Women Australia-wide are struggling to access sperm from White donors, the ethnicity of highest demand, with NSW particularly hard-hit due to clinics misinterpreting a rule on overseas donors.
One patient who is trying to have a lab baby on her own at NSW clinic Fertility First, which operates under IVF giant Genea, was shocked after being told they no White sperm donors available at all.
City Fertility, another major IVF company with one of Australia’s largest sperm banks, as of last week only had 13 Caucasian donors out of 60 total, and Monash IVF only had four White donors nationwide, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The Fertility First client, Ellen, said she had used a Dutch overseas sperm donor during a round of IVF last year because he matched her European heritage and she wanted to be able to help her child understand his or her ethnicity.
But when she inquired about doing a second round she was told the previous donor was no longer available, and nor were the 70 other previously available overseas options, and that she had to choose from six local donors of Asian ethnicity.
Ellen, 44, said she had friends of Chinese background but wanted to be able to teach her child about both sides of their background, and was now looking at other clinics.
“It’s devastating facing potentially not being a mother, I feel like the choice to become a mum has been stripped from me and where do I go with my life from here,” she said.
Ellen’s fertility specialist, Dr Anne Clark, said NSW sperm donor services had been “effectively shut down” due to the major IVF clinic chains wrongly believing overseas sperm donors were capped at five families in NSW, when in fact they were capped at five globally.
When this was clarified by NSW Health in 2025 it ruled many donors out, Dr Clark said, and many clinics had already exhausted their compliant donor supplies as bringing on a new local sperm donor takes nine months.
Some City Fertility patients are now travelling to Queensland where the rules are less strict and the company has seven White donors available, compared to one in NSW and five in Western Australia.
The NSW government said it was aware of the issue and had brought in exemptions for affected patients, allowing the use of non-compliant embryos or sperm if they were already in storage.
All states currently have different donor limits, and advocates are now calling for NSW to move to a 10-family limit, which is in line with Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.
The shortage comes after it was revealed last year that a White couple in Brisbane who chose a donor with fair hair and blue eyes like the father ended up with a black baby, and Australia’s biggest fertility company, Virtus Health, kept it secret for 11 years.
The mistake was caused by a US-based lab mixing up samples from two men who had donated on the same day, and the couple were given a payout in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement.
Header image: Stock photo (Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash).
