sperm donation

[anneme]

a v good friend of mine who is single is desperate for a child. She has decided that, if she goes ahead with it, she will need to do it via sperm donation.
I know there are all kinds of arguments (see recent news stories!) about the rights and wrongs of this and raising children as a single parents etc etc which I do not want to get into but I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice that I could pass on to her. She thinks it would be better to ask a friend to donate because there would then be a personal link but the other side of the argument would be that to go with a sperm donor could be less emotionally confusing for her.
This is not something that people tend to want to discuss so I thought this might be a good forum.
thank you

bump

My sister had a child by anonymous sperm donor. I think she had to pay for it (although i may be wrong) and she had to have a lot of counselling first so that she understood all the issues and implications and was emotionally prepared for it. She was able to select the donor based on a variety of factors. She now has a lovely 13 year old daughter who is very well adjusted and quite cool about not having a dad (my sister doesn't have a partner). The law I think changed recently so that children conceived by ASD can contact their fathers when they are adults. I don't know how my niece feels about this but I'm sure my sister will discuss it with her.

I think if I were going to do it, I'd go for an anonymous donor, as with a friend, you never quite know how their feelings might change over the years. But that's my view.

I haven't done this as a single woman, only as a couple with 100% male factor infertility. I would say that one of the biggest problems that she could run into is the dreadful shortage of donors in the UK. Both sperm and egg donors now have to agree to be contacted by any offspring resulting from the donation (when the children turn 18). And it has put a lot of people off. The advantage that she would have over those of us in couples is that most couples want a donor with similar physical characteristics to the man, which obviously wouldn't apply.
If she uses a friend, that would obviously throw up a lot of legal issues that I'm just not qualified to comment on. But she (and the donor) would need to be very clear about how much he would be involved etc. very early on. And even then, feelings can change once the baby is born.
There are lots of people who have done this though. Amazon is a really good place to search for books. The more she can read up about it the better.

She will almost certainly have to have private treatment and pay for the sperm, by the way. Compared to the cost of raising a child, it pales into insignificance though!