Prelims

Half Title Page

Donors

Series Title Page

Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society

Series Editors: Petra Nordqvist, Manchester University, UK and Nicky Hudson, De Montfort University, UK

This book series brings together scholars from across the social sciences and humanities who are working in the broad field of human reproduction. Reproduction is a growing field of interest in the UK and internationally, and this series publishes work from across the lifecycle of reproduction addressing issues such as conception, contraception, abortion, pregnancy, birth, infertility, pre and postnatal care, pre-natal screen and testing, IVF, prenatal genetic diagnosis, mitochondrial donation, surrogacy, adoption, reproductive donation, family-making and more. Books in this series will focus on the social, cultural, material, legal, historical and political aspects of human reproduction, encouraging work from early career researchers as well as established scholars. The series includes monographs, edited collections and shortform books (between 20 and 50,000 words). Contributors use the latest conceptual, methodological and theoretical developments to enhance and develop current thinking about human reproduction and its significance for understanding wider social practices and processes.

Published Titles in This Series

Egg Freezing, Fertility and Reproductive Choice

Authored by Kylie Baldwin

The Cryopolitics of Reproduction on Ice: A New Scandinavian Ice Age

Authored by Charlotte Kroløkke, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, Janne Rothmar Herrmann, Anna Sofie Bach, Stine Willum Adrian, Rune Klingenberg and Michael Nebeling Petersen

Voluntary and Involuntary Childlessness

Edited by Natalie Sappleton

When Reproduction Meets Ageing: The Science and Medicine of the Fertility Decline

Authored by Nolwenn Bühler

Lived Realities of Solo Motherhood, Donor Conception and Medically Assisted Reproduction

Authored by Tine Ravn

Surrogacy in Russia: An Ethnography of Reproductive Labour, Stratification and Migration

Authored by Christina Weis

Reproductive Governance and Bodily Materiality: Flesh, Technologies, and Knowledge

Edited by Corinna Sabrina Guerzoni and Claudia Mattalucci

Anti-Abortion Activism in the UK: Ultra-Sacrificial Motherhood, Religion and Reproductive Rights in the Public Sphere

Authored by Pam Lowe

Technologies of Reproduction Across the Lifecourse: Expanding Reproductive Studies

Edited by Katharine Dow and Victoria Boydell

Forthcoming

(In)Fertile Male Bodies: Masculinities and Lifestyle Management in Neoliberal Times

Authored by Esmee Hanna and Brendan Gough

Contingencies, Complexities and Normativities in Uterus Transplantation: A Gift for Life?

Authored by Lisa Guntram

Title Page

Donors

Curious Connections in Donor Conception

By

Petra Nordqvist

University of Manchester, UK

And

Leah Gilman

University of Manchester, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Petra Nordqvist and Leah Gilman

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80043-567-4 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-564-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-566-7 (Epub)

Dedication

For all touched by donor conception.

List of Tables

Author Biographies

Petra Nordqvist is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Co-Director of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, University of Manchester. She has published widely on donor conception and how it impacts people's lives and relationships. This book about egg and sperm donors is a sister study to her earlier research into the experiences of parents and grandparents of donor-conceived children, published in Relative Strangers: Family Life, Genes and Donor Conception (Palgrave Macmillan 2014, with Carol Smart).

Leah Gilman is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at The University of Manchester. Her research interests include the sociology of reproduction, childhood, morality and family relationships, as well as the intersection of fiction and research methods. She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies, awarded by The University of Edinburgh for her work on the views and experiences of UK identity-release sperm and egg donors. Leah's research has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including Sociology, Sociology of Health and Illness and the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family.

Acknowledgements

No research happens in a vacuum, and we are indebted to a great number of people, ideas and organisations in writing this book.

The book draws on the research project ‘Curious Connections: The Impact of Donating Egg and Sperm on Donors' Personal Lives and Relationships’ which was generously funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (grant number: ES/N014154/1, PI Petra Nordqvist). We are hugely grateful to the ESRC for giving us the opportunity to do this, and to our colleagues Christine Turner, Jill Sambrook, Hazel Burke and Dr Luciana Lang, for working with us through the ups and downs of delivering on this project, bringing it to the finishing line. It's been a blast to work with you all; thanks for the hard work, for the fun and for coping together with all the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic threw at us. Thanks also to the University of Manchester for providing administrative support and space to write in the very final stages of the project.

Our deepest thanks go to all the people who so generously gave of their time and shared their experiences of being a donor with us. Thanks also to donors' partners, parents and siblings, and to those working with egg and sperm donors professionally, as fertility counsellors or donor coordinators. Without you this book simply would not exist.

We have also worked with a number of organisations, whose staff contributed greatly to the success of our research and who generously shared their advice, in some cases through membership of our advisory board. This includes the London Women's Clinic (particularly Venessa Smith), Manchester Fertility (Joanne Adams and Samantha Slack) and CARE Fertility (Debra Bloor and Selina Wilkinson). We are also immensely grateful to everyone from the HFEA, the Donor Conception Network, Altrui, the SEED trust, Pride Angel, the British Infertility Counselling Association, the Progress Educational Trust and the various people on Facebook and Instagram donor groups who freely offered us time, feedback and support.

