AUTHOR=Taylor Francesca , Turner-Moore Rhys , Pacey Allan , Jones Georgina Louise 

TITLE=Are UK Policies and Practices for Regulated Donor Insemination Forcing Women to Find Unregulated Sperm Donors Online? A Perspective on the Available Evidence

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Global Women's Health

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/global-womens-health/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.644591

DOI=10.3389/fgwh.2022.644591

ISSN=2673-5059

ABSTRACT=In recent years, there has been an increase in women obtaining donor sperm via unregulated online websites and social media.  In this article, we consider whether restrictive UK policies and practices for regulated clinical donor insemination (DI) are a potential explanation for the growing use of the unregulated route. To this end, we examine the nature of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines, recent data provided by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) on the regulated route, and prior research on who uses online sperm donation and their reasons for doing so. In addition, we highlight why this issue is important by outlining the negative outcomes that have been associated with restricting access to other regulated reproductive services, such as abortion, and some of the legal and health implications of the unregulated route.  We argue that, whilst there are many factors driving the unregulated route to DI, restrictive UK policies and practices for regulated DI might be one of these. We conclude that turning our attention to structural barriers, such as regulated DI policies and practices, is necessary to produce more definitive evidence of this potential issue, and that adopting a reproductive justice framework could lead to more equitable provision of regulated DI services.