Jacob is a young medicine student, Thomas is a teacher and a family father, and Henrik works as a butcher. We have asked the men about what motivated them to become donors and their thoughts about being donors. I realised that being a sperm donor was one of the things where I could actually make a difference.
I could actually help childless couples, so they could experience having children. I just see it as a bonus. I think that must be the best starting point. I think more about the fact that there are children who come into the world with parents who get the child they wanted above everything else.
Bringing a child into the world must be an amazing thing. Occasionally, tales with that message pop up in advice columns and on support-network forums , but in general they are not exactly saturating the culture.
Additionally, one children's book, The Pea That Was Me: A Sperm Donation Story , by the psychotherapist Kimberly Kluger-Bell, has been lauded by parents and psychologists for how it deals with the emotional side of sperm donation.
Kluger-Bell has since released two additional versions of the sperm-donation story, in which the baby pea is born to a pair of pea-moms and to a lady pea raising her baby pea on her own by choice. For many reasons, the law has not caught up with the practice of sperm donation. In the United States, the laws governing it vary by state, and as Susan Crockin, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law and a co-author of Legal Conceptions: The Evolving Law and Policy of Assisted Reproductive Technologies , says, a majority of states have only baseline provisions to govern sperm-donation practices.
Most adhere to the Uniform Parentage Act, which establishes that when a man donates sperm to a consenting married couple, the donor is not a parent; paternity rights belong to the husband of the impregnated woman. In , in light of the legalization of same-sex marriage, two of the states that have adopted the Uniform Parentage Act enacted an update making the spouse of the sperm recipient, regardless of gender, a legal co-parent as long as they consent to the procedure.
The formation of any lay consensus about sperm-donation best practices also trails behind the uptake of the practice—even though experts have a somewhat clear understanding of how people should go about it. The closest thing to a regulatory body overseeing sperm donation throughout the U. The ASRM has a set of recommendations that physicians, fertility specialists, and sperm banks are encouraged to follow.
The ASRM also recommends setting a limit of 25 births per donor within a population of ,, in order to lower the risk of accidental incestuous relations. In many other countries, there are laws putting caps on the number of births per single donor within populations of a certain size, but the U. Andrea Braverman, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology as well as psychiatry and human behavior at Thomas Jefferson University, often counsels couples before and sometimes after the sperm donation process.
Our group is at 70 known children already, and getting new matches every month. One half-brother, Jordy Willekens, who lives in The Hague, matched online with four half-sisters. The group keeps a list of potential siblings to refer to before going on a date.
Some sperm donors, like Karbaat, donate surreptitiously and illegally, leaving their identities and the scale of their activity to be discovered many years later by their offspring, often as a shock. Other donors are openly profligate. He told The New York Times that he had 76 biological children. Simon Watson, a donor in the United Kingdom who regularly updates his Facebook site with photos of his offspring, told the BBC in that he had at least children around the world.
Meijer appears to have adopted both approaches, registering at more clinics than is recommended while also donating privately. In , after confronting Meijer, van Ewijk notified the Dutch Donor Child Foundation that he had many more children than he had initially revealed, and that he had been donating sperm at several clinics. The group already knew of him, from other mothers with the same complaint.
The foundation soon determined that Meijer had privately fathered at least 80 children in the Netherlands, in addition to the that the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport had identified through 11 clinics in the country.
Because of Dutch privacy laws, the government has not publicly named Meijer as the donor in question. However, in an email to The Times, a spokesman for the health ministry confirmed his identity. Nevertheless, he donated at more sperm banks resulting in babies. Van Ewijk subsequently became friends with two other Dutch mothers who had used Meijer as a donor.
The two worked together in the same preschool and realised they shared the same donor after noticing that their children, both 9, looked alike. One mother expressed concern that some of these half-siblings could accidentally meet and have a relationship. There are more brothers and sisters in Almere, and they can fall in love.
They wanted to know if there was any legal action they could take against him. Bueter said there was very little they could do, as no laws applied. Something has to be done to stop him. The only thing these women can do is go to the public and hope everyone in the world knows not to use this guy as a sperm donor.
According to her research, he has been travelling throughout Europe, Scandinavia and Ukraine for several years, donating sperm since at various clinics as well as privately on the internet.
I must say this was one of the best experiences I have with clinics! In addition, Meijer has registered with at least one international sperm bank, Cryos, which does not set an overall limit on how many children a donor may generate, although it claims to adhere to the limits set by each country to which it donates.
Still, with each bank exporting to scores of countries, a single donor could potentially produce hundreds or even thousands of children around the world. Moreover, unlike sperm banks in the Netherlands, which prohibit anonymous donation, international sperm banks commonly register donors under an alias or a number. Also, they rely on clients to voluntarily report the births of their children when keeping track of sperm donor offspring, and that tally is not always accurate.
And others know someone with fertility problems so understand what a difference they can make. For just a small commitment in your everyday life you could help many people realise their dreams.
Until now, demand for donor sperm has been greater than the supply. Although more men are becoming donors, we still need more people to sign up. If you wish to join them, give us a call on ext 1, or fill out our online form below.
Under British law, those conceived using donor sperm can access information about their sperm donor for medical, social and emotional reasons, if they request it. People receiving donor sperm are allowed access to non-identifying information only. Anyone conceived with donor sperm has the right to request non-identifying information from the age of 16 and identifying information from the age of
0コメント