'Sperm donor the only option for me' says Big Brother contestant

Aisleyne said: ““Sperm donation seems the only logical option. I don’t need a man financially. I can do it myself. I’m 34, my biological clock is ticking and I haven’t got forever.” The party girl says she's had to rethink her priorities since the death of her mother and uncle from cancer last year. She was left devastated when mum Sophia, 54, passed away in February, then three months later in May her uncle Dennis lost his battle with the disease aged 52. Speaking to Now magazine, she said: “I was too busy having fun. I thought I was invincible and had forever. It made me realise how fragile life could be and that I wanted to become a mother. “I want that responsibility of looking after someone completely helpless, to bring them up to be decent and give them the best life I possibly can. I want to live for someone other than just myself.” Since making the Big Brother final in 2006, Aisleyne has kept her love life largely out of the public eye. She briefly dated Mike Tyson in 2009, but despite a rumoured proposal from the former boxer, has yet to find someone to settle down with. She said: “I do think a child needs a dad and that’s a big drawback to doing it on my own. But there are so many single parents or children with a bad father – in this day and age the nuclear family hardly exists. “If I do meet Mr Right he’s going to have to accept me with this child. And anyway, having no stability is more detrimental to a child than having no father at all.” Article: 16th July 2013 www.thesun.co.uk

Sperm donors offer to help grant 'dragon baby' wish

Auckland woman who wants a "dragon baby" appealed for sperm donors from across the country to step forward and help. Bevan Chuang, a single 30-year-old, wants to get pregnant this year so her baby is born in the Chinese year of the Dragon which is considered the most auspicious sign in the 12-year astrological cycle. The New Year was welcomed in on January 23 and will run until February 9 next year. According to Chinese astrology, dragon babies are destined to be wealthy and successful.
Chuang went public with her search earlier this month and has since been contacted by about 20 men. With just a couple of months to fall pregnant Chuang has made shortlist and will spend the next few weeks meeting the possible fathers. "About five or six of them are genuine, like they really want it because they understand where I'm coming from and they want to help me pursue what I want to do. "I've had people who are older that tell me they already have children but they just want to help me. "And then I have one single man who has been having trouble finding a partner so he just wants a child."

Potential fathers for her child have ranged in age from 27 to men in their 40s and offers had come in from around the country. "There's a few from the South Island, a couple from Christchurch, someone from Kaitaia - they're not all from Auckland." She said rather than conducting a formal interview she just wants to meet potential donors and find out what they're like. "The correspondence I have got so far has just been electronic, I haven't met these people."

She would also like the donor to be part of the child's life. Chuang, whose sperm donor quest has landed her on television and radio, said feedback from the public has been mixed. "It's been interesting to see the comments online, to see what people assumed was the motive behind it. "There are people, especially my friends, who are really supportive but there are people saying I wasn't being responsible or that I was selfish to have a child as a single woman. She said one person accused her of trying to get residency, but having a child here wouldn't entitle her to that anyway.

Chuang said it was English-speakers who were surprised at her request. "I think in China it's more acceptable because it's not uncommon that people want a child in this year." China is expected to see a five per cent increase in the birth rate this year as a result of couples trying to have dragon babies.

Are you looking for a sperm donor? or wanting to help single, lesbian and infertile couples? visit www.prideangel.com

Ken Livingstone: The ideal sperm donor?

In his new autobiography, the former mayor of London reveals that he helped two friends get pregnant. John Walsh imagines his donation credentials
In his autobiography, You Can't Say That, Ken Livingstone reveals that, in the early 1990s, while living with his long-term partner Kate Allen, he was asked by two women if he would father their children. He obliged with enthusiasm and triumphant success. He gave the first woman, the journalist Philippa Need, a daughter in August 1990 and a son in September 1992. Around the same time, he also helped out Jan Woolf, a teacher and political activist, who gave birth to Livingstone's second son in November 1992, just weeks after the first.

The former, and indeed possibly future, Mayor of London made it clear that in each case he was doing a favour for a friend, "be[ing] around, taking an interest" in the children and "supporting them emotionally", but not living with the mothers.

