Every summer, Anupa Roper thinks about the little girl who is celebrating her birthday. She thinks about how old she is, what she’s doing, what her life must be like.
She doesn’t know this child, she may never will. But there’s also the chance that one day the girl might nervously knock on Anupa’s door.
‘I have to be prepared for both scenarios,’ Anupa explains to Metro.co.uk. ‘As she may never find out that she was born through an egg donor. But if she does do, she might want to talk to me, as I was the one who donated those eggs.’
Egg donation – where a woman gives her eggs to another to allow the recipient to have a baby – enables women who cannot get pregnant using their own supply to achieve their dream of carrying, birthing and raising a child.
According to figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), conception using donor eggs, embryos or sperm led to more than 4,100 births in the UK in 2019, compared to around 2,500 in 1993. It accounts for 1 in 170 of all births and for 1 in 6 births using IVF in the UK.
Although egg donation is nothing new, taboo still surrounds this particular pathway to parenthood. While donors in the UK are anonymous to the receiving parents at the time of donation, a law change in April 2005 means that at 18, donor-conceived people can contact the fertility clinic to find out the identity of their donor.
This means the first wave of children born under these rules will be turning 18 shortly – and potentially looking for the people that helped conceive them. However, not all will be aware of their roots as it is left to the child’s birth parents to decide when – or indeed if – they choose to share this information.
Children’s author Anupa, 44, donated her eggs a decade ago, following her own struggle to conceive.
‘When we were trying for our first child, it took us a lot longer than we thought,’ she recalls. ‘We had in the back of our mind that we might need to think about adoption or using an egg donor.’
As part of the process, she had to endure daily injections to sync her menstrual cycle with the donor recipient, then go through an egg retrieval procedure – where a needle is passed through the vagina and into the ovary. It yielded 12 eggs, which were split between two women, and one child was born as a result.
Anupa’s husband supported her throughout and the couple’s children were told about the donation at a young age. ‘My daughter always says she’d really like to meet her because she’s like a sister, so I have to prepare them that it might never happen,’ she explains. ‘They may never get to meet this child and, technically, she’s not their sister. ‘But it’s not something that comes up often, so it’s never been an issue.’
Anupa now advocates for egg donation as a trustee for The Sperm, Egg and Embryo Donation (SEED) Trust, and has also been involved with research at De Montfort University, looking at South Asian attitudes towards egg donation, as Asian egg donors represent just 5% of egg donors compared to 10% of an age-matched population.
‘In my culture, it’s perhaps not the norm to be an egg donor,’ she explains. ‘Luckily for me, my parents recognised it was a kind gesture and something that would help others.’
Emma Haslam and her husband Adam spent a year trying to conceive before discovering that she was perimenopausal and Adam had a low sperm count and low motility. The newlyweds from Skipton were given just a 3-5% chance of success using their own egg and sperm.
They did not qualify for NHS funding due to Emma’s BMI and with IVF in the UK proving prohibitively expensive, the couple looked abroad for treatment.
‘We spoke to some clinics in the Czech Republic, who had a very different approach and made us feel very welcome,’ explains Emma. ‘It was easy to get transparent, quick answers. They said it was not going to work with our own eggs and sperm, but they’d support us if we wanted to try. However, they added that it would probably be a waste of money which was a difficult thing to hear, although we respected their honesty.
‘We were then told that tour chances of conception would go up to 65-75% through egg and sperm donation. After that it was quite a quick decision.’
The couple’s son Albie is now four-and-a-half but has already been made aware of his donor roots.
‘It’s something that he has known about from an early age and in an age-appropriate way using books and when things drop into conversation,’ says Emma. ‘He knows that Mummy’s eggs and Daddy’s seed are broken. And the lady and the man gave us these things, a doctor helped put them together to create Albie and then put the embryo into Mummy to grow him into a baby.
“it’s something we will support our son with if we need to, but day-to-day I don’t think he thinks about it. Just as we don’t think about it day-to-day, because he is our son.
‘I’ve grown him, looked after him, it’s us and it’s our family and it’s not something that we think about all the time.’
Egg donor anonymity varies across European states. In countries like Spain, donation is completely anonymous and altruistic, while Sweden was the first country to prohibit it from being done anonymously. Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, where Emma and Adam were treated, donation is done anonymously and without financial gain.
Emma believes that individuals should have a choice around anonymity but also be better educated about the pros and cons, along with the intricacies of having treatment in different destinations. That way, they are able to make informed decisions.
’In an ideal world there would be more options for people to have non-anonymous donation,’ she says. ‘With advances in DNA testing it may be possible for Albie to find out more information in the future and we would support him with this, happily.’
Following their own journey, Emma and Adam set up Your IVF abroad, with the aim of helping people who are seeking fertility treatment abroad explore their options.
