The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families aims to investigate the physical, mental and social wellbeing of 750 children belonging to about 500 parents. It will involve surveys and interviews to score the children on a large range of measures.

Lead researcher from Melbourne University, Dr Simon Crouch, said although there were likely to be thousands of children with same-sex attracted parents in Australia, very few local studies had ever looked at whether their family circumstances affected their wellbeing and when they had, they were small. Furthermore, he said most studies of such children had been done in northern European countries and the US and they tended to focus on children of lesbian mothers at the expense of those belonging to gay men, bisexuals and transgender people.

They’re asking people to volunteer for the study.

Sperm donors are no more likely to carry genetic diseases than anybody else, but they can father a far greater number of children: 50, 100 or even 150, each a potential inheritor of flawed genes, and each a vector for making those genes more pervasive in the general population.

Next week in New York the major networks will announce a slate of new shows, including a sitcom on NBC that features a gay couple and their surrogate. The title: “The New Normal.”

The new normal: when we’re supposed to agree it’s ok to say a mother is not a mother but rather a “surrogate,” and that it’s ok for (wealthy) men to hire women (with little money or social power) for the use of their bodies to gestate babies.

Overall, with assisted reproduction methods, the risk of any birth defect was 8.3 percent compared with 5.8 percent for unassisted pregnancies. These included cleft palate, and heart, gastrointestinal and esophageal defects.

For in vitro fertilization (IVF), the risk for birth defects was 7.2 percent. For intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), it was 9.9 percent.

And a Daily Mail (UK) article:

The designer baby factory: Eggs from beautiful Eastern Europeans, sperm from wealthy Westerners and embryos implanted in desperate women

In 1988 the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that 30,000 children were born via donor insemination during the year 1986/87 in the US (1).

A quarter of a century – and no further research – later, ’30,000 annual births’ is still trotted out in academia, lectures and the media (2). Sometimes the number is doubled, probably to allow for the passage of time, and occasionally a range of 30,000 – 60,000 is deployed.

Yet so much about donor insemination has changed during this time. Using either of the whole figures is scientifically unjustifiable, and the range is just as flawed.

Hence, experts should not be using such patently erroneous figures. Rather, they should be noting that there is no reliable method of assessing how many children are conceived via donor insemination each year. They should be pointing out that the USA has no accurate tracking or record keeping from which it is possible to make an educated assessment.

Instead of complacently relying on outdated best guesstimate figures from more than a generation ago, they should be demanding reliable, recent figures. They should be voicing outrage that neither the fertility industry nor any other entity is required to collect data or report statistics on the numbers of human beings conceived using donor sperm. This is in stark contrast with cattle insemination, which is much more tightly regulated and surveyed. more

In our report, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, we also cited the 30-60,000 number as the experts’ best guesstimate. And believe me, if you try to tell a reporter that there really are no numbers the first reaction you get is that you must not know what you’re talking about. You can sense their fingers creeping along the figurative Rolodex to call their next source.

But Kramer is right. The big story should be that we don’t know the story.

Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Amaro (Danny Pino) investigate the disappearance of a teenaged girl after her young brother calls 9-1-1. While Fin (Ice-T) and Rollins (Kelli Giddish) look into a possible abduction, they discover the girl had been searching for her biological father, an anonymous sperm donor. The investigation takes a startling turn when a suspect is found to be targeting several young, vulnerable women, all with the same personal connection. But the suspect isn’t what he seems, and Dr. Huang (Wong) must delve into his past to save the women. Guest Starring Eric Close and James Van Der Beek. Also starring Richard Belzer (Sergeant John Munch.)

First they said we would be ok because at least we’d know who are mothers are.

Then they said we’d be ok so long as our parents tell us we were donor conceived.

Now they say we’ll be ok so long as our parents tell us we are donor conceived and we can access the identities of our biological donor parents.

When are they going to work it out that we’ll only be ok if they admit that donor conception is not ok?

We’ll be ok when society recognises the hypocrisy of recognising the importance of biological familial relationships and then saying they aren’t important if you’re donor conceived.

We’ll be ok when we are permitted to grieve that loss. To say it out loud. And have open ears receive the words without retribution.

Ok?

Assuming it is not possible, or that it is impractical, to divide one sperm straw in half, I award seven sperm straws to the claimant, J.C.M., and six sperm straws to the respondent, A.N.A.,” [Justice] Russell wrote.

From Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India, by Anita Jain (Bloomsbury, 2008), p. 30-1, when the main character is still looking for love in New York City:

I didn’t recognize William when I arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes late, but was pleased that he was rather attractive. At some point during dinner, I asked him about his family.

“It’s just me and my mother,” he said.

“Oh, okay. So where is your father?” I asked.

“My father’s not in the picture,” he said, in a way that told me not to pursue that line of conversation. He didn’t say “My father left us before I was born” or “That’s a sore topic,” but “My father’s not in the picture.”

Later, when William told me his mother was a lesbian, I began to think it was entirely possible that his father had been found at a sperm bank. I processed this with careful determination not to let the realization pass across my face. It was only when he told me his mother was adopted that I flinched. I was holding some noodles with my chopsticks and they fell into my lap. Let’s see, his mother didn’t know who her parents were, and he didn’t know who his father was. I was sitting with the Man Who Had No Past…He was like a phoenix rising from the ashes of an unknown civilization. I was too unnerved to see him again.

And see The New Stigma: Part I