tto think it should be illegal to travel abroad for anonymous egg/sperm donation?

I don’t think people who perpetrate FGM are setting out to ‘harm’ the girl. It’s a ‘tradition’ they woefully, wrongly, believe is in her best interests.

I am totally against anonymous gamete donation as I think it's dreadful for the child and just about the parents.

However, we do not want to get ourselves into the situation I read about in Israel where mothers who had babies abroad at an advanced age were asked to prove they were genetically related to the child because Jewishness (and therefore I think Israeli citizenship) is through the mother's line.

Your comparison makes no sense. FGM directly harms a child and is illegal. Creating a baby through donated eggs or sperms doesn't of it itself cause harm, though a child/ adult so conceived may feel bereft later in life by not knowing anything about their biological parent/s. The intent is not to harm a child however, but to create one. It's not illegal to create a child yet withhold or not know the identity of a parent.

As for travelling abroad to do either thing - it's not readily identifiable that either activity is likely to take place since people are usually free to travel at will to many places and could easily lie if asked the purpose of their journey.

Your thread sounds like it should be about whether anonymous donation is ethical, which is a possibly valid discussion. It doesn't need to refer to FGM at all.

If the parents are responsible and let the child know that they are born from donor sperm/eggs then the children will know to register on the donor conceived person website so they can avoid this.

Equally if everyone had the option to find their genetic history they would know they didn’t share a donor with their girlfriend!

I don’t think it is always cruel to keep parentage anonymous. In cases of rape for example. Especially gang rape or rape in war zones. There are thousands of young adults in Rwanda right now who’d rather not know they were conceived when their mum was a teenager tied to a tree naked and raped by dozens of men for months, and that is how she got pregnant with them.

And there are female captives right now in Gaza or Israeli jails being raped- you think that these women would be cruel to keep from any child how they were conceived?

I am more worried by the idea that in one city a man can donate sperm to multiple women whose children will grow up not knowing who they are related to in a small area. Lots of room for children to end up in difficult situations when it comes to marriage/breeding for my liking.

Had I been in a position where I needed sperm, I'd rather it was from miles away than round the corner for this reason.

Your vitriol is misdirected. I don’t think many people travel abroad for donation because it’s anonymous. They do it because it’s substantially cheaper. I’ve spent years on infertility forums having gone through IVF and can tell you a LOT of people struggle with the moral dilemma of anonymous versus affordability. Fertility services are extremely expensive in this country. Unless you have experienced the pain of infertility yourself, please don’t judge others doing whatever they can to alleviate that pain.

Except the government can’t. They have a law saying they are allowed to, but they can’t really enforce it without an informant telling them well in advance. There is also a law banning FGM in the U.K., but it still happens in the U.K.
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/female-genital-mutilation/april-2021---march-2022

your whole premise is jacked.

Thanks. Such is life. It was sad, but life went on.

That’s what this boils down to: the wishes of the adult wanting to have a child, versus the wishes of the child wanting to know its genetic heritage.

Some would want to replace “wishes” with “needs”: that’s subjective.

The UK has come down on the side of the wishes of the child. Personally, I don’t think it’s that clear cut. It’s easy to take the moral high-ground when you know people can access the low-ground fairly readily.

Even on this thread, there are non-genetically related children who disagree, and non-genetically related parents who agree/disagree (and I for one am mindful of this in my answers in this thread.)

One size doesn’t fit all, in this scenario, imo. Yes of course I wish nobody suffered from infertility, everyone knew and had a healthy genetic heritage etc. But the world isn’t like that. Outlaw this and a woman who really wants a sperm donor can just….walk out the door/go onto the internet and find one. This can’t be policed, and transgressions can’t be punished.

It’s not fair. Lots of things aren’t.

Ex police here. Lots of intelligence work goes on around FGM. Stemming from reports from family, school, SS, acquaintances, parents of school friends etc etc. Lots of arrests made every year. Nowhere near enough prosecutions but the work is being done.

Genuinely sorry your IVF failed. That's really tough.

I have experience of the issue from multiple angles.

I went out of my way to use a known donor even though it would have been easier/cheaper not to, and I am completely open to being contacted by the child born from my egg donation- if he chooses to. If not I’m 100% ok with that too.