Ten years later, after his relationship with Allen had ended, and he had got together with Emma Beal, another journalist, he became the proud father of two more children. Despite the potentially awkward convergence of dates in 1992 – which suggest that, while co-habiting with one woman, he impregnated two others simultaneously – the outcome was a happy one, with all three mothers and all five children enjoying summer holidays together.

There is something splendidly patriarchal – something tribal, Mormonite, sultanic – about Livingstone's cheerful polygamous arrangements, and about the casual, even humdrum, way he describes them in his autobiography. It's piquant to find this Lambeth-born working-class hero and Labour MP for Brent East beginning the 1990s by emulating King Mswati III of Swaziland, who had 23 children by 14 wives.

It is an admirable, if not objectively explicable, thing that at least three women were so impressed by his political commitment and strength of character that they settled on him (sometimes not once but twice) to be the ideal father for their babies. But would Livingstone be the ideal sperm donor for everyone? Were he to fill in a form on a donor website, how would it read?

Article: 25th October 2011 Read more www.independent.co.uk

Sperm donor who finds he has 70 biological children confesses to his fiancee

A lawyer who became a sperm donor and donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children.
More than 15 of those have already attempted to contact 33-year-old Ben Seisler.

The sperm donor confessed to his fiancée as part of a new reality show, 'Sperm Donor', that aired on the Style Network on Tuesday.

Seisler donated sperm for three years while attending law school at George Mason, Virginia. He earned around $150 per donation.

He originally planned to remain anonymous but later joined an online registry called the Donor Sibling Registry that connects offspring and siblings to each other and their donors, Boston Globe reported.

During the reality show Seisler also comes face to face with two of his biological children, a boy and a girl.

The Boston lawyer said there is no 'road map' for the situation he is in now.

'It was kind of wild,' he said after meeting the children. 'On the one hand, these kids are biologically my kids. On the other hand they are not my kids. I didn't raise them. I have no control over how they are raised.'

View You Tube click, where sperm donor confesses to his fiancee You Tube.

Article: 29th September 2011 www.dailmail.co.uk

Read more about finding a known sperm donor, or donating sperm at www.prideangel.com

Donor mum: The children I've never met

Documentary about about egg donors and sperm donors making contact with their genetic children. 'Donor Mum' can be seen tomorrow: BBC1 10.35pm Tuesday 30th August.
In 1991, Sylvia was one of Britain's first anonymous egg donors. After donating as a one-off at the London Fertility Centre in Harley Street, all she asked to know was whether her donation had been successful. But she soon found out more than she had bargained for.

Sylvia was struck to discover an article in the Daily Mail six weeks after she donated, telling the story of a woman called Joan who had successfully become pregnant using en egg donor. The clinic, the dates and the fact that they were twins, coincided exactly with Sylvia's story. She felt sure that Joan was her recipient.

Joan had a tragic story - her two boys were killed in a car crash when they were on holiday in Crete, and in her mid- 40's she desperately wanted to start another family. When she successfully used an egg donor, there were countless press reports that covered her moving story of tragedy transformed into happiness, and even a BBC documentary in 1994 that showed the twins as toddlers.

Sylvia felt tormented by seeing children who were genetically hers, but were in fact strangers who she wasn't supposed to know. She was tempted to make contact, but terrified of upsetting a family who had already suffered so much. But once the twins turned 18 she felt it was right to take the bold step of contacting them.

Alongside Sylvia's story is the story of her son Eliott. Sylvia wanted a child when she reached 33 but hadn't found Mr Right, so she decided to go it alone. Eliott was conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, and was born six months before Sylvia donated her eggs. Now 19, Eliott is ready to search for his sperm donor father.

For Eliott, born in 1991 when all donors were anonymous, his only hope is to search through DNA testing with the help of an organisation called UK Donorlink.

For Sylvia, contact with her recipient is at her fingertips. The film follows her turmoil as she decides how and when to make contact with Joan and the twins - and the extraordinary consequence of her decision.

Donors is a warm and moving film about a new kind of family emerging from the interventions of science. This film is also a snapshot of a future following the removal of donor anonymity in 2005, where more and more people will discover who their donors are after they turn 18.

