Tag Archives: sperm donation

France Looks To Legalise Assisted Reproduction For Lesbians

A French government minister has promised lesbian couples and single women access to sperm donor services.

The move would mark a significant extension of gay rights in France, where violent protests preceded the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in 2013.

Marlene Schiappa is the French Minister for Gender Equality said

It was a campaign promise. It will be honoured.”

She said a bill would likely pass through parliament in 2018.

Current legislation means that gay women with sufficient funds travel abroad for artificial insemination while other women without the financial means cannot.

Earlier this year, a national ethics committee said it would welcome the option for female couples and single women to use ‘medically assisted procreation.’

Emmanuel Macron, president since May, had set such a recommendation as a prerequisite to any legislative action.

Schiappa said that was unjust.

Current French law means lesbians wishing to use artificial insemination have to travel abroad.

This would be a landmark move towards equality in France.

Sadly, same-sex marriage has been legal in the country since 2013.

 

Woman Wins Supreme Court Batlle After Ex Girlfriend Takes Their Daughter

A woman battling with her ex -partner for the return of her IVF-born daughter from Pakistan has been given hope by a Supreme Court ruling.

The girl’s biological mother and sole legal parent took her out of the UK in 2014 to Pakistan, three years after their relationship down.

The second woman then launched legal action and asked judges to order the youngster’s return to the UK.

Her efforts to force her former partner to bring the girl back to the UK had been blocked by the High Court and Court of Appeal.

A High Court judge and Court of Appeal judges concluded they did not have the jurisdiction to make such an order because the girl was not habitually resident in the UK when legal proceedings were launched.

However, Supreme Court justices have now overturned those rulings – deciding she had been resident and allowing the woman’s appeal.

The case will now return to the High Court where a judge will make decisions on what happens next.

Lawyers say the Supreme Court ruling will have implications in a number of areas.

Five Supreme Court justices had analysed evidence at a hearing in London in December.

A lawyer representing the second woman said a judge in England could now consider what was in the child’s best interests.

Maria Wright, who works for Freemans Solicitors, said:

“(She) feared the consequence of the High Court and Court of Appeal’s decisions was that (the child) would lose her relationship with her parent entirely The consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision is that the English court can properly consider what is in (the child’s) best interests and, if appropriate, order contact or (the child’s) return to England.

Further, the Supreme Court has brought welcome clarity to the law regarding a child’s habitual residence.”

The five Supreme Court justices, who ruled that the child could not be identified, allowed the second woman’s appeal by a three-two majority.

And the second woman said she was “relieved”.

In a statement released through Freemans Solicitors, she said:

“I am very relieved that the Supreme Court has accepted that my daughter has the right to have her future considered by a court in England,” “It has been a very long process to get to this result, and I am delighted that someone will now be able to look at what is actually in (the child’s) best interests.”

She added:

“I very much hope that (the child) and I will now be able to see each other again.”

Lawyers had told judges that the second woman would have been unable to persuade a court in Pakistan to consider the case “because of the strength of there of negative attitudes towards that sort of adult relationship”.

Judges heard that the second woman was a British woman of Indian ethnicity – and the girl’s biological mother a British woman of Pakistani ethnicity.

Unmarried Lesbian Has Her Appeal For Parental Custody Rejected By US Supreme Court

Days after a US Judge ruled in favour in a custody battle between married lesbian couple, the US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a woman who says Florida’s same-sex marriage ban deprived her as parental rights.

A lower court in Florida had ruled that Penny Willis had no parental right to the child conceived by a previous female partner.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the lower ruling stands.

Willis had been in a relationship with Anne Marie Mobley for 11-years, but the couple never married.

After they got together they decided to raise a child.

Using donor sperm bought over the internet, Mobley gave birth to their child, but a year later the pair split up.

Despite the lower court having thrown out the case, Willis claims that her constitutional rights have been violated.

In her case she noted the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalising same-sex marriage across all 50 US states.

 

Our Sperm Donor Is Getting Cold Feet | We Answer Your Questions

We aim to get to the heart of your sex and relationship problems, so if you need advice, please contact us.

Q: Our sperm donor is getting cold feet

Dear KitschMix, my fiancée and I are in the need of a bit of advice.