We are further indebted to a huge number of people for providing the intellectual environment in which this book started to form, and which sustained it, and us, throughout. This includes everyone in the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, University of Manchester, where our colleagues (past and present) have been so generous with their time and energy. A special thanks to the late David Morgan whose brilliant scholarship and generous character continue to inspire us, and to Professors Jennifer Mason and Sue Heath who both acted as project mentors at times and who were so generous with their time and wisdom. We are also indebted to our academic colleagues and friends (again, past and present) in the United Kingdom and internationally, who make the field of reproductive technologies and donation such an enjoyable and fascinating field to study. Your ideas, work and academic collegiality has informed our own in so many ways.

Many thanks also to Kimberly Chadwick at Emerald Publishing for being so patient with us, and to copy editor Simon Mussell for helping us in the very final stages of writing.

The final and most personal thanks to our own children (Iris, Kit, Sam and Niamh) and their many varied ways of providing distraction, inspiration and motivation in writing this book, and our partners (Alex and Diz) who helped us get to the point of conclusion despite the odds. Thank you.

Glossary

AI:

Acronym referring to ‘Artificial Insemination’. Insertion of sperm/semen into the vagina, cervix or uterus using some form of a syringe. Widely used in clinical and non-clinical donation communities.

CMS:

The Child Maintenance Service, previously referred to as the Child Support Agency (CSA). A UK service for parents who, usually after separation, have not been able to make a private arrangement about how their child's living costs will be paid.

DCN:

Acronym referring to the Donor Conception Network. Supports those considering using donor conception or have donor-conceived children, and donor-conceived people.

Donation (egg, sperm or embryo):

The transfer of egg, sperm and embryos from one body to another for the purpose of helping someone other than self or a partner conceive.

Donor:

Person who agrees to give away their gametes (egg, sperm or embryo) to another for the purpose of helping someone other than self or a partner conceive a child. See donation.

Donor-conceived person/people:

Person or people born from donated egg, sperm or embryos.

Donor offspring:

Refers to the person conceived from a specific donor's donated egg, sperm or embryo. We use it as a relational term only, that is, to highlight the specific connection between a donor and the person/people conceived from their gametes. See also donor-conceived person/people.

DSL:

Acronym referring to the Donor Sibling Link; a service provided by the HFEA to enable donor-conceived adults, conceived after 1 August 1991, to exchange contact details with people who share the same donor.

Egg-share donor:

A person (or couple) undergoing IVF who opts to donate half of their eggs which are produced in a given cycle in return for free or (more commonly) discounted treatment.

FET:

Acronym referring to ‘Frozen Embryo Transfer’. Refers to the process whereby a patient uses embryos frozen from a previous IVF cycle in a new embryo transfer.

Gestational surrogacy (also called host surrogacy):

An arrangement whereby a person carries a baby for another person or couple and where the surrogate does not have a genetic connection to the child. Gestational surrogacy arrangements require egg or embryo donation.

HFEA:

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The UK independent regulator of fertility treatment and research using human embryos. The HFEA licenses, monitors and inspects UK-based fertility clinics and provides impartial information about treatments and donation.

HFE Act, 2008:

Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It constituted a major review and update of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, 1990.

Host surrogacy:

See Gestational surrogacy.

ICI:

Acronym referring to ‘Intracervical Insemination’. Same as IUI but the sperm is deposited onto the cervix rather than into the uterus.

ICSI:

Acronym referring to ‘Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection’. Procedure which may be done as part of IVF which involves the sperm being injected directly into the egg.

Identity-release donation:

A regulated form of donation pertaining to UK clinic-based donation practices (and some other jurisdictions) where donors are initially anonymous to recipients but must consent to identifying information about themselves being released to people conceived from their donation (often only after they have reached a given age. In the UK, age 18)

Intended parent/s:

A person or couple who conceives (or tries to conceive) using third-party reproduction (donated gametes or surrogacy) in order to have a child. See also Recipient parent/s.

IUI:

Acronym referring to ‘Intrauterine Insemination’. A fertility treatment performed in medical contexts that involves directly inserting sperm into the uterus.

IVF:

An acronym for ‘In Vitro Fertilisation’, literally meaning ‘in glass’ fertilisation. During IVF, egg and sperm are fertilised outside of the human body, in a laboratory. If fertilisation is successful, the resulting embryo is then transferred to the uterus with the aim of producing a pregnancy.

Known donation:

A donation arrangement where the donor and recipient parent/s have some level of personal knowledge of each other.

NI:

Acronym referring to ‘Natural Insemination’. Term used in online donation communities to refer to sperm being donated through the donor and recipient woman engaging in heterosexual intercourse.

Open donation:

A term used variably to refer either to identity-release donation or donation to a known recipient(s). See also known donation.

Recipient (parent/s):

A person or couple who use donated sperm, egg or embryo with the aim of conceiving a child which they will parent. See also intended parent.

ROPA method:

Acronym referring to ‘Reception of Oocytes from the Partner’. Refers to when a lesbian couple conceive using IVF where one partner contributes eggs for the other partner to carry and gestate. Also referred to as ‘intra-partner sharing’, or ‘reciprocal’ or ‘partner’ IVF.

Self-arranged insemination:

Insemination which is organised by the donor and recipient(s) themselves, and which takes place outside of a clinical environment. Also referred to as ‘home insemination’.

Sperm-share donor:

A person who donates sperm in exchange for free, or (more commonly), discounted, IVF treatment for them and their partner.

Surrogacy:

An arrangement whereby a person agrees to gestate a child for another person or couple, but does not intend to be the child's parent.

Surrogate:

A person who agrees to bear and birth a child for another person or persons; see surrogacy.

Traditional surrogacy:

An arrangement whereby a woman carries a baby for another person or couple, using their own eggs and so has a genetic link to the baby.