Sperm and egg donor's views wanted

The National Gamete Donation Trust wants to listen to sperm and egg donors!
People think really carefully before they make that first enquiry about becoming an egg or sperm donor. It’s often prompted by the infertility of a close friend or family member. Most donors have thought about it on and off for several years before they contact a clinic.

There’s a big emotional investment, so the way the clinic behaves, especially with that first phone call or email, really matters, just as it matters to be treated decently when you get there.

The National Gamete Donation Trust works with donors on a daily basis and we get to hear lots of donor's stories. Too often the feedback is not good, and yet small changes in the way donors are treated could produce some big improvements.

To carry weight with the people who can make a difference, the Trust needs to prove that changes are necessary. We’re running a survey to gather evidence of what works and doesn’t work, and we need your help.

We want to hear both from donors who have completed their donation cycle and from people who enquired but did not donate. It’s important that donors are treated with respect; it’s also important to acknowledge the kindness that motivates enquirers.

We’ll use what donors tell us to make recommendations on how to treat donors through the whole process of donation, from that first phone call or email to sharing the outcome at the end of the cycle.

When you’ve known people with fertility problems finally achieve their much loved and hoped-for child, it is hard to understand why the people whose precious gift made that possible are sometimes treated so poorly. The minimum donors should receive for this unpaid act of generosity is to be treated well.

Dutch sperm donor with autism, has 20 children after lying about his health

Heartbroken women in The Netherlands have given birth to numerous children with Asperger's Syndrome after a sperm donor lied to them about the state of his health. For 18 months the man's semen has been used despite the fact that he suffers from the hereditary autistic disorder. Incredibly, he is still active as a sperm donor, but not at an official clinic. Dutch media said the man has fathered at least 22 children and several of those are already showing symptoms of autism.
Asperger's Syndrome is a type of development disorder retarding in the development of many basic skills, most notably the ability to socialize with others, to communicate, and to use imagination. Symptoms include children losing language or social skills, an inability to make friends easily, and developing unusual behaviour patterns, such as spending hours lining up toys or developing odd repetitive movements.

Despite passing on his syndrome and lying about his health, the man is still an active sperm donor Asperger's syndrome was named for the Austrian doctor, Hans Asperger, who first described the problems 1944, but it was not recognized as a unique disorder until much later.

The Dutch sperm donor is aged 30 and comes from the port city of Rotterdam. The woman who had babies as a result of his sperm only found out his true identity in the past month. As well as carrying the Asperger's gene, Dutch newspapers said he had also been treated for depression in the past. The women contacted the man via the Internet; this has become a popular method in Holland due to the long waiting lists at offical sperm banks and the high prices they charge.

Waiting periods vary from six months to two years and prices are usually between 500 and 1,000 pounds. The long waiting lists have also led hospitals to give preferential treatment to heterosexual couples. As a result, many single women and lesbian couples find it is much faster and cheaper to find sperm donors via the internet. 'There is a perceived added value in that the women get to meet the potential sperm donor, but the risks are also considerably higher,' said the Dutch newspaper AD. 'Some of the unofficial donors are reportedly only after sex or out to have as many donor children as possible.'

Identified only as Paul, the newspaper claimed he was a 'pathological liar.' Women have come forward to say that they had intercourse with him, or artificial insemination, after meeting him on websites like Verlangennaareenkind.nl and Bam-mam.nl. Those two sites have since banned him but there are fears he will continue to infect women with the autism gene by changing his identity and advertising elsewhere.

Erika co-founder of Pride Angel, the leading parenting connection website added 'This incident emphasises how important it is to personally meet and get to know your sperm donor, finding out as much as possible about their medical family history.' 'Fertility clinics can only perform limited screening tests, therefore personally getting to know a donor before taking them to a clinic for fertility treatment, is the safest form of sperm and egg donation'.

Mother wishes to identify the father of her IVF son, conceived with a sperm donor

A single mother from north London is trying to lift the anonymity of her child's sperm donor.
The woman has been told her six-year-old son will never be able to trace his father because the child was conceived at a Spanish clinic. The case is understood to be the first of its kind and experts say it highlights the pitfalls for those who undergo IVF abroad.

It also has led to renewed calls for a system of cross-border regulations over fertility treatment. Under British law, children conceived in Britain are entitled to obtain the name and address of their biological donor when they reach 18. These details are held on a database run by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. But the HFEA has said it is powerless to act.

