Mainlanders drain sperm bank

**frostyboy** · 21st-December-2009

From The Mercury:

Mainlanders drain sperm bank

WOMEN from interstate have used up almost all of Tasmania's
donor sperm.

The state is down to its last four donors, and for the first time
in the program's 35-year history next month it will introduce a
waiting list for sperm.

Tas IVF director Dr Bill Watkins said fewer men donating sperm,
and more interstate women draining the state's dwindling store,
had caused the crisis.

"We [usually] treat about 30 women a year, and in the past couple of years about half have been from interstate," he said.

"Donor banks were drying up on the mainland, so they asked 'Can we come there?'

"We thought, 'Well, they have as much right to sperm as anyone'. Unfortunately that's meant our bank has whittled away much quicker than expected."

Dr Watkins is worried that unless more men donate sperm, women will run out of time to have a child before they reach the top of the waiting list.

"If someone comes along and is 38, they don't have a year to wait," he said.

"Time is something they just don't have."

Tas IVF inseminated about 50 women with sperm this year, resulting in 18 pregnancies.

Dr Watkins estimates about 60 per cent of the women who use the service are in heterosexual relationships, 30 per cent in lesbian relationships and about 10 per cent single.

"I have noticed an increase in women [aged] 35, 38, coming in and asking, 'What are my options if I don't meet Mr Right?'," he said.

Dr Watkins said sperm donors did not get paid any more, and that since 2000 have had to agree to be identifiable to offspring when the child reaches 18 years of age.

"Now people genuinely want to help people out, rather than wanting $40 to go to the pub," he said.

"They think, 'I've got sperm, I'm not using it, why not donate it'.

"Everyone has such busy lives. People think about it, but, like blood donors, they think, 'I should', but don't get around to it."

Dr Watkins said donors could only provide sperm to five families, to limit the number of children a donor could have.

"People's fear is, 'What if my children meet their half-sibling?'," he said.

Dr Watkins said donor sperm had produced hundreds of Tasmanian babies, but while the majority of the children knew their origin, friends and family were often unaware.

"It's a very personal thing," he said.

"Sometimes they may have told a few family members, but sometimes they haven't.

"We like to match height, build and hair colour, so the child will have similar physical attributes to the father.

"If the couple both have dark hair and olive skin, you'd be less inclined to use a 'fair' donor."

Dr Watkins is encouraging men aged between 20 and 50 to consider donating sperm.

"We are desperately short of sperm donors," he said.

"Come along and have a chat to us, people can back out at any time. They can say, 'No, I have changed my mind', and we just toss it out."

**Tyrael** · 21st-December-2009

Quote from frostyboy

Dr Watkins is encouraging men aged between 20 and 50 to consider donating sperm.

"We are desperately short of sperm donors," he said.

"Come along and have a chat to us, people can back out at any time. They can say, 'No, I have changed my mind', and we just toss it out."

Why donate if you run the risk as a donator to be held accountable and pay ridiculously high child support anyway if she changes her mind?

Secondly there's already too many fatherless bastard children who are more likely to cause trouble and be a liability to society. It's in the best interest of children to have both an involved father and mother in their lives. This is often ignored by the selfishness of single moms who neglect such needs of the child.

Overall it's very bad to increase such negative trends.

**RebelliousVanilla** · 21st-December-2009

Women who wait until 38 to have children don't earn my sympathy. You had since 18, until 38, which is 20 full years to have children. What kept you?

**Zuberi** · 21st-December-2009

Good let them run out!
It might give those entitlement whores something to think about other than themselves!

**rohara** · 21st-December-2009

Women who wait until 38 to have children don't earn my sympathy. You had since 18, until 38, which is 20 full years to have children. What kept you?

Here is the narrative RV:

Woman decides that she needs to be successful in life and shuns marriage and family in her peak child bearing years to "have a career." In her mind she becomes competitive in her career by shunning marriage at least for the time being.
Time goes by and at around 30 or so she starts to think to herself: "gee I had better find 'Mr. Right' soon!" However, because she very likely has an infantile need for a man to take care of all of her needs she has a hard time finding a man not already married that makes as much money as she did. AND SHE IS NOT WILLING TO SACRIFICE HER LIFESTYLE TO HAVE A KID!
She also realizes that by the time the men who do make as much or more than she did and are still not married by her age are that way because (like me I am 38 and never married) they are on to the fact that marriage has basically become a peonage contract that men get suckered into.
Your 30's go by mighty quick and before she knows it she is literally at the very edge of never having children of her own so she goes to a sperm bank and discovers that there are literally thousands of women just like her who did exactly what she did. And why?

brilliant let them run out!

i think we should all start a reproduction strike.
someone wants to use me to get get pregnant and have me
give my life away in child support? i spit in her face.

This is why. In fact this is already happening to a much larger extent than many wish to believe. It comes out in Rutgers and other news sources that men are delaying marriage if not opting out of it altogether. One of the main reasons being that they are afraid that they will have their children and at least half of everything they have ever worked for their entire lives in the very likely event that they are FORCED into a divorce by their wives whom the laws and courts favor.

I have no sympathy for them either.

**RebelliousVanilla** · 21st-December-2009

rohara, I know the narrative. It was a rhetorical question so don't make me punch you in the collar bone. :P

**frostyboy** · 21st-December-2009

The state is down to its last four donors, and for the first time in the program's 35-year history next month it will introduce a waiting list for sperm.

Dr Watkins said sperm donors did not get paid any more, and that since 2000 have had to agree to be identifiable to offspring when the child reaches 18 years of age.

It's hardly surprising that sperm donation is at an all time low, considering the fact that both anonymity and financial gain have been scrapped for sperm donors.

Dr Watkins is encouraging men aged between 20 and 50 to consider donating sperm.

"We are desperately short of sperm donors," he said.

But with no anonymity or financial gain - what motivation is there for men to bother?

**Nynrah Ghost** · 21st-December-2009

Splendid. If I'm not mistaken this was called justice or something like that.
They are reaping what they sowed.

This is what happens if you turn the laws against men by an overwhelming degree...
During their fertile years women like these only care for their careers and their lifestyle along with quite some man-bashing (we don't husbands etc) and now out of sudden when the clock almost stops ticking we suddenly change our minds and decide we desperately need men? At that point men as myself will tell such people 'you made your bed, now lie in it.'

Actually, I see this, along with the marriage strike as a good thing. It forces women to reexamine themselves... unless I underestimate their habbits of blaming men for EVERYTHING (and thus also the marriage and reproduction strike).