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LGBTQ Parents - Lesbian Moms & Gay Dads

Receiving: The recipient parent perspective – London 24th January

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JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor, Anatomy Building, Bloomsbury Campus, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
24 January 2013 – 6.30pm-8.30pm

The Progress Educational Trust project ‘When It Takes More Than Two’, supported by the Wellcome Trust, seeks to clarify public and professional understanding of donor conception by focusing on the different parties involved. This second event in the project will focus on the perspective of the recipient of donated sperm or eggs, and is free to attend, but advance booking is required. If you email Sandy Starr at sstarr@progress.org.uk then he will add you to the attendee list.

• What traits do gamete recipients prefer in a donor, and what are the scientific facts about the heritability of such traits? Does preferring a tall donor (height is a widely preferred donor characteristic) or deprecating a red-haired donor (the world’s largest sperm bank closed its doors to red-haired sperm donors in 2011 due to a reported lack of demand) actually give recipients any assurance as to the height and hair colour of their children?

• What of more complex characteristics, such as intelligence and personality? The extent (if any) to which such qualities are heritable is a highly contentious, and yet these same qualities frequently form the basis on which donors are marketed. Donor profiles provided by clinics also include such details as pierced ears, choice of car and favourite pet – can a choice of donor made on such grounds be meaningful, and if so how?

• To what extent is it necessary or desirable to seek a ‘matching’ donor, whose looks resemble those of the recipient couple (at a generic level such as skin colour)? Is this important to avoid inviting questions about a child’s provenance, or should we aspire to put such thinking behind us? Are such questions rendered moot by the limited availability of sperm and egg donors in the UK, which can make matching difficult or impossible?

• Following donor conception, what are the challenges (if any) involved in raising donor-conceived children? Is it always incumbent upon parents to inform their children of the fact that they are donor conceived, in line with official support for the principle of openness? In what circumstances might parents inform family, friends, colleagues or teachers of the fact that their children are donor-conceived? And what if this is disclosed inadvertently?

• What are the specific challenges (if any) faced by non-traditional families, which involve same-sex couples and/or co-parenting arrangements, when it comes to donor conception? What is the impact on such families of being less readily accommodated by established social conventions and institutions? And is this changing?

Speakers include:
• Dr Nicky Hudson
Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University’s School of Applied Social Sciences
• Olivia Montuschi
Cofounder and Practice Consultant at the Donor Conception Network
• Sue Moore
Senior Fertility Counsellor at the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust’s Assisted Conception Unit
• Professor Marcus Pembrey
Founding Chair of Trustees at PET and Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Genetics at University College London’s Institute of Child Health
• Caroline Spencer
Co-Active Coach and Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist at Successfully Single

Chair:
• Juliet Tizzard
Head of Policy and Communications at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and former Director of PET

Article: 22nd January 2012 www.progress.org.uk

Pride Angel part of the National Donation Strategy Group

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The UK’s regulator of fertility treatment, the HFEA, undertook a wide ranging public consultation last year, which looked at the barriers and motivations to egg and sperm donation in the UK. The review uncovered numerous barriers to donation, some which could be removed through regulation and others which could not be as easily tackled.
It is these issues which sit outside of traditional regulation that have led the Authority to set up a national strategy group to find new ways of tackling obstacles to sperm and egg donation.

The HFEA aims were to use their unique position as the national regulator to bring together a wide range of experts to come up with new approaches to raising awareness of donation and improving the care of donors in the UK.

About the group
The group will operate over an initial two year period, after which time the terms of the group will be reviewed.

The three core objectives of the group will be to:
1. increase awareness of donation and the information that donors receive
2. improve the ‘customer service’ that donors receive when they contact clinics
3. help donors provide better information about themselves for future families

The HFEA aims to bring together a group of people with diverse experiences, including non-licensed donation services, people with experience of blood, organ or tissue donation, as well as those with experience of sperm and egg donation. This includes people with interest in the welfare of donors, patients and donor-conceived people.

We are pleased to announce that Erika co-founder of Pride Angel has successfully achieved a place on the group. Erika says ‘We are delighted to be part of these consultations whereby we can make a real difference to the future of sperm and egg donation and the effects upon donors, future parents and ultimately the donor conceived children’.

We would really like to hear from any donors, future parents or donor conceived to pass on their views to the donation strategy group. Please get in touch with any ideas you may have at info@prideangel.com or contact us.

Click here to read the members of the group

Article: 2nd September 2012 Pride Angel

New Zealand & Gamete Donation – New Rules Open the Doors But Require Need

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This week the New Zealand government is set to approve new guidelines that will allow infertile couples to use both donor eggs and donor sperm if they need to.

The Government Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology has spent the past 18 months consulting with experts and the public in order to draft new guidelines for assisted reproductive technology in New Zealand.

“The new guidelines will allow donated sperm to be used to fertilise donated eggs in a laboratory before the resulting embryos are implanted in a third party.” Up until now, couples that needed to use both donated eggs and sperm had to go abroad for treatment.

“People taking the treatment have to undergo an ethical approval process to make sure they are following the guidelines believed to include things such as not using donated sperm and eggs from people who are closely related.”

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10692144

Friday Legal Update – Canada & The Issues Surrounding Donor Anonymity

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Gamete Donation & Anonymity – The debate on donor anonymity is raging on here in the United States; however, in Canada, they are already dealing with it through litigation that is winding its way through the courts as follows:

Olivia Pratten filed a lawsuit in British Columbia seeking to create a system to keep the donors records indefinitely and to allow children conceived with donor sperm to have the ability to find out the donor’s medical history and information about their identity. This landmark legal case would effectively put an end to sperm donor anonymity.

“Ms. Pratten, a Toronto-based journalist who works for The Canadian Press, launched the lawsuit after fighting for more than a decade to obtain records about her conception, arguing such information is vital to her health and to ease the psychological stress of not knowing who her biological father is.”

The doctor who treated Ms. Pratten’s mother insists that that donor’s records have been destroyed because doctors are not required to keep patient records for more than 6 years.

The British Columbia government lawyer is arguing that the case should be thrown out since the donor’s records have been destroyed she no longer has an interest in bringing this case to assist other donor children. The government lawyer, Ms. Leah Greathead, “pointed to the current system in B.C., which wasn’t in place when Ms. Pratten was born, that allows women considering sperm donation to opt for a donor who has agreed to be identified once the child becomes an adult. She also noted the extensive work done at the federal level to legislate assisted reproduction, including a royal commission in the 1990s and the introduction of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act in 2004. That legislation prevents donors’ health records from being destroyed, but still allows donors to remain anonymous.”

Ms. Pratten argues that the current provisions are not enough and that they do not provide any protection to children conceived by donor sperm prior to the law taking effect.

The case is scheduled for October and if the government is unsuccessful in getting the case thrown out they will most likely ask the court to postpone their decision until after the Supreme Court of Canada rules on the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, because some of the same issues could be decided in that case.

What are your thoughts? How should we proceed or rectify these issues?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/reject-suit-to-end-anonymity-of-sperm-donors-bc-urges/article1733841/