The mother, who is Jewish, used an English donor who was also Jewish and he provided sperm through the London Women's Clinic. But the clinic did not have any donor eggs, so the woman transported the sperm to a clinic in Marbella where her son was conceived in December 2005. This meant none of the sperm donor's identifiable details could be placed on the authority's database.

In a statement, the woman said she hoped "with all my heart" that the father of her child would still want to meet him. She said: "I still hope that one day, through my son, I may get to thank him after all for giving me this wonderful child, who brings such joy to so many people."

Sperm donor's altruistic reasons for helping women have children

Simon has two sons, aged 15 and 13, from a failed marriage, who live with him, and a six-year-old daughter from a later broken relationship, who lives with her mother. The 37-year-old divorced former business manager thinks he has a further five children, aged between two months and six years, living in Britain and another eight in countries including Australia, South Africa, Poland and Spain. He admits it could be more, but he plays no part in their upbringing — emotionally or financially — and has absolutely no desire to.
‘If, when they turn 18, they turn up at my door wanting to know who I am, then they would be more than welcome,’ he says blithely. ‘But I am not their father in the true sense of the word and never will be.’ Simon is a freelance sperm donor who offers what he jokingly calls his ‘magic potion’ over the internet to women desperate for children.

They make contact on various internet forums, where women post adverts seeking sperm donors or respond to his posts offering his services. He says the majority of his clients — more than 50 per cent — are lesbian couples, around 40 per cent are single women hoping to beat the biological clock and the rest are heterosexual couples where the man is infertile.

Simon is doing nothing illegal. By offering fresh instead of frozen sperm, his activities fall outside the regulations laid down by the Human Fertilisation And Embryology Authority, which governs licensed sperm banks.

'I'm not doing it for the money. I want to help people who can't afford to use a fertility clinic' Countless appointments have been suddenly postponed because one of Simon’s ladies is ovulating and he is urgently required elsewhere. One day he’s in Bognor Regis on the South Coast; the next in Sheffield, the day after he’s needed in Colchester, Essex. On his travels, he carries his ‘kit’ — a sterile plastic pot in which to deposit his sperm and some sterile syringes for the women to inseminate themselves with, without needing a turkey baster.

But if you were desperate for a child, would Simon’s DNA appeal? A tall, lean, friendly man opens the door to a small, messy detached house littered with his sons’ musical instruments and other teenage detritus. Blond and blue-eyed, the initial impression is of a slightly flaky hippy; an unconventional laid-back character who prefers life in the slow lane.

But appearances can be deceptive. ‘I don’t smoke, I don’t take drugs, I hardly drink and we don’t have junk food in the house. I won’t even eat sausages,’ he says sipping on fresh mint tea. A health and fitness fanatic, he swims, runs and is converting his garage into a gym. His body is clearly a temple. Single since his last relationship broke down last year, he’s lacked the time and energy to commit to another. With two broken relationships behind him, he’s not sure if he’s cut out for marriage.

He used to be the manager of an award-winning aromatherapy firm, which was founded by his Greek-born mother, Franzesca. Simon, who was privately educated and studied aeroplane mechanics in Canada after school, held the position for eight years until he decided he didn’t want to work 65-hour weeks.

Now, he does not work and lives frugally, eking out the savings he amassed during his business career. Simon’s house is owned by his parents, who have retired abroad, so there is no mortgage to pay. He claims to charge around £50 for each sperm donation, plus his expenses — little more than he’d receive if he donated through a clinic. So why bother?

‘I’m not doing it for the money,’ he says. ‘I want to help people who can’t afford to use a fertility clinic. My family, including my parents, know about the sperm donation. My father, who paid a fair amount for my education, keeps saying: “I want my money back.” ’ Given that Simon is not prone to self-analysis, it is hard to unravel what his motives are for becoming a freelance sperm donor. What’s in it for him?

‘I’d read there was a shortage of sperm donors and, though I had two boys, I’d always wanted three kids, so it seemed a good idea.’ Simon applied to an NHS fertility clinic attached to a teaching hospital in London and after undergoing a barrage of medical tests to ensure he carried no sexual or hereditary diseases, he was accepted as a donor. His GP records were also checked for a history of psychiatric illness.

