Sperm donation, or the lack thereof. So now there is a campaign to get men to donate sperm because it is in short supply. And now we connect the dots between this and the removal of anonymity for sperm donors a few years back.
But some experts are concerned that the removal of anonymity will deter donors from coming forward in the future.
And here we are a decade later badgering men to donate because there is a shortage. Well, blow me down, I didn’t see that one coming.
It’s one thing as a young man to anonymously donate to help infertile couples conceive. But knowing that in eighteen years time there could be a knock on the door and there stands a teenager saying “hello Daddy” does tend to concentrate the mind. I certainly wouldn’t donate under those circumstances and it seems that I am not alone. So campaign by all means, but this is an unintended consequence playing out. An entirely predictable one.
At least unnatural families will find it hard to get started…
It ain’t so much the unwanted knock on the door as the fact that the Child Support Agency or whatever bastard horror they have morphed into of late are quite willing to use sperm donor records to track down the biological father of any sproglet thus conceived and forcibly coerce them into paying for the upkeep of said unwanted bastard.
For this reason men are now most unwilling to donate sperm, since the legal immunity to such shenanigans has been removed. For some reason the phrase “As you sow, so shall you reap” springs to mind…
I recall many other posts on this subject, all of which drew the same conclusion. Including one of yours from 2005.
Why is it the people responsible for these decisions cannot see the bleedin’ obvious? If us dumb bloggers can why not them? It’s not complicated.
Good God, that was a blast from the past.
There is one good thing. Seems the greatest number of sperm donors were people in the medical profession. And this is in part the reason why.
The overriding principle of the HFEA is all donations should never be for monetary gain. It is they who set the payment for semen donors at £35 per donation. This is supposed to cover out of pocket expenses for the registration process, the interviews, the tests, taking time from work to attend a clinic, to then jack-off in the clinic before finding their own way home! Donors can do this until they have fathered 10 children, however they can no longer do so with complete anonymity.
Another is they’re hugely selective about whom they’ll allow to donate sperm. They have a lengthy questionnaire that includes lifestyle choices and – as many recipients are fearsomely choosy – you can forget it if you’re a red head, or bald, smoke, wear glasses, did drugs, have a history of drink and so on. And you don’t receive a thing for the initial visit, just £35 for your donation.
But the greatest single reason why the additional huge demand is same sex couples. They used to persuade a friend (preferably gay) to provide the stuff, but – as Dan H pointed out – the CSA knocked that on the head. And same sex couple marriages are notoriously fragile, so yes the naive donor does get nailed into paying for sprogg’s upkeep.
Perhaps you’re unaware that couples (either of) who smoke are being denied fertility treatment until such time as they quit, while lesbians and women up to age 42 who don’t smoke go on to the list without a qualm.
When I was a medical student, the donors were wankers in more than the literal sense. Insofaras character is heritable, their contribution to the gene pool and the happiness of humankind is questionable. Without anonymity, they would not have volunteered and spread their narcissicism as widely.
We don’t sperm donors. There’s too many bloody people already…
I agree too many people and too many who already don’t know their paternity, because women today can’t keep their legs shut for 5 minutes and think having babies is a free meal ticket, and boys today think it’s their right to have sex without protection, complete lack of any accountability all around.
No one in their right mind would donate sperm.
We have enough fucked up families in this country without more.