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

Thank you - I think it was Einstein who said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result doesn't work so we mixed it up a bit at the end.

I wish you all the luck in the world in your next round - I don't think people appreciate how tough it is with the injections and the waiting and the living in hope

Not sure - be honest, tell him how much he was wanted - got a few years to think about it yet!

It's worse than FGM. It lasts a lifetime. FGM can be surgically improved.

As I’ve said already on this thread though, if you are offering us either an egg or the money to use a known donor please feel free to have an opinion on what myself and others choose to do.

The cost of this is unaffordable and always will be for many people in the UK. I agree it’s the better option, for what it’s worth. But when you are both working well paid jobs and still can’t get near it in the time frame you would need in order to be young enough to transfer, it isn’t an option.

It’s not either or. You could use a donor that’s NOT anonymous.

My friend used a brilliant book series to help with this from Cryos International. I’m sure your boy will know how wanted he was. My first round of IVF failed in June, I’m gearing up for round 2. Nine is unimaginable and I’m sorry you had to go through that 🩷.

What will you do if he feels a deep need to know his genetic parent (s)?

This is the crux of the matter- different things are important to different people.

Some donor conceived people won’t care and they shouldn’t have genetic parents forced on them, and some will care and should have the option to contact their donor.

So donor conceived children should be anonymous and donors should be traceable.

This 100000%. I know what I’d prefer!

And yes, we will discuss it with him when the time is right

Haven't read the thread. All I know is we went abroad for our final throw at IVF after 9 failed attempts. We now have a beautiful little boy and I can't thank the sperm and egg donors enough. I'm sorry we will never know them but I totally respect their anonymity. So no, I can't agree.

The is true. And I think it’s time society had a proper, sensible discussion about all the ethical issues surrounding donor conception and surrogacy.

Currently we are allowing the scientific advances dictate how people are made, rather than following considered ethical principles.

This is assuming a picture perfect ideal though isn’t it?
A lot can happen in 18 years. The donor will likely have a wife and family that they possibly didn’t have at the time of donation, maybe even school age children, other things going on. There is much more to consider than the original donor child, it’s complex and can impact a lot of peoples lives. An automatic right to the donors name, dob, last known address isn’t necessarily going to result in any kind of relationship with them, much less being part of another, extended family.

💐 If it’s any consolation, I was an accident, my mum was going to have me aborted, my dad tried to dissuade her and her friend basically reassured her that she’d be alright, so here I am. She did have two abortions after me though, which a weird thought.

Excellent points! I can imagine any court case forcing an abortion would last well after the baby is born, so mandatory abortion would be right out. Confiscating the ‘illegally conceived’ baby and having them raised in state care would not be in the baby’s best interests.

I can’t see how this is ever going to be enforceable?

Which is an article focused on egg donation in the U.K., which is (of course) not anonymous...

Returning to the question of how this could ever be enforceable, assuming you were able to somehow identify that a family had gone overseas for donor treatment that you'd now made illegal, what would the remedy be? Mandatory abortion of any pregnancy conceived in this way? I can't see how that could possibly be considered ethical, and the potential for disastrous mistakes seems quite high even if you thought it was reasonable. Imprisonment of the parents? That would clearly be immensely traumatic and likely harmful to the donor conceived children involved. If your basic premise is that anonymous donor conception is harmful to the children involved, then you need to identify a remedy that doesn't harm them further if you want to make their conception illegal - because people absolutely do go ahead and do things even though the law says they can't.

I know what it feels like to be a mistake, for one of my earliest memories to be that my mother contemplated suicide when she found out she was having me. I hope you don;t know what it feels like to be in that situation.

But you are not in a situation where your parents worked hard to get you but you don't know your genetic history. So just like men can't know what it's like to be women, you don't know how you'd feel if you were in that situation.

Again we are all different, I haven't seen any of my cousins in years, I think I saw a couple of them about 12 years ago at a funeral. I have no contact with them, nothing in common with them, no desire to see them. I have lots of cousins, well I did but I suppose some of them could be dead.

We are all different and personally I resent that I was a mistake and knew that from an early age. To me knowing my parents worked so hard to get me and wanted me so much would outweigh genetic history.

Article about egg donation here. Personally I do not feel at all comfortable with young uni students being targeted as potential egg donors.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/fertility-clinics-using-social-media-persuade-young-women-sell-eggs-2217424

I think it would depend upon how much I resented having no access to my genetic history/family. In one case it was carelessness, the other was deliberateness. I think I would resent deliberateness much more than carelessness in that situation.

There’s something else important that I think is being missed here. It’s not just ‘genetic history’ which is being withheld.

I have noticed as I have got older that my own cousins have become more important to me. Having adult discussions about certain traits we have in common and so on, helping me to make more sense of myself and even to make more sense of my own children.

So the child is also being denied access to that entire family tree and all the living relatives in it, when they are denied that link. It’s not just genetic code or names on some certificates. It’s people - relatives.