It is worth keeping in mind that the invitation to politicians is a simply a stunt, designed to raise the issue in the community's mind and cut through the blizzard of commercial and other messages in the media, rather than being a serious call on politicains to donate. It is this feature, rather than any other, that is shared with the promotions for organ donation. While using politicians as a device is excusable for a promoter, the use of this device in her reply is merely a cheap and lazy appeal to the baser interests of her readers.

Tankard also places great importance on knowledge about linages, health and genetics and states that the costs of not knowing this information is harmful to the child, based on a sample of one. Well children are only a children for a short while, and a more mature judgement in later years is likely to reflect on the fact of their very existance rather than where they came from. Stating that the flow of sperm is taking “precedence over a child's well being” is unfair because its call to emotion tries to obscure the real forces driving this issue. It is adults making decisions about their lives and the lives of children they will love that is taking precedence. To imply that we should change practice for the sake of childrens' sensitivities is not an adequate argument. It feels good but is emotive, and in its own way utopian. But what is worrying is that it implies that we should run our world based on the sensitivities of children. This is utopian because adults, thinking or unthinking, for better or for worse, will always decide what they will do with their lives, and children of necessity follow.

I do think we need women’s perspective on why society does need IVF, as I think that the IVF industry is being propelled mainly by women, and also by people who want to make money from that industry.

Looking at it from a male’s perspective, I don’t think there is much in IVF for males, particularly for sperm donors. If they donate sperm then they can be held liable for child support, and also for possible litigation if they pass on a genetically inherited disease or disorder. The potential risks are becoming too great to donate sperm.

For a father there is not much in it for him also.

But there are an enormous number of ethical and moral issues surrounding IVF, and these issues may grow even more so in time. If IVF links up with biotechnology and begins to incorporate gene splicing etc, then we can have genetically modified children, which has even more ethical and moral issues involved.

I think it very important to determine why do we need IVF in the first place, and because it seems to be driven so much by a woman’s desire for pregnancy, then why do women want to be pregnant when they could adopt.

There are very few ethical or moral issues involveing adoption, as compared to IVF.

No Takers. Well these are my thoughts

Basically I see IVF technology as becoming a potential mine-field of technical, legal, and health problems. It may be best for society to just leave IVF and concentrate on programs that enable couples to adopt children.

I can understand a couple’s desire to be parents as that is a natural desire, but it is not necessary for the woman to be pregnant so as to be a parent. Therefore instead of spending resources on IVF, it would be best to spend those resources on enabling better adoption programs for couples.

There are a lot of orphan children in great need in many poorer countries, and for most of them their future would be very bleak. Adopting them would be the best for them and satisfy the couples desire for children.

I agree that adoption would be a noble option. After all, we dads do our fair share of it already. Somewhere between 20% and up to 30% of children we believe to have fathered, are not actually ours.

Although DNA paternity testing is now available and affordable, it only occurs at the edges, and in disputes where Family Court requests it. Perhaps it should be made standard part of the process - say a prerequisite to birth certificate. It would at least be nice to know our true adoption rates.

Children are not trophies – they are people. And our laws regarding reproductive technologies have the potential to either set people up for life or to rip them off.

To be legislatively deprived of the opportunity of ever knowing the identity of one’s biological parents is to be ripped off. I think it’s clear people born of donor semination have a right to know identifying information about their biological parents.

Surely there has been enough said about ‘nature versus nurture’ for society to realise that to blank out nature (in this case biological parents) from a person’s life is likely to leave big gaps in their sense of identity. It’s not hard to imagine a person in that situation desperately wanting to know about their biological parents or any half-brothers and sisters they may have. Melinda Tankard-Reist states the obvious when she writes about sperm donors: “passed on are entire personal, genetic and medical histories, lineages which aren’t just nothing.”

Is it plausible that people wouldn’t feel cheated or frustrated by blanks to questions about their biological identity?

With maturity, perhaps many young people deprived of knowledge about their biological parents will indeed come to realise the reasons why they were conceived from donor sperm. No doubt most will be grateful for the opportunity to make their mark in life. But the realisation of why they were conceived won’t necessarily take away their pain or the gnawing dead ends about their identity.

Australia is – at least in theory – an open society. So let’s do the right thing by all our citizens, no matter how they were conceived, and give people equal access to information about their biological parents. Let’s lobby State governments to follow Victoria’s enlightened example by amending reproductive technology laws so that children born from sperm donation have access to identifying information about their biological parents when they turn 18.

The big money (IVF companies) is likely to strongly oppose such amendments, however I suspect agitation for change will intensify, not subside, as increasing numbers of young people conceived from sperm donation grow to adulthood and become active in public life.

Melinda Tankard-Reist is to be congratulated for daring to challenge the establishment regarding a topic which, for most commentators, is simply too hot to handle.

I tend to agree with Duffmeister, but the only way we could be guaranteed to know, would be by way of postscript on our birth certificate. That asterisk next to mother or father, could indicate that further information should be sought at 18.

“So let’s do the right thing by all our citizens, no matter how they were conceived, and give people equal access to information about their biological parents.”

Hear, hear!