To think that if you’re prepared to travel to an IVF clinic outside the UK in a country where fertility treatment is not as tightly regulated as here then you need to accept the risks?

Well, sorry, but what are you saying? I sound a bit frustrated but I did ask you to clarify whether or not you were making that comparison with respect to the categories described in the previous post, precisely because I thought it would be very odd to say that donor-conceived children were worse off than the children of drug addicts.

Not to be rude - genuinely - but did you perhaps misunderstand me, or lose track of which post you were replying to?

Obviously, like all parents, I think it's interesting and useful to consider how we could be better. But I think that is very different from breast-beating about things we can't sensibly change. Yes, it'd be lovely if we all raised our children in happy, wealthy, well-educated two-parent households: but how is that useful to a single parent now? Yes, you might regret choosing an anonymous donor, but honestly, if at the time you went into that situation thinking you'd done your best, then I don't think you should beat yourself up about it endlessly. And I think you should expect that your medical care would be what you paid for.

I didn’t say that. But I do think it’s interesting and useful to consider how we could be better parents.. I’ve made myself think about it a lot, even though it’s not been that comfortable. I think/hope it makes me a better parent. But as they say, you do you.

Absolutely, my original point was that anyone who thinks they are donating anonymously in this day and age is naive in the extreme. I'm sure the vast majority of registered donors will be ready for future contacts and will be happy to have at least minimal contact but those who donated past thinking it was something that could never catch up with them have potentially been caught out by DNA developments and could be tracked down at any point which is something they couldn't have anticipated back in the day.

Well, you made the comparison, not me!

I think it is frankly ridiculous to suggest that children born with a donor parent - not even necessarily an unknown donor - might be as disadvantaged as children born to parents who abuse drugs.

We could spend all day concocting the perfect parenting scenario and beating ourselves up for not being those parents, but it's a daft thing to do.

Of course. But knowing the name of your father is a lot better than knowing (or he was supposed to be) eg a Danish man with blue eyes who enjoys football which is what anon conceived children get.

A lot can happen in 18 years and while donors have agreed to potential contact in theory there nothing to compell them to respond to contact.

Who knows? You’re not comparing like with like. All things being equal, children do better with two parents who are well educated and earning well. If you take away any of that or add in other deficits - an unknown genetic parent would be one - then you’re reducing the likelihood of your child doing well.

My child is an adult and is doing pretty well. Would they be doing better if they had blood relatives on both sides? Probably. Would I do it again knowing what I know now? Probably not.

That’s incorrect. Under post 2005 HFEA rules, donors accept that any children born can contact them. They have to provide verifiable contact details. We also have details of all siblings.

@HoppingPavlova’s scenario is not what has happened in the U.K. All prior to the 2005 law change have sealed records so parents can only be accessed via DNA databases.

More psychological risks to children born from donors than from the categories listed in the previous post?

I doubt that.

I do feel sorry for them, but when the price is too good to be true -it probably is.

Don’t think health risks are huge for children born via IVF, but certain risks are slightly higher.

Obviously, there are more psychological risks to children born from donors

What risk to my child, born through IVF, is greater than the risk to a child born to a couple with health issues/alcohol or drug dependency/mental health problems/inter-family marriage and the list goes on.

So, tell me, explicitly, why my perfectly healthy child was more at risk than those children born to those above.

Or whilst we are ‘banning’ things, let’s ban all women in the above categories (by sterilisation) from ever having children. That ok?

This was an important point for us swerving anonymous without id release

The reality is that there's a good chance they will traceable and when and if our kids trace them I would want the person they find to have been prepared for that possibility

This was an important point for us swerving anonymous without id release

The reality is that there's a good chance they will traceable and when and if our kids trace them I would want the person they find to have been prepared for that possibility

This was an important point for us swerving anonymous without id release

The reality is that there's a good chance they will traceable and when and if our kids trace them I would want the person they find to have been prepared for that possibility

True, but neither does having the donors identity.

@GriseldaandMike doesn’t necessarily mean you can contact them though

Online DNA data bases make anonymity a moot point. People can now trace their relatives via any extended family that have put their DNA out there and they can usually make at least an education guess at who their genetic parent is assuming they get some sort of familial link.

I also think it's wrong for children not to be able to access identifying information about their biological parents

I am so torn about this. I absolutely agree it’s in the kids best interest. However, decades ago, when I was at uni, so many male peers donated, they n the basis of anonymity. They would often do a donation a week to fund Friday night drinks, and be generous about it, given us girls did not have the ability to make the same ‘drinking money’. I’m in Australia, so likely different rules to UK, but here one State ruled at at a certain point that there would be no historical anonymity, which I believe is wrong given that is what these guys were promised at the time when they donated. If they believed there would be none, they would not have donated. I’m in a different state, so my uni peers anonymity is preserved, there was no backdating here, just open details from a certain date which allowed donate to make a choice, which I believe is morally correct.

So, totally agree that children should be able to access details from donations made under conditions that anonymity would not exist, but disagree about access for historical donations made on the condition of anonymity.

No, I don't think so? She has a donor conceived child, I think?

I think the poster is questioning the moral aspect of using doner conception.

Let's face it human error is/ can be an issue. It's difficult to proof for certain if the error was intentional or not.

So that means they - and their children - deserve this?

I cannot get my head around that. I also think it's wrong for children not to be able to access identifying information about their biological parents. But to me, it seems like a huge leap to go from that to thinking 'oh well, this family deserved whatever was coming to them'.

Yes. They’ve deliberately created a child using an anonymous donor which is morally and ethically wrong in my view