difficult to put into words. It feels like your being billows out from you like a womb. You become larger. All the questions that had plagued me for nine months seemed irrelevant. All the intellectual disciplines – ethics, sociology, psychology – that frame those questions seemed profane. They deal in abstractions, whereas my child was in the world. She weighed 8lb 1oz and measured 20in. She had a name: Sabine. I held her in my arms and knew that I was meeting a witness to my life and to its worth. I felt I had to examine more fully what I believe. I knew I loved her. I thought of my father and the troubles we’d had. I shielded her eyes from the light.

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