‘I discovered non-anonymous donation is more expensive and there are less clinics to choose from,’ says Emma. ‘Plus if there was no anonymity around donation then there would be a shortage of donors, which we see a lot in the UK, particularly for people of colour who are on long waiting lists to find a donor.
‘I’m pro-choice, but I understand it’s difficult to know how the child’s going to feel about it. However, from the research I’ve done I believe that if you’re brought up in a nurturing and loving environment and you are honest with your children and you support them with their feelings, then that’s the best approach.’
In February this year, the HFEA called for the law to be updated so information about egg and sperm donors in the UK can be made available after the birth of a child, should the donor choose.
It’s a move, two-time egg donor Fi Hennessy fully backs. ‘The information overwhelmingly shows that the more somebody can know about where they came from and how they came into being, the better the outcomes are likely to be for them,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
In an ideal world there would be more options for people to have non-anonymous donation
Pregnancy massage specialist Fi already had two children of her own when she decided to donate. One, at the Jessop Assisted Conception Unit in Sheffield, ultimately resulted in the birth of a baby boy.
But Fi says that given her chance again, she would have preferred not to be anonymous, something that could have been possible through charities such as Surrogacy UK, which gives the prospective donor and recipients the chance to get to know each other first, with no-obligation for the donor to be involved in the child’s life.
‘Although I gave as much information during the anonymous donation process as possible, it’s just that missing piece for the donor-conceived children to know where they came from and why,’ she explains. ‘It’s such an important part of their growing up.’
Before donating, Fi decided to pen a personal letter to the donor child, which they can access at 16. ‘It was a really emotional process, writing to somebody that we didn’t even know was going to exist,’ she recalls.
Now 42, Fi says she would welcome the chance to meet the child when he turns 18 and can request contact. ‘I’d be absolutely willing to chat with them if they wanted,’ she says. ‘But not everybody’s told they are donor-conceived. There’s still a taboo in some cultures about admitting you need help or that you’ve used different genetic material, when actually genetics is such a small part of it. Being a mum is so much more than just passing on genes.’
Donor recipient Jess* has unfortunately seen first-hand the result of negative narratives surrounding egg donation.
After two failed attempts at IVF in the UK, she underwent egg donation IVF in Greece and gave birth to twins at 27 weeks.
Weighing just 2lb 3oz and 2lb 9oz, the babies spent 12 weeks in hospital. One twin had blood transfusions, contracted sepsis and required oxygen for several months after being discharged.
It was around this time Jess started to receive hateful messages.
‘They were horrible emails from an unknown address saying “they will never properly be yours, you’re not their mother, they’re freaks of nature, you’d be better off without them”,’ she recalls.
‘I reported it to the police at the time, but they couldn’t do much because there were no physical threats towards me or the children. But it was horrible.’
Jess received four or five emails over the course of several months. Although the perpetrator was never traced, the incident left her reluctant to speak publicly about using an egg donor: ‘It was really scary and really upsetting,’ she admits.
Just like Emma, Jess first told her children before they reached school age about the woman who donated her eggs – earning her the affectionate nickname ‘the chicken lady’.
When the children were nine, they learnt about reproduction at school, which raised some fresh questions. ‘My daughter asked if she was adopted and I had to explain it to her again, saying that she grew in Mummy’s tummy, and has Mummy’s blood flowing through her. She’s Mummy and Daddy’s child but another lady enabled us to help make her.
‘I think she just wanted reassurance that someone wasn’t going to turn up one day and say “you don’t belong to your Mummy and Daddy”’.’
However, 18 months ago, Jess did receive an unexpected visitor.
Her first husband donated sperm a number of times as a student. When he died suddenly, some 15 years ago, he was unaware one donation had resulted in a baby girl.
The woman, who only discovered her donor roots in adulthood, used DNA tracing to track the family down. Jess agreed to meet her.
‘It was quite a shock, because she’s got the same mannerisms,’ she remembers. ‘It brought back a lot of the grief of losing him so suddenly.
‘We spent quite a lot of time together looking at photographs of him as a youngster, and through uni. I let her hold his wedding ring, which really upset her because she said it made him feel like a real person.’
Since then, Jess and her husband’s biological daughter have stayed in touch and still meet regularly.
There are differing views over whether donor anonymity should be relaxed in the UK and whether the HFEA will achieve that law change in the future, remains to be seen. But, as Jess discovered, with advances in DNA testing, ultimately the choice whether to remain anonymous or not may be taken out of the donor’s hands.
‘The thing I took away from my husband’s daughter making contact was that it doesn’t matter what the laws are, the DNA is out there,’ she says. ‘The database is out there, and if somebody wants to try and trace you, they will.’
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