Nearly 2 years ago we asked a friend to be our sperm donor. He seemed genuinely interested in helping us achieve our dreams of becoming parents. He understood and was happy with the fact that he will not have parental rights etc (as he never wants his own children). He pretty much said he’d do it, but wants to get legal advice first. We understand his wishes and have cooperated as much as we can to get the legal advice but after 18 months he still hasn’t done it. When we contact him to find out what’s happening he still says he’s interested in doing it.

However, lately our attempts to contact him have failed. And when we do hear back from him he doesn’t seem as interested to help.

What would you suggest we do? We are tempted to try and find someone else, but we don’t want him to feel like we put all the pressure on him for nothing (I don’t feel it was a lot of pressure as we often go months without contacting him, but he may think it is). He got our hopes up by saying he’d be happy to do it once he’s seen a lawyer, and he was everything we wanted in a donor.
We want to have children as soon as possible and were hoping that by asking almost 2 years ago we would be parents by now.

Also, is it bad when I get jealous and upset when I see or hear people around me (especially people I know) that are pregnant and get pregnant without even trying? I’m not normally a jealous person so I hate this feeling but I can’t help feeling this way.

A: Hello Reader! I can definitely understand the frustration you’re feeling right now. While I don’t have kids of my own, I tend to be pretty bothered when someone says they’re going to do something, and then they just don’t do it. And rightly so! You have every right to be upset about this situation.

However, you need to determine what’s happening in your situation. He doesn’t want kids of his own, he spoke to his lawyer and still is interested… But he doesn’t seem interested. There are a million possibilities why he may have cold feet – have you seen the episode of The L Word where Bette and Tina are trying to find a sperm donor? (It’s the pilot episode, so if it’s been awhile since you watched Season 1, it could be a good idea to rewatch it.) Their “sperm donor party” shows a million different reasons why someone might not want to be a donor – and even if he said he did in the past, it’s entirely possible that he’s thought the scenario over in his head and decided it no longer works for him, but he’s unsure of how to break the news to you.

No matter how slighted you may feel by this change in plans, it’s important that you realize the only thing he’s actually done wrong is the lack of communication. Him changing his mind, although frustrating, is entirely understandable – after all, contributing to a human life is a huge undertaking even if he washes his hands of the whole thing immediately after conception.

Another possibility may be that he’s with someone now who doesn’t approve of the situation, or doesn’t know about it – so he no longer wants to follow through (or he’s afraid of his own partner finding out about it). Spoiler alert, an unwilling partner-of-the-donor comes up in The L Word, too.

It’s easy to write this stuff off as fiction, but I actually had a situation like that come up. A few years back, I began the search for a donor for the woman I was with at the time. We weren’t ready yet, but we were getting our options penned out ahead of time. Well, fast forward to a year after choosing one of my best friends, and he has a new wife – who forbid him from donating so we could have a baby. He didn’t want kids, but she did – and she didn’t want him giving a child to someone else before he gave one to her.

(In my situation, his wife actually broke up our friendship together eventually. I wasn’t really in a position to prevent it, and I hope that doesn’t happen with you and your friend, but it’s important to know that it can happen.)

My guess is that if he has already gotten cold feet, he will understand that it’s not you who unnecessarily put pressure. After all, you put the pressure with the intention of him following through – and if you determine that it truly is him trying to back out gracefully, he will be relieved if you give him the opportunity.

However, there’s another side of the coin, as well. Is it possible that you’re just not on the same page as far as the scheduling goes? He may have initially agreed to it thinking it was a point far out in the future – and now your pressure is making him feel as if he’s rushed to do it now. You must consider the possibility that he is still willing – just not quite ready yet. Keep in mind that the receiver of a gift is rarely the one who chooses when it’s delivered.

For your final question – you have every right to be jealous. You’ve been patiently waiting for someone else to get their end of the deal in order, and still you have no baby! It’s ok to be sad, it’s ok to be hurt, and it’s ok to be frustrated. What’s not ok is if you use that pain and jealousy to make you negative. That means that this is one of those conversations that should stick to you and your partner, and not the moms and dads you’re jealous of. Be happy, and share in their happiness – your baby will come exactly when it’s meant to.

