Thursday, December 11, 2014

Yet more on the sperm donation shortage in Australia

It always amazes me the levels of denial our government has in what it's doing:

Victoria clinic sperm demand prompts calls to use overseas donations

My favourite part of that article is:

"... but available donor sperm plummeted from 104 to eight over the same period (or one year)"

Meanwhile, some states (Victoria and Queensland), in an effort to overcome the shortages, have doubled the maximum number of children a single donor can 'father' from five to ten.

I'm still waiting for the "man up" campaign that's coming (pun intended), but I really do think that this whole situation is by design.  The government doesn't really want a whole heap of single mothers on benefits, but they also don't want to be seen to be discriminating against women who are incapable of maintaining a relationship long enough to have children unable to find "Mr Right" in time, so they not only give single women subsidized access IVF and sperm donation, but also put a heavy disincentive for men to donate by giving into a small minority of children born from donations access to their donor's details.

  • Single women think they've won, because they've technically got access to IVF and sperm donors.
  • Children born of donations think they've won because future children will have access to donor information.
  • The retroactive removal of anonymity has caused donor numbers to plummet, thereby meaning fewer single women will actually get access to the service.

The real losers in the above deal are the poor donors whose anonymity was retroactively removed and couples who would have been looking for donors.

One does wonder how many children born of sperm donation of intact families are looking for their sperm donor, although I highly doubt we'll ever see that little statistic.



Woman looking for father of unborn child

A woman is looking for a regular, large amount of child support to find the father of her unborn baby from a one night stand.

She claims that it's so that the boy can grow up knowing his father, but one does wonder if the fact that the father is (or claimed to be) a Fly-In-Fly-Out worker who is probably earning a lot of money has anything to do with it.

I always find it amazing how a 25 year old could know she has poly-cystic ovaries AND that it would mean she may not be able to get pregnant again.

One can only feel sorry for the child in this situation.