Potential families who require donor sperm to achieve their dream of having a baby are everywhere. They could be your neighbours, colleagues, siblings, friends or even your favourite celebrities.
They might be single individuals, LGBTI+ couples or heterosexual couples who require donor sperm due to medical (poor sperm quality) or social (neither partner have sperm) reasons. Without it, their chances of a baby are often slim to none.
What everyone in need should know is that access to safe donor sperm is available through City Fertility, reducing the risk factors involved.
You often hear alarming stories through Australian forums of people donating without any safeguards. However, the message needs to be loud and clear that there are safe ways to secure donor sperm in Australia.
City Fertility operates Sperm Donors Australia (SDA) to recruit and select its clinic-recruited sperm donors. All SDA donors go through a lengthy and thorough process to ensure the safety and quality of the sperm.
The benefits of using a clinic-recruited sperm donor
Using a clinic-recruited sperm donor recruited through City Fertility or having your chosen known donor donate through the clinic has several benefits including:
- thorough medical screenings to exclude transmittable or most common genetic diseases;
- knowing that the donor has undertaken counselling and understands the implications and legalities of being a donor, including no legal rights to the child;
- a three-month quarantine period for the sperm donation which is followed by further medical screening of the donor;
- a limit to the number of sperm donations and families the donor is allowed to create;
- the option for patients to select a sperm donor with particular characteristics that are important to them.
Choosing a clinic-recruited donor is a very safe option, but if you already have a sperm donor in mind, then making sure they donate to you through an accredited fertility clinic is also a must.
The risks of using a non-clinic recruited or screened donor
There are many areas for potential issues including:
- the risk of sexually transmittable diseases
- risk of genetic diseases as it is unlikely they will have had extended genetic carrier screening
- the absence of counselling and hence not understanding that the child conceived through their donation can contact them when they reach 18 years old or are of sufficient maturity
- being unaware of the legal implications of being seen as the father, which some recipients may prefer, but others maybe not
- the donor may have already created numerous families with their sperm
- the recipient could be getting a semen sample that has poor sperm morphology (quality) and count (quantity) as they may not have had a semen assessment, reducing the chances of success
City Fertility currently has over 80 clinic-recruited sperm donors available through its Addam App. The recently launched Addam App delivers real-time access to this database of donors. For more information the Addam App website or download it via the App Store or Google Play.
