Certified Medical Magazine by WMA, ACSA, HON
Opinions on DIY sperm donation
23
0

Opinions on DIY sperm donation

  1. <span  class="bbp-author-name">Ann Tanner</span>
    Ann Tanner

    Hello! Nice to meet you all,

    We’re a lesbian couple from Cincinnati, OH. We’ve been together for 5 years (we started too young!) and now we’re getting married in a year. Next thing we’d like to do is having a child. We’d like to make it easy and quick, so we believe sperm donor conception is the best choice for us. We don’t mind choosing a stranger, in fact we’d like that our child gets to know his/her donor in the future, but we don’t want to carry it out through a sperm bank or private center. We just want to find a man who is keen to do it generously at home for us, just as simple as that. We’ve heard about “DIY donor insemination”, which we think is the option we’re looking for, so could you tell us what are the dos and don’ts of this process? I just wanna make sure no problem will be derived from the process. BTW, even though there wouldn’t be legal contracts, we’ll carry out a thorough interview previously. Thanks for letting us communicate with the world 😀

    Cheers,

    Ann Tanner

    10/05/2015 at 8:04 pm
    Reply
  2. Dear Ann Tanner,

    Choosing a friend as a sperm donor is a risky, difficult decision which is not advisable, mainly because sperm donors are not just about a pretty face but about a healthy man both physically and mentally. For this to be proved, sperm donors must pass a series of thorough assessments so that his health state is checked. If you choose a friend as your sperm donor, there is no legal contract, and therefore he does not have any legal obligation or right regarding the baby or the process.

    Formality and transparency are key concepts within this process and you should bear it in mind from now on. At the end, the process of sperm donation will be the same. But the advantages of carrying it out through a clinic or a sperm bank are that both you and the donor are required to sign a contract to continue with the process. There you both agree on different aspects of the process, being the parent custody one of them, which clearly states that the donor has no rights in respect of the donor-conceived individual.

    Conversely, if you choose the DIY option, you are risking the relationship between you and a friend, because further problems with the donor may arise in the future, especially when the baby is born, for instance. Thus, if you don’t want your sperm donor to have any parental right, my recommendation is that you formalize the process. Besides, the donor will provide his sperm through a licensed physician, which guarantees it is a healthy semen sample.

    Hope this helps

    10/06/2015 at 4:17 pm
    Reply
    • Hello girls, this forum is very interesting and I find it’s the perfect place for sharing a story I know with other women planning to do the same. Although I’ve no fertility problems or something like that, I’ve a friend who went through something like this some time ago. Let’s say her name was X and the name of the donor was Y. Well, he was a friend of her, a close friend indeed. They planned to keep it a secret, as any other person who meets someone one Saturday night. Okay, so they did the at-home artificial insemination and she got pregnant quickly. Then she had her baby and she invited him to see the baby, let’s name her Z. The problem is that Y fell in love with Z, and then the whole mess started. Y wanted to be her father and they started a complicated process which ended up so bad unluckily. Well, this is more or less the whole story. I wanted to share it so that you know what complications may happen if no legal contracts are signed. It is like hiring an employee illegally, would you accept it? I don’t think so… Think twice before doing it, at the end it will be the child who will suffer the most.

      10/07/2015 at 7:31 am
      Reply
Leave a reply