 

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In “Seeking Dolly Parton” Two Women Ask an Ex-Boyfriend to Help Get Pregnant

The most famous film (and perhaps one of the only ones) about lesbians and sperm donors is The Kids Are All Right, the Oscar-nominated film starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple whose children go looking for their donor. In that film, Moore’s character cheats on her wife and sleeps with the sperm donor, making the film incredibly divisive amongst gay and bisexual women.

Seeking Dolly Parton, is only marginally better in terms of how divisive it may be. The film, which gets its name from the type of rose rather than the famed country singer, features queer couple Celina and Charlie who make the decision to have a child together after two years of dating.

Seeking Dolly Parton 05

While Charlie is unsure about the whole baby-having idea, the two ask their gay male friend Jon to be a donor but after he backs out they turn to Josh, who is Celina’s ex-boyfriend and the man she was in a relationship with before she began dating Charlie.

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Seeking Dolly Parton 03

If that sounds like a bit of a mess already then consider this: Josh is also still in love with Celina and sees his status as sperm donor as his way to win his ex-girlfriend back.

While his flirting is sure to grate, this is where Seeking Dolly Parton and The Kids Are All Right differ greatly; Celina and Josh don’t sleep together (despite his best efforts) as she puts her foot down and makes him know that her and Charlie’s relationship is the real deal. She also points out that he wouldn’t be trying it on if Charlie was a man.

Seeking Dolly Parton 04

That’s certainly a positive takeaway and a nice fork from the usual trope-y path and Seeking Dolly Parton does do Charlie and Celina’s relationship justice in many ways (many critics have called the pairing believable, romantic, and cute), but queer female viewers may take issue with the Josh focus that the film gradually begins to take.

In the latter section of the film, Seeking Dolly Parton becomes as much about Josh’s place in the story as much as it is Charlie and Celina’s. That could be a dealbreaker but at least all three characters are fleshed out enough for it to work well.

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Seeking Dolly Parton will be available from Vimeo On Demand from September 25, 2015.

Things you should Know about Sperm Banks

Sperm banking is a huge industry that has been around for decades but one that is relatively loosely regulated in the U.S.

Here are some things to know about the industry:

How many Babies come from donated sperm?

While anecdotal evidence might suggest that the use of sperm donors to conceive a baby is rising because of improvements in technology and its popularity among lesbian couples and single women, there is no way to know for sure. No federal agency or professional organisation tracks the number of children born from sperm donations.

The last time a count was done was in 1988 by the now-defunct U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, said Rene Almeling, a sociology professor at Yale University who has done extensive research on sperm and egg donation.

Also read: Woman Creates A Sex Toy To Aid Artificial Insemination Between Lesbian Couples

What they tell you

Sperm banks generally tell clients about a donor’s family medical history; physical traits like hair color, eye color, height and blood type; some educational and professional information; and some personal social preferences.

Additional information that might also be available for some donors, possibly for an extra fee, includes childhood and adult photos, audio interviews and other personality attributes.

Much of the information comes from surveys that the donors fill out.

What’s the cost

It depends on the sperm bank and various options the recipient can choose from. Georgia-based Xytex Corp., one of the bigger players in the industry, provides free profiles with basic information including medical history, genetic testing results, physical traits, and limited educational and professional background. There is a tiered pricing structure to see more extensive information.

A single unit of sperm from Xytex costs between $395 and $795, depending on a variety of factors, including the method of insemination the recipient plans to use and whether the recipient wants her child to have access to the donor’s identity once the child turns 18.

sperm-donation

Donor anonymity

Sperm donors are generally anonymous when the recipient buys the sperm and is inseminated. Some sperm banks, including Xytex, allow a donor’s identity to be disclosed with the mother’s permission once the child turns 18. The child could then use the information to seek out a relationship with the biological father, or simply contact the donor with questions about family history.

Donor requirements

Donors are screened over a period of four to six weeks. The screening generally includes a blood test, a genetic test, a physical and collecting sperm samples. Donors are asked to provide three generations of family medical history, including mental health, as well as some social background and preferences.

Because of the expense of screening, donors are frequently asked to donate once a week for at least a year. To keep up their sperm count, they’re advised not to engage in any sexual activity for at least 48 hours prior to donating, to try to limit alcohol consumption and stress, and to exercise regularly and eat healthily. If the sperm count is too low, the sperm bank will throw out the sample and the donor won’t be paid.