Africa, Sperm Donation, Surrogacy

Nigeria – ‘I Can’t Allow My Wife Take Sperm From Another Man — Husband Says As Lawyer Warns Of Legal Implication Of Surrogacy

Source The Whistler

An Abuja-based legal practitioner, Barrister Tunde Falola, has warned those engaging in the act of surrogacy in Nigeria to desist from such practice because it runs contrary to Nigerian laws.

Surrogacy is the practice where a woman (a surrogate) carries a child for another person (the commissioning or intending parents) based on a prior arrangement that the child would be handed over to the commissioning parent at birth.

The practice in most cases is sought for when pregnancy is medically impossible, pregnancy risks are dangerous for the intended mother, or when a single man or woman wishes to have a child.

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Australia, Embryo, Singapore, Sperm Donation, Surrogacy

Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) 2022 Congress: Frozen embryos, sperm and eggs will be big travellers in post COVID-19 cross border reproductive care

Yahoo!

SINGAPORE, May 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have major impacts on the nature of cross border reproductive care where infertile couples and individuals in the past travelled extensively abroad to access medically assisted conception.

The 2022 Congress of the Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) heard that as the pandemic unfolded, access to fertility care in other countries was severely curtailed because of border closures, the adverse effects of COVID-19 during pregnancy, and vaccine hesitancy issues.

Australian fertility specialist, Dr Clare Boothroyd, said today restrictions on commercial surrogacy emerged as coronavirus and its variants spread throughout the world and there was a sudden shortage of donated sperm, eggs and embryos.

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Canada, Sperm Donation

Canada – Ottawa proposes partial easing of sperm donation, new surrogacy regulations

Source The Globe and Mail

The Trudeau government proposed new regulations Friday that would lift a ban on men who have sex with other men from donating their sperm anonymously to Canadians struggling with infertility.

The proposed changes, up for review through public consultations, could also see surrogate mothers reimbursed for more of the expenses they face in trying to help people build their families, including loss of income.

Those new regulations under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, if enacted, will help protect the health and safety of women and children, says Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor.

“They will also offer couples dealing with infertility, single people, same-sex couples and other members of the LGBTQ2 community flexibility in building their families,” the minister said in a statement.

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Egg Donation, Sperm Donation, Student

Students turn to sperm and egg donation to make money

Source State Press

College students are always looking for creative ways to make money to pay their bills and other necessary expenses, and some students have used sperm and egg donation to make money while also helping out families in need.

Making a deposit at the sperm bank
Conner Jensen, a junior studying intermedia art, has produced three children and has contributed to six current pregnancies from donating his sperm to Phoenix Sperm Bank.

Jensen was 18 when he first started and has now been a donor for two years. Jensen says his friends would always joke about donating their sperm in high school.

“It’s actually really difficult to get in the program because you have to have a high sperm count. One day, I was like ‘I’ll just give it a shot!’” Jensen said.

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Sperm Donation

Why is the process of buying sperm so terrible?

Source Fast Company

Nothing really prepares you for purchasing sperm. It’s not as simple as a Tinder-meets-Netflix swipe-through of super attractive aspiring rocket scientists and brain surgeons. The information comes to you via your fertility doctor as a printed list of URLs for around 10 different cryobanks (facilities that store sperm). You have no idea what differentiates these facilities, which may be the best fit for you, and why. The cryobanks’ websites appear similar to dating websites. But instead of adult pictures, and without warning, you are suddenly faced with photos of the donors as children, which makes things weirder, infinitely more awkward, and at times downright creepy.

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Sperm Donation

America’s hottest export? Sperm

Source The Guardian

Ella Rasmussen’s doctors started to prod her about children when she turned 30. She was single, suffered from endometriosis, and contemplated a hysterectomy. After several years, the nudges took hold. Because she wasn’t a good candidate to freeze only her eggs, she was advised to undergo IVF and freeze fertilized embryos.

In 2016 Rasmussen, then living in Queensland in Australia, decided to take the plunge. A friend offered his services, but she worried that if she knew the father, but he wasn’t involved, she or her child could feel hurt. If she wanted sperm, she’d have to buy it.

For Rasmussen, a striking brunette of multi-ethnic background, looks or an attraction to the donor weren’t a factor. Neither was race; it would be difficult to match what she knew of her own ethnic background anyway. She wanted someone who might fit her family personality-wise. That included a love of music and a sense of humor.
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Sperm Donation

The Overlooked Emotions of Sperm Donation

Source The Atlantic

Sperm donation offers a tidy solution to an aggravating problem: When a person or a couple wants a baby and needs a different ingredient than what they’ve currently got to make one, a man with viable sperm swoops in to help.