He was paid £20 plus expenses each time, but has no idea if any of this sperm — screened and then frozen for storage — produced any children. When, in 2002, Simon met his last partner, a Korean languages student, he put the sperm donation on hold, but resumed it shortly after the birth of their daughter. He says this was with his partner’s blessing, but not long after, she moved out with their little girl. ‘She didn’t get on with my sons and it was easier for everyone if we lived apart, but we were still together,’ explains Simon. ‘Then she met someone else.’

Simon denies it was a mid-life crisis that drew him back to sperm donation. He says he does not quiz his clients as to why they want children and would only rule someone out if they were obviously mentally unstable. 'It's better than getting pregnant by a stranger in a nightclub. You can’t ask about sexual health or hereditary diseases in those circumstances, can you?'

To read more go to http://bit.ly/od7v8Q

Sperm donor's genetic illness never disclosed to his 24 children

A mother and son were devastated to find out the man who donated sperm for his conception had a genetic illness - and they were never warned. Rebecca Blackwell and her 18-year-old son Tyler of Maryland tracked down sperm donor ‘John’ three years ago.
While he didn't respond to their letter for contact, John's sister found them online via Ancestry.com and, unaware her brother had donated sperm, asked why they wanted to get in touch. When she found out he had a son, she told them of the fatal genetic disorder that had ruptured John's aorta at the age of 43.

She said John, two brothers and their mother all had an 'unnamed, never before seen genetic mutation' disorder, the 59-year-old special education teacher told MailOnline. John's father, who didn't die from the aortic dissection suffered a stroke due to a lack of oxygen to the brain, Ms Blackwell said. John also has a family condition of the connective tissue disorder Marfan's Syndrome.

‘Tyler had a time bomb ticking in his chest,’ she said. ‘It didn't occur to anyone to tell us.’ Though Tyler has since had surgery on the defect in June, questions are raised as to the Blackwells weren't informed.

The fertility industry in the United States is one of the most unregulated in the developed world, said Wendy Kramer of the Donor Sibling Registry, a group that has matched some 8,400 donor offspring with their half siblings and/or donors. ‘There are no rules or regulations about donor identification, testing donors, monitoring numbers of children or medical records,’ she said.

Ms Kramer conceived her own son via sperm donation. ‘No one is watching. There are no laws. They don't keep track.’ But laws are changing. Come Friday, Washington is set to be the first state to give donor-conceived people the right to crucial health information about their biological parents when they turn eighteen. Previously, they were not entitled to any information and medical records were rarely updated.

Advocated say the new law is imperfect but it's a 'first step' in allowing these children to be nationally recognised. There are approximately 1 million children in the US born via a sperm donor. Law at present requires donors only be screened for sexually transmitted diseases and some communicable diseases.
To read more go to http://bit.ly/oTskNm

The sperm donor 'dads' connecting with their many, many children

He donated sperm every week for three years when he was a cash-strapped college student 20 years ago, and now Todd Whitehurst is still counting his children.
Four years ago, Mr Whitehurst, from New York, got an email from a girl named Virginia. Mr Whitehurst, a 45-year-old medical engineer, said: 'She said, basically, "I'm 14, and I think I'm your daughter".' Shortly after, he found a son, Tyler, who is now 14. Then he found another, Gavin, now 16. That led to another child, and another, and yet another.

He said: 'It was definitely overwhelming. I'm not even sure how many children there are.' So far he has found nine children sired by his sperm. Statistically speaking, said one biogeneticist, Mr Whitehurst could be the father of 42 to 60 children.

Because of a lack of industry regulation, high totals are all too probable, especially for prolific college kids like Mr Whitehurst. He was paid $50 a time at a clinic on the Stanford University campus in the 1980s and 1990s.

A web site set up for the children of sperm donors has discovered a number of 'superdads' who have fathered dozens, sometimes hundreds, of children. One top seed in Virginia has sired 129 kids and still counting, according to the Donor Sibling Registry, a nonprofit that helps connect families with biological fathers and siblings, the New York Post reports.

