The rough guide to insemination: cross-border travelling for donor semen due to different regulations
Cross-border reproductive care, donor semen, ethics, law, reproductive tourism
Abstract
Donor insemination is one of the main treatments for which patients cross borders. The present paper presents the date from a Belgian and a European study. Sperm donation in Belgium is mainly performed for single and lesbian women coming from France. The other main host country for sperm donation, Denmark, has a much more diverse group of visitors from Sweden, Norway and Germany. 74% of all Swedish women leaving the country, went abroad for semen donation, compared to 57% from France and 51% from Norway. In all other countries, the proportion was much lower.
For all nationalities (apart from the Netherlands) the majority of the patients indicated that they went abroad because of legal restrictions in their home country. This is unlikely to change and travelling to obtain donor insemination will continue in the future.