The process can look like a seamless way to create a family, and for many, it is. That’s a big reason why it has gained so much popularity in the past half century, a period when it’s gone from being a niche practice to being responsible for tens of thousands of births. In 2010, the most recent year for which good data is available, some 30,000 to 60,000 babies born in the United States were conceived through sperm donation, out of approximately 4 million American babies born that year.

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Anonymous, Ireland, Sperm Donation

Ireland – Anonymous sperm and eggs to be banned by autumn

Source Irish Times

The Irish Fertility Society, which represents clinics, consultants and scientists working in the sector, has expressed strong opposition to both pieces of legislation.

Anonymous sperm and egg donation in fertility treatment is set to be banned by next autumn on foot of revised legislation due to be introduced shortly, Minister for Health Simon Harris has confirmed.

Provision for a ban and for the creation of a register to allow donor-conceived children obtain personal family information once they turn 18 was contained in 2015 Children and Family Relationships Act. But the minister at the time did not commence enactment of parts two and three of the legislation which would have brought the measures into force immediately.

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Anonymity, Ireland, Sperm Donation

Ireland – Sperm donors will not be able to remain anonymous

Source Independent News

People who donate sperm, eggs or an embryo for use by infertile couples will no longer be able to remain anonymous and will have to provide personal information for a register.

The disclosure will be enforced under the Children and Family Relationships Act, and will mean children conceived in this way will know both their parents.

The plan is to set up a register with all the individual donor’s details, according to the Department of Health.
Some fertility clinics here objected to the provision, saying it would lead to a fall-off in donors.

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Egg Donation, Latvia, Sperm Donation

Latvian parliament decides to allow childless women donate their eggs

Share Xinhuanet

RIGA, June 21 (Xinhua) — After a long and heated debate on Thursday, Latvian lawmakers decided that women who have not borne children should also be allowed to donate their eggs to other women for fertility treatment, rejecting a proposal to ban such a donation.

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Egg Donation, Sperm Donation

Sperm, egg donation facing decreased anonymity due to DNA testing, social media

Source ABC 11

When the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) was founded in 2000, Wendy Kramer and her son Ryan were simply hoping to make Ryan available to connect with his biological dad who donated the sperm used to conceive him. Fast forward to 2018, Ryan did connect with his biological father as well as 10 biological siblings (and counting) and the DSR has done the same for 15,557 others.

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Sperm Donation

How does sperm donation in the UK work, do you get paid and how to find your nearest sperm bank?

Source The Sun

Sperm donation is essential for fertility treatment such as intrauterine insemination or IVF.

It can help couples struggling to have kids of their own or single women who want to start a family.

If you donate your sperm through a fertility clinic or a sperm bank, you won’t have any responsibilities or rights towards a child conceived using your semen.

However, as of April 2005, children conceived through sperm donation do have the right to ask for certain information about their donor once they reach the age of 16.

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Egg Donation, frozen embryos, Malta, Sperm Donation, Surrogacy

Malta – INDEPTH: Surrogacy can lead children into an identity crisis

Source Indepth

Dr MIRIAM SCIBERRAS, Chairperson Life Network Foundation Malta, speaks to Rachel Attard about the amendments to the much-disputed IVF law. While she says that regulating the law to help couples while also safeguarding the human embryo is a good thing, she argues that the amendments being proposed are introducing new concepts which are not in principle part of Maltese society

In principle, are you against IVF?

In 2012, I was part of a group named Professionals Against Embryo Freezing that was involved in the amendment of the law regulating IVF, in the belief that helping couples while also safeguarding the human embryo is a good thing.

Are we not in the same situation now with the government proposing further regulations?

The amendments proposed are introducing new concepts which are not in principle part of Maltese society. The law in essence makes the human embryo an object by using terms like adopting and freezing. Although embryo freezing is already part of the law, it states that the case needs to be an exceptional one. If a woman cannot attend the session of implantation due to, for example, illness or an accident, the embryo is frozen until the woman has recovered. Now it will become a choice to freeze them.

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Sperm Bank, Sperm Donation

Europe – Halt population slump by easing access to donor sperm, EU urged

Source The Guardian

World’s biggest sperm bank calls for fewer regulations to revive Europe’s childbirth rates

The world’s biggest sperm bank has warned the EU that access to donor sperm must be improved to reinvigorate childbirth rates amid the continent’s slump in population growth.

Sperm banks across Europe have closed after the enforcement of new EU regulations on staffing levels, executives at the Danish firm Cryos International told European commission officials in a private meeting.

