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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Danish, Denmark, Sperm Bank, UK

UK – The Brexit crisis nobody is talking about? Our need for Danish sperm

Source Wired

The UK is heavily reliant on foreign sperm donors – and Denmark is responsible for more than its fair share. Then along came Brexit…

Brexit keeps surprising us. The latest industry that might be under threat if the UK leaves the EU without a deal is allegedly that of sperm donation.
Specifically, Danish sperm donation.
The Department of Health and Social Care revealed last week that 3,000 sperm samples were imported from Denmark to the UK in the last year, and nightmare scenarios were quick to flourish. The risk of Danish sperm being held up at British borders because of unclear custom arrangements seems to have never been so real.

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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

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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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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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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Australia, Sperm Donor, Sperm Donor Registry

Man shocked to discover he has kids after donating sperm for ‘research’ 30 years ago

Source: news.com.au

An example of one of the advertisements looking for donors. Picture: VARTASource:Supplied

MEN who donated sperm in Victoria in the 1960s and 1970s for “research purposes” may not have been aware that their donation was being used for conception, according to a new report.

Research by the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA), set to be released later today, reveals meticulous records kept by donor clinics and approximately 40 interviews with clinicians, sperm donors and recipient parents who were involved in the early days of the fertility industry.

The report states that men who donated in the early years of the program may not have been aware that their semen was being used for conception purposes.

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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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Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

I Found Out I Had 17 Siblings When I Was 39. Here’s What That’s Really Like

Source: Mind Body Green

The past year of my life has felt like some combination of an Oprah special and a binge-worthy Netflix series. I was born and raised as a (very proud) only child. My parents divorced when I was young, and although both remarried, neither ever had any other children of their own. My dad was married a total of five times, so I’ve had plenty of step-siblings—but not any blood relations as far as I knew.

Fast-forward to May of 2017, and in one click, my whole identity changed. After sending in DNA samples to learn more about my ancestry, I finally got results— and one click later I opened a Pandora’s box of siblings and went from an only child to a 39-year-old woman who had 17 siblings I didn’t know about.

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Infertility, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Daughter of sperm donor tracks down 40 siblings born to same man

Source:  Metro

Kianni Arroyo, who has made contact with 40 other people born to the same sperm donor father as her (Picture: Kianni Arroyo)

A woman whose father was a sperm donor has tracked down 40 siblings born to the same man, and is sharing her encounters with them online.

Kianni Arroyo, from Orlando, Fl, first began the project five years ago, when she was a high school sophomore.

She has since discovered four sets of twins, and siblings as far afield as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Kianni, 21, is the oldest known sibling born to the donor, with the youngest a baby who is just five months old

Kianni, who works as a waitress, told Metro US: ‘I was raised just by my mom, and she’s always been honest with me about the fact that I was born to a sperm donor.

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Egg Donation, IVF, Same Sex, Shared motherhood, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor, UK

UK – Shared motherhood: The amazing way lesbian couples are having babies

Source: Cosmopolitan

It allows women to share the motherhood experience from the stage of conception.

Getty images

More and more lesbian couples are having babies thanks to a super cool fertility treatment known as ‘shared motherhood’. What’s cool about it? Both women are involved in the process, as one’s eggs are used, and the other carries the child. I know, science is awesome.

New research carried out by The London Women’s Clinic, has revealed just how successful and efficient shared motherhood fertility treatment is proving to be. So here’s everything you need to know about the process. Plus, a success story from a couple who’ve become parents this way.

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India, IVF, Semen, Sperm Donor, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

India – Using late son’s preserved semen, couple gets twin grandkids through IVF, surrogacy

Source: Nyooz

Pune: The parents of a 27-year-old man, who died of brain tumour two years ago, used their unmarried son’s cryopreserved semen extracted long before his death to have grandchildren. Fusing the semen with eggs of a matching donor, doctors created embryos and transferred them into a surrogate mother’s womb.

The woman, who incidentally is the man’s aunt, delivered healthy twin baby boys two days ago. Experts, however, have raised questions about the ethics behind the procedure. The man was diagnosed with brain tumour in 2013 while pursuing higher education in Germany.

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Sperm Donor

A Georgia sperm bank, a troubled donor, and the secretive business of babymaking

Source: Atlanta Magazine

When customers of Xytex uncovered the truth about one of its sperm donors, the disclosure set off more than a dozen lawsuits—exposing an industry that can shatter lives while helping to create them

In first grade, when John drew a picture of his family, there was no dad because he knew his biological father was a sperm donor. His two mothers had always been open about that. In the drawing, his birth mother, Wendy Norman, bounces on a trampoline. Janet Norman, his other mom, grades papers inside. His older brother, Kevin, plays video games. John stands alone at the top of the stairs. About a year later, he would threaten to throw himself down them.

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IVF, Sperm Donor

UK – Single-mum gave birth to IVF baby conceived with sperm of a dead donor

Source:  Daily Record

Single-mum Kellie-Ann Fleming and daughter Haileigh, who was conceived through IVF (Image: Daily Record)

She will never know her dad but little Haileigh Fleming has brought incredible joy to her mum. The four-month-old is Kellie-Ann’s miracle, conceived through IVF with sperm from a dead donor. The teacher, who took out a bank loan to pay for the treatment, has no regrets after failing to find a partner. She said: “Haileigh has got a huge personality and it is as if she already knows just how special she is. “I turned 40 just before I had her so Haileigh is the best present I could have wished for. She is my wee star, my tiny miracle and my greatest achievement.

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Cancer, Infertility, Same Sex, Sperm Donation, Sperm Donor

Cancer patient outraged to discover he can only donate sperm to female partner (Video)

Source: Stuff NZ

A gay man suffering severe pain from cancer was mortified to discover he was only able to donate sperm to a female partner.

Logan Morton, 22, received the shock diagnosis he had acute myeloid leukemia in April last year, and after being warned the treatment could make him infertile, arranged to store healthy sperm through Fertility Associates.

Severely debilitated from the cancer, Morton asked a nurse to fill out the paperwork, and noticed afterwards that he was only given the option of donating his sperm to a female partner.

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