According to infertility specialist Dr Ron Chang this decline could be due to the recent legal changes that mandate sperm donors to be contactable once the child they helped to conceive turns 18. “All the donors stopped coming forward because they didn't want a knock on the door in 18 years time….I think children should have the right to know their biological parents, but it has a knock-on effect,” he said. Queensland Fertility Group Cairns clinical director Dr Bob Miller echoed these thoughts and said, “In the old days, they used to sort of donate and forget… Now the donors have to be registered and go for quite a bit of tests before they're allowed to donate… It means that the offspring cannot find them until they grow up to 18, but they can find them and find out who their father is, if they want to…. These things are very good ethically, but it means that we don't have many donors.”
In a brief article written by Jeremy Taylor at Asylum dot com, Taylor explains that to combat the shortage, one of the largest fertility clinics in the country has begun actively soliciting sperm, with slogans such as:
"You've got millions to spare, we only need one."
But the the city of Townsville can't wait for these ad campaigns to bear fruit. Their local fertility clinic has begun importing sperm from the United States at a whopping $700 per vial.
Taylor comments;
"Now there's an innovative way to up exports in this increasingly flat world. Wouldn't it be something if America eventually becomes as well-known for its ready supply of grade-A sperm as Germany is for cars, or Japan is for electronics"
The American Political Broadcast Blog, 'The Young Turks' had a go at the story as well:
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