Buying sperm...

[Ferrousfumerate1]

Asking for a (girl)friend who wants to conceive with her girlfriend...can you just buy sperm online (through a regulated body) and use it yourself without having a clinic involved in the process? To be crass, can she turkey baste with sperm bought at a reasonable cost without the incredible fees of IVF clinic intervention?

Sorry, badly worded, on the phone

The only sperm bank I'm aware of that will deliver for home use is Cryos, in Denmark. (They ship internationally.) Costs vary depending on how many straws you order, of what level of oomph (not the technical term!) and what anonymity and profile. (So, a couple of straws of low-motility, anonymous, basic profile sperm would cost a lot less than say half a dozen high-motility, ID release sperm from a donor with detailed info and baby pictures and whatnot). Most of my Cryos attempts cost about £1k - £1.5k, so although it's convenient it's not actually much cheaper than getting IUI done via a clinic. I would definitely recommend at least getting some initial tests done in a clinic (eg do I ovulate, are my tubes clear) before spending that money, because it would suck to spend money on sperm and later find out it had been wasted. It may also be worth just going for IUI in a clinic anyway - the odds are better, you get monitoring to ensure its timed correctly, and so on.

The other option people sometimes use is finding an altruistic donor via eg Pride Angel. However, the legal situation is a bit more complicated than getting sperm from a sperm bank; and some people report bad experiences with 'donors' who turn out to have something else in mind.

Thanks very much. That's really helpful.