Wendy Kramer, a mother to a sperm-donor child, started the online registry when her son began asking questions about his father. She said one donor in the Boston area has been traced to 72 kids.

She added that the registry has found 92 groups of 10 or more offspring, and 336 groups that have up to nine siblings. There's no limit on how many banks a donor can sell his sperm to and about 21 per cent of donor fathers have given to more than one, according to Mrs Kramer.

Albert Anouna, director of Biogenetics and Sperm Bank of New York, cryo clinics should destroy a donor's sperm after it has produced about ten live births. Birth numbers are self-reported by pregnant mothers, which he admits is an incomplete and inconsistent system.

Compounding the problem, donors are screened so that the most fertile get selected, because high sperm count is most likely to produce a pregnancy. High-performers who rack up many pregnancies are among the most popular donors selected by women.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/jR4Kqm

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

JoEllen Marsh spoke on ‘This Morning’ about her search for her father, a Sperm Donor

Twenty-year-old JoEllen Marsh was desperate to find her real father - a sperm donor. Little did she know when she set out on her quest that she'd also find 14 siblings fathered by Donor 150.
This extraordinary story has been made into new documentary Donor Unknown: Adventures in the Sperm Trade, and JoEllen is tells her story today about her fascinating discovery.

View the clip on 'This Morning' at www.thismorning.itv.com

The film Donor Unknown (cert 12A) is in cinemas early June, and will be screening in London, Glasgow, York, Bath, Oxford, Uckfield, Bradford and other towns across the UK.

Below is a list of screenings:

Friday June 3rd – PREMIERE – Apollo Piccadilly Circus, London at 6.45pm
Sunday June 5th - Gate Cinema, Notting Hill at 8.45pm
Tuesday June 7th - Apollo, Stroud at 8.30pm
Thursday June 9th - Glasgow Film Theatre as part of the Glasgow Science Festival at 6pm
Monday June 13th - The Phoenix, Finchley at 9pm
Tuesday June 14th - City Screen Picturehouse, York at 8.30pm
Wednesday June 15th - The Little Theatre Cinema, Bath at 6.30pm
Thursday June 16th – Phoenix Picturehouse, Oxford at 6.30pm
Sunday June 19th – The Picture House, Uckfield, 6pm and 8pm
Monday June 20th – Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton at 9pm
Wednesday June 22nd - Apollo, Torbay at 8.30pm
Thursday June 23rd – The Lexi Cinema, Kensal Rise at 6.30pm
Sunday June 26th - Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge at 4pm
Tuesday September 13th – British Science Festival, Bradford at 6pm


For more information about bookings visit www.donorunknown.com/uk-screenings

Read more about known donor conception at www.prideangel.com

tO read more go to

Woman goes to court to try and find her sperm donor's identity

A WOMAN conceived with the help of a sperm donor has taken a rare legal step to find out the identity of her biological father.
In a case that could affect thousands of donor-conceived families, Kimberley Springfield has asked a tribunal to overturn a bureaucratic decision that no action be taken to help identify the donor.

Her case comes as state and federal parliamentary inquiries due to report in the coming months consider donor conception and the rights of donor-conceived people to gain access to identifying information about their donors.

In submissions to both inquiries, Ms Springfield, 26, whose sister and at least four half siblings were conceived with her biological father's sperm, said she had suffered mentally, emotionally and physically from being denied knowledge about her family since she found out how she was conceived five years ago.

''I cannot fathom going through life never knowing where I have come from, my ancestry and my identity,'' Ms Springfield wrote. ''Every day I look at the faces of people around me and wonder: 'Could you be my father, my half sister, my half brother, my grandparent?'''

Ms Springfield was born before 1988, when sperm donors were completely anonymous. The identity of her donor is not recorded on the voluntary register of donors kept by the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

In Victoria, where Ms Springfield lives, those born between 1988 and 1997 have the right to access information about the donor if the donor agrees and only those born after 1997 have an absolute right to information.

Ms Springfield has asked the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to review the registrar's decision to deny her recent request that they seek the donor's identity from a medical institution and then write to the donor advocating the purpose and benefit of the voluntary register.

