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Edited by
Fiona Kelly, La Trobe University, Victoria,Deborah Dempsey, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria,Adrienne Byrt, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria
In recent decades, a number of jurisdictions have moved towards more open practices in donor conception, including legislating for the rights of donor-conceived people to trace their donor. In such contexts, the donor’s role is ambivalent. They are not expected to enact a parental role in relation to people conceived from their donation. However, they are expected to ‘be available’ for some form of relationship. Our UK-based research found that donors typically navigate these dual obligations by articulating a moral commitment to ‘following the lead’ of the families they help to create and particularly the people conceived from their donation. In this chapter, we illustrate how sperm and egg donors imagine and enact this commitment but also show that it is easier to say than to do. The embedded nature of donors’ personal lives and relationships create challenges in letting others decide their role in relation to recipient families.
Psychosocial support in fertility clinics or centres providing third-party reproduction has changed over time as reproductive techniques have developed; social norms, legal systems and counselling standards have evolved; and access to information expanded with the world wide web. Today patient support and infertility counselling involves supporting and assessing patients, donors, surrogates and their partners, and the parents and children at all stages of family building from initial decision-making about choices to later family life. Infertility counsellors also address support needs of staff providing fertility care. However, not all centres provide this range of services. The present chapter will review essential components of patient support in third-party reproduction provided by clinic staff and infertility counsellors, highlighting key features of good practice according to the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Code of Practice (2019, 9th edition).