ABC 7.30: VIDEO: Australia facing a sperm donor shortage
Michael Barnett OAM
VIDEO: Australia facing a sperm donor shortage
Australia is in the middle of a major sperm donor shortage with clinics warning they can’t keep up with demand.
People are increasingly turning to strangers online, but it comes with lifelong consequences. Courtney Bembridge reports.
MESSAGE ON FACEBOOK: I’ve tried to find a donor for quite some time but have been unlucky.
MESSAGE ON FACEBOOK: I can help you, you won’t regret it.
MESSAGE ON FACEBOOK: Hello future mamas! I’m your friendly neighbourhood seed-spreader, baby making without the baggage.
MESSAGE ON FACEBOOK: Looking for a donor in Tasmania, or willing to travel for the right person.
MESSAGE ON FACEBOOK: Be fruitful and multiply
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE, REPORTER: Across the country, demand for sperm has never been higher.
PROFESSOR ROGER HART, NATIONAL MEDICAL DIRECTOR, CITY FERTILITY: It's been exponential the last few years, the number of individuals seeking sperm donation treatment.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: A demand that outstrips supply.
KELLY LEHMANN: I was checking the clinic donor portal every single day. It's just giving me anxiety and frustrating me.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: The so-called ‘sperm drought’ is being fuelled by limits in most states and territories on how many families a donor can help as well as more single women and same-sex couples wanting to have children.
Now clinics are trying to attract more Australian donors.
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COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: But unlike in the US, it's illegal to pay donors and they can’t be anonymous.
ROGER HART: Increasingly we're having to seek sperm suppliers from overseas.
It's perhaps a societal change. Perhaps Australians, I always say, don't give freely of their gamut.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: Each vial of sperm from overseas costs between two thousand and three and a half thousand dollars. That’s before IVF costs, which can add tens of thousands more.
And some people are finding cheaper and quicker ways to do it.
There are dozens of Australian Facebook groups with thousands of members. Women post what they’re looking for and men offer up sperm.
It’s a world operating with very few rules outside the highly regulated fertility industry.
Lawyer, Sarah Jefford, says things can go wrong.
SARAH JEFFORD, FERTILITY LAWYER: I do speak to women who are in a situation where they found a donor online and then they have felt like they've been coerced into having sexual intercourse. It places them in a situation where they have ongoing risks for themselves and the child and it's not just that one interaction.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: There’s also no way to know how many women a man donates to with no formal register.
ROGER HART: I wonder about the motivation of these individuals that are offering this sperm. I wonder about the poor woman in that position that's accessing this.
JAY LAZARUS, SPERM DONOR: It's pretty crazy out there. I think there are a lot of people out there that are doing it for the wrong reasons, which is super scary. There's a few guys out there that have donated to lots more than what legally are allowed to.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: Perth hairdresser and business owner Jay Lazarus is part of a Facebook group called Sperm Donation Australia.
A few years ago, he put up a post offering sperm. He says he got 300 responses.
JAY LAZARUS: Oh God, I got inundated with private messages, beautiful stories, some not so beautiful stories. Some people talking about how they're ovulating, they live in Perth and they would love me to come over now. That wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to create someone's special journey.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: Jay decided to donate to a lesbian couple who live a couple of hours away. They’re now expecting their first child.
JAY LAZARUS: Being a gay man and finding it really hard for us to be able to have kids, I thought why not while we're starting that process help someone else?
Now that they are pregnant, it's just really exciting to see her. We get photos, we get regular updates. They've definitely become friends.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: The fertility industry is booming, and tech companies have spotted a gap in the market.
This is ‘Just A Baby’ and it works like a dating app, where you can set what you’re looking for – sperm, egg, womb or embryo – and swipe yes or no.
It was set up by Perth man, Paul Ryan.
PAUL RYAN, APP FOUNDER: We've changed the way that we're having a family. The way that our parents did it is just not working anymore.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: Paul says there are 50,000 users in Australia and globally, thousands of people match each day.
When those things are successful, do you have any way of tracking the number of live births that come from these arrangements?
PAUL RYAN: No, not at the moment. People meet on the app and then they go off and do whatever they're going to do. Some people might have a relationship. A lot of people or some people might do their own arrangement with a fertility provider, or they might do their own thing, or some people sometimes get married.
So who knows what people will do? And it's none of our business. So we don't try and pry and understand that really because remember, we're not really actually making babies at all. We're just helping people connect to each other and they make the magic happen at home.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: Kelly is single but has always wanted to be a mum. She decided apps or the Facebook option were too risky.
KELLY LEHMANN: I just thought that was not something that I can risk for my own future and for my child's future because in the long run, that's going to cost you way more, I think.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: Going through a clinic has cost her more than $20,000 but she says it was worth it.
KELLY LEHMANN: It’s been a long process and a lot of research, so getting to this point, it's been really nice to be able to tell people that I'm actually pregnant finally.
COURTNEY BEMBRIDGE: She’s due in December.
KELLY LEHMANN: It's always been a path that I wanted to take. I just didn't expect it to be along this route that I'm taking in this journey now. So yeah, it's going to be really different, but I'm really excited.