Peter Hanks, QC, for Ms Springfield, said the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act stated that ''the registrar may from time to time publicise the establishment and purpose of the voluntary register''. He argued this provision needed to be read together with a part of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Act dealing with the registrar's general functions.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/fgfL1x

Secret sperm donor donated sperm to his aunt and lesbian partner

A 15-year old boy secretly donated sperm to his aunt's lesbian partner so they could have children, his parents have discovered.
Charlie Lowden's parents Charles and Lynn are now coming to terms with the fact that the two children they considered to be their nephew and niece are actually their biological grandchildren.

They only discovered the family secret last December after Charlie, 20, died following a routine hernia operation.

After his death it emerged that several years previously he offered to donate sperm - unofficially - to his aunt Sarah Ashman, now 40, who is his mother's younger sister, and her partner Claire, now 30.

He knew they had wanted to have a baby, but Claire had suffered a miscarriage after becoming pregnant by another donor. Claire Ashman, a beautician from Choppington in Northumberland, subsequently gave birth to a boy, Carlton, now five.

Three years later they asked him to donate again, which he did, resulting in Sarah, who is now two.

The lesbian couple agreed to keep Charlie's true identity as the father under wraps. However, his death forced his aunt to confess the situation to her sister.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/h1qhNo

Sperm donors deserve more praise

A FRIEND recently revealed he had fathered a baby. No cigars though, just a carefully worded statement. "I have been told there is a pregnancy, but I don't know the mother, or when the baby will be born."
Say again? My friend explained that after 20 years of thinking about it, he had become a sperm donor. Which made the whole thing a bit tricky. Is a pregnancy something a donor also gets to celebrate?

My friend saw my dilemma and said he wasn't going to have children of his own and at least now he would have the satisfaction of knowing he had helped a family achieve its dream.

That is a generosity of spirit I hadn't considered before. We often sing the praises of organ donors, but who gives thanks to the sperm donors?

My friend said the journey wasn't easy and there were the doubts: "Am I up to the job fertility-wise? Will I feel too old if a child seeks contact 20 years later? What would my partner and family think about it?"

He admitted it was a tug on the heartstrings knowing that he would never be more than a donor number and that another man would be the father of any children.

But just the same, he gained a lot of satisfaction from the thought that any parent who went down the track of IVF was "OK in my books".

"Full marks to any man who consents to accept donor sperm as part of his efforts to become a father. And praise to his partner for helping him through such a time," he said.

I was so touched by his motivation and how deeply he had considered all the factors and yet I think most of us take the whole process of sperm donation for something to even snigger about, to our shame. The fact is many IVF clinics desperately need more donors.

You need to be altruistic -- as there is no payment -- and committed, because new laws now require a lot more effort. And, disappointingly, all accessing IVF must now have criminal record checks and counselling sessions


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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.

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Jennifer Aniston says 'women no longer need a man in order to have a child.'

In her latest film, The Switch, the 41-year-old actress plays a single woman who uses a sperm donor to get pregnant.
"Women are realising it more and more - knowing that they don't have to settle with a man just to have that child," Aniston said.

"Times have changed and what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents' days when you can't have children because you have waited too long.

"The point of the movie is: what is it that defines a family? It isn't necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children and a dog named Spot.

"Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere. That is what I love about this movie. It is saying it is not the traditional sort of stereotype of what we have been taught as a society of what family is."

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Jennifer Aniston: searches for a sperm donor in her new movie 'The Switch'

Jennifer Aniston plays a wannabe mother who undergoes artificial insemination, using what she believes is the perfect donor's sperm, to get pregnant.
And when it comes to off screen it seems Aniston would allow life to imitate art, insisting that if she ever went that route she too would definitely 'wanna know the guy'.

Aniston revealed her preference during an appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, in Los Angeles.

In The Switch, Aniston plays singleton Kassie who is desperate to have a baby. Ignoring the objections of her best friend, Wally (played by Jason Bateman) she decides to go it alone.

Kassie chooses a handsome and charming donor but before she can complete the act of insemination, unbeknown to her, a drunk Wally swaps the sperm for his own.

The switch isn’t discovered until seven years later when he finally meets her precocious, though slightly neurotic, son.

Aniston has talked about her desire to be a mother one day, telling Entertainment Weekly 'I'm on the verge of it in some way...it's something I long for.'

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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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