Some member states’ insistence on making the identity of donors traceable was cited as a further obstacle to access, released minutes reveal. The executives also raised the 2011 decision by the Danish courts to treat sperm as a “good” liable to VAT. Donor sperm is subject to as much as 25% VAT in some EU countries.

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Donor Eggs, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Letter: Salonen uses public voice to spread misinformation

Source Inforum

I was dismayed to read the rather closed-minded offering published March 17 from Ms. Salonen, who is the mother of five children. While I am not in a position, as a physician, to routinely determine what is right, and what is wrong, I am in a position as a reproductive endocrinologist to know that it is quite dangerous to lump things as important as creating families together.

To paint with a broad brush that it is not OK to use “third party reproduction” is hurtful and inappropriate. Does she disprove of helping single women who have a strong support network in place conceive using donor sperm? Should donor sperm be used in a heterosexual couple who choose this means of having a family?

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donor sperm, intended parents, Parental rights, Same Sex, Sperm Donation

The Continuing Legal Evolution of the Concepts of ‘Parent’ and ‘Child’

Source: New York Law Journal

Alton L. Abramowitz

On Jan. 25, 2018, the Appellate Division, Third Department, issued a significant decision in Matter of Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ, 2018 NY Slip Op 00495. Underlying the court’s determination is the conundrum which it describes as follows: “Application of existing case law involving different-gender spouses, addressing whether the presumption [of legitimacy] has been rebutted, to a child born to a same-gender married couple is inherently problematic, as it is not currently scientifically possible for same-gender couples to produce a child that is biologically ‘the product of the marriage’ [citations omitted].”

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Law, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Judge Dismisses Third Sperm Bank Lawsuit Over Dodgy Donor

Source: Daily Report powered By Law.com

For the third time, a federal judge in Atlanta has tossed out claims against a Georgia sperm bank involving a donor it touted as a highly educated and multitalented but who was really a convicted felon with a history of mental illness.

The order issued Thursday by Northern District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. closely mirrors two he issued last year, finding that Xytex Cryo International clients who bore children sired by the donor have no basis under Georgia law to sue for “wrongful birth.”

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DNA Test, Donor Eggs, Donor Embryos, Egg Donor, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Personal genetic testing and the implications for the donor conception community

Source: BioNews

The dramatic growth of the databases is raising ethical challenges for the donor conception community. It has been recognised for some time that donor anonymity can no longer be guaranteed but this hypothetical threat is now very much a reality.

Donor conceived individuals are using genetic genealogy databases to match with genetic relatives and identify their biological parents, and there have been many success stories. There are now also a number of cases where people have accidentally discovered that they were donor conceived after taking a commercial DNA test. Some families who have used the services of a fertility clinic have learnt through DNA testing that the clinic owner substituted his own sperm for that of the father (see BioNews 931).

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Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

A fertility doctor’s secret, a special kinship decades later

Source: AP News

This photo provided by Matt White shows him with Jacoba Ballard, left, and Julie Harmon in New York before a television interview. The three one-time strangers have also reached out to 21 other men and women, all in their 30s, who’ve been linked through DNA tests as their half-siblings, which they claim is evidence that former fertility doctor Donald Cline is likely thei biological father. (Courtesy Matt White via AP)

ZIONSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Matt White remembers that day in September 2016 when a mystery began to unravel that would change his life.

It started when White read a news report that Dr. Donald Cline, a retired Indianapolis fertility specialist, faced charges for lying when he denied he’d inseminated unwitting patients with his own sperm decades earlier. He searched out Cline’s address online, recognizing it as the location of his mother’s former doctor. Then he Googled the doctor’s name. When a photo popped up, he was stunned: He looked like Cline.

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Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Sonoma teen Tyler Sievers discovers 20 half-siblings

Source:  Sonoma Index-Tribune

Tyler and his half sister Heather. This is only the second time they’ve met. (Photo by Robbi Pengelly/Index-Tribune)

Growing up as an only child, Tyler Sievers was comfortable with solitude.

His mothers expected their son to occupy himself – and so Sievers became a creative and resourceful boy. For 18 years he lived happily as a party of one.

And then he sent his DNA to Ancestry.com, and got 20 half-siblings back.

He was conceived in March of 1999, using donated sperm banked at Pacific Reproductive Services in San Francisco. The donor was selected by his mothers from hundreds of options, using data that profiled each man’s broad particulars. Age, height, weight, eye-color. Medical history, family history, hobbies and skills. Sievers’ moms made their choice and his biological mother was inseminated. On Dec. 23 of 1999, Tyler Hammill Sievers was born.

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