I don’t think of him as my child in any way, but I am the gateway for him to find out half his genetic history if he wants that- as is his right.

Is it awful that I suspect it was an attempt to reduced the rapidly rising cost of fertility treatment needing to be provided on the NHS. Lots of other IVF barriers, age and weight being the most common not being discussed here.
I just don't feel knowing Ur genetic history is a deal breaker to existing. Sometimes life's not ideal and you make the best of what you can.

That’s the position I’m in- I have a child from a known sperm donor, and I am a known egg donor- my ivf failed but the woman I donated to had a son.

I was happy for her and sad for me. I know that he might contact me in the future, that’s fine- if he wants to know his genetic history then I am happy to enable that, if he is happy without then that’s great for him.

I would feel utterly irresponsible if I actively chose to create a person and then abdicated all responsibility.

@ibelieveshereallyistgedevil, I'm not saying that. You are being very judgemental about something I'm guessing you have no direct experience of. See the very eloquent reply from @Sycamor. I too have endured years of painful (emotionally, physically and financially) fertility treatment. DE IVF in Spain was my last option. There are organisations who provide information and support on how to provide information to DE conceived children as they grow up - we will follow this advice. And, as @Sycamor says, I'm guessing my child will be happy he has been born.

What is most important is what is best for the child and I say that as an adopted person

Interested without judgement to know if you agree with egg sharing IVF. Where a woman who needs eggs funds someone's IVF cycle who can't afford it and the eggs produced are spilt. That's a common method of having a known donor. But if the woman who paid gets pregnant and the donor doesn't, then gets contacted 18yrs later... That would be hard I think.

So it’s not that you actively wanted to avoid it, you just weren’t bothered and felt it wasn’t really important?

Ahh, but we didn't have that option. Known donors are a very rare (and amazing )person. To go through egg donation is a huge gift to an infertile couple , but the fact you may get a "knock on the door" in 18yrs, understandably puts most off. We were told the chances of finding a known donor were incredibly slim. My UK based consultant advised us to go abroad. My fertility journey was 7 ivfs and multiple miscarriages.
My children know, have always known and are comfortable with the concept of being donor conceived from a clinic abroad. I explain I didn't have eggs and a really kind lady gave me some with which to start a family. They ask questions all the time. They exist to be able to ask those questions. Id say that was quite important to them too.

@Sycamorthere is a reason why the law was changed so you can no longer have anonymous donors in this country. Do you not think that reason is important?

I think perhaps this would have gone better if you hadn't mentioned FGM but instead framed it as 'if the government can make it illegal to go abroad for something that is illegal here why aren't they doing it with anonymous donor conception.' FGM is one example of this, so is sex with a minor.

There is a growing movement of donor conceived people who are unhappy that they can't easily trace their genetic parent(s) although DNA is changing this Adults conceived by donors left behind by fertility industry, experts warn | King's College London (kcl.ac.uk)

@Sycamor I’m sure you love your children and have a happy family- but what advantage was it to the children not to have the opportunity to trace their genetic parent if they want to?

Some people don’t want to and that’s great for them- but you can’t know before they are born how they will feel about it when they are older.

They should have the option, made as simple for them as reasonably possible, then they can make their own decision.

The point I was making was refuting the “the outcomes are the same” argument and the “a low bar has already been set, so all are equally entitled to follow” argument.

I wasn’t talking about the law in that case.

Here’s another example. Just because one parent accidentally burns their child with an iron because they surprised them ironing, doesn’t make it okay for another parent to deliberately burn their child to get them to do what they want.

They both have the same outcome of a child with a burn by an iron, but one was an accident and the other was a deliberate act for selfish reasons. One of those things wouldn’t lead to the child being removed from their parent’s care, the other would.

@ibelieveshereallyistgedevil I am his biological parent. It's not that I don't want him to be able to trace his GENETIC parent, but it is anonymous in Spain. Annonymoity is not why I picked Spain. I picked Spain because the success rates are much better and it is cheaper than the UK. I had multiple rounds of own egg IVF in the UK and the clinics here are much inferior to Spanish clinics.