July 21, 2025 • 14 mins
More Australians are turning towards using in-vitro fertilisations to have babies, every year.
Often it's done through regulated IVF clinic, but sometimes parents - desperate for a child - search for a sperm donor on social media.
But as this extraordinary case shows, there can be many more risks associated with - as one lawyer put it - the ‘wild west’ - of online sperm donation.
Today, senior reporter Henrietta Cook on the case of a Melbourne man who fathered 27 children, and the fall-out after the women he donated to found each other.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
July 22nd. More Australians are turning towards using in vitro
fertilization to have babies every year. Often it's done through
(00:21):
regulated IVF clinics, but sometimes parents desperate for a child
search for a sperm donor on social media. But as
this extraordinary case will show, there can be many more
risks associated with, as one lawyer put it, the wild
west of online sperm donation. Today, senior reporter Henrietta Cook
(00:42):
on the case of a Melbourne man who fathered 27 children,
and the fallout after the women he donated to found
each other. So, Henrietta, let's start with Cathy's story. Cathy's
not her real name. You've protected her identity. But she
told you that she was searching for a sperm donor
(01:02):
to help her fulfill her dream of becoming a mother.
And then she came across Andrew Veitch.
S2 (01:08):
That's right. Like thousands of other women, Cathy decided to
go onto social media to find a sperm donor. She
chose to do this because it was quicker than accessing
donor sperm in an IVF clinic, and she also didn't
have the money at the time to afford that treatment.
While you might fork out four and a half to
(01:30):
7500 dollars for IVF at a clinic using donor sperm,
these women basically were able to receive sperm for free.
So she posted an ad requesting what she wanted in
a sperm donor. A man called Andrew Veitch responded to
her post and they then arranged to meet up. She
(01:52):
says at the time that she was quite vulnerable. She
was very desperate to have a baby, and I guess
that's what was driving her to go online to search
for someone. The ten women I spoke to for this
story said they were attracted to Andrew because he seemed
very respectful. He told them he was an engineer. He
shared documentation showing that he had a very high sperm count,
(02:15):
which was about five times that of an average male's.
He said he was healthy. There were no family history
of disease. He seemed like the perfect sperm donor.
S1 (02:25):
And what actually led her to start looking into her
sperm donor further? And what did she find out?
S2 (02:31):
So Kathy discovered about six weeks ago that there were
quite a few women who had also conceived using sperm
from Andrew Veitch. They discovered one another after one of
them posted on a Facebook page asking for other donors
to come forward. They were quite shocked to discover the
(02:51):
scale of Andrew Veitch's donating. They discovered that there were
at least 15 women who had conceived using his sperm,
and that had led to 27 half siblings. These siblings
mainly lived in Victoria, and there was one in Queensland,
and many of them lived within a few kilometres of
(03:13):
one another, and some of them even discovered that they
had come into contact with one another in the community,
without actually realizing they were related. Five of the ten
women who I spoke to said that they had felt
pressured to have natural insemination or sex. They said that
he told them it would improve their chances of falling pregnant.
(03:33):
He denies this and said that he never did that.
We're not suggesting that Veitch committed any crime or did
anything illegal. He hired a lawyer who wrote to them,
kind of confirming how many children had been born as
a result of his donations. And at the moment it
stands at 27 half siblings. They came to me and
(03:57):
wanted to share their story because they are concerned that
there's more kids out there who might be related to
their children.
S1 (04:09):
And on that point, you've actually written that online sperm
donation is growing in popularity. So how much so and why?
S2 (04:17):
That's right. We don't have any exact figures. It's a very, um,
it's completely unregulated space. There's no way of telling how
many babies are born as a result of this. Adam Hooper,
who runs a very popular Facebook page called Sperm Donation Australia,
told me a few years ago that he believes that
more babies are being born through these informal channels, like
(04:40):
his Facebook page, than all the IVF clinics put together.
I think about five years ago, I think, she said,
there was almost 430 babies born as a result of
his page alone. But yeah, we really just don't know.
There's no data collected on this because there's no requirement
for these births and conceptions to be recorded on any
(05:02):
sort of register. Most of the people using these services
are either same sex couples or solo mothers by choice.
There are a few heterosexual couples as well, but they're
mainly people who can't afford IVF or don't want to
wait for ages for sperm, and are put off by
going down that path and dealing with lengthy delays. And
(05:24):
I guess all the red tape as well associated with
IVF clinics. For the past five years, there's been a
sperm drought in Australia. Fewer men are donating to clinics
where donations can only be made on an altruistic basis,
so you can only be compensated for reasonable expenses associated
with the sperm donation, such as travel to the clinic. So,
(05:46):
as a result of this, people have sought online forums
and apps to find sperm donors themselves, bypassing these clinics
and leading to pregnancies sooner rather than later. Many of
the women who use online donors are worried that they
will no longer be in their fertile window if they
(06:07):
wait for sperm to become available through IVF clinics. So
there's real urgency in terms of falling pregnant.
S1 (06:14):
And I think one of the most interesting things about
the piece that you've just written is that it sort
of raises a number of issues that people might not
otherwise think of if they're considering IVF. I mean, I
can understand the desperation and the vulnerability of these women
who want to have a child. They might not be
able to afford IVF, which can be so expensive. So
it's understandable, you know, they would turn to social media,
perhaps to find a donor. But tell me about some
(06:36):
of the risks that this case has brought to light.
S2 (06:39):
Yeah, some of the risks, I guess, are siblings unknowingly
coming into contact with their relatives when they're older. They
might start a relationship with one another if they're not
aware of who exactly they're related to. Particularly given that
quite a few of these families live within kilometres of
one another. So that's a really real fear for these families.
(07:01):
Another risk is that there's no health screening of the
donor sperm. So unlike an IVF clinics where sperm is
screened for STIs and genetic diseases, that doesn't occur in
in this space. There's also risks for the donor as well. Um,
if natural insemination occurs, then they can technically become the
(07:23):
parent and can be liable for child support payments. So
that's something many people are not aware of either. Um,
and I guess as well, you know, can be really
quite confronting for children to discover that they have so
many half siblings. One of the academics I spoke to
said that knowing your origin story is really, really important
(07:44):
in terms of having a sense of your self-identity. So
that's that's a really big issue at play as well.
S1 (07:50):
And four years ago, you actually wrote about a woman
who reported that she was sexually assaulted by a man
who offered to donate his sperm informally without there being
the safeguards of a regulated IVF clinic. So is the
safety of women a particular concern here, too?
S2 (08:04):
There have been reports of women being allegedly sexually assaulted
when they've gone to meet up with a sperm donor,
and often they're in quite a vulnerable position. They really,
really want a child and they can find themselves, um,
I guess in a dangerous situation, potentially with someone who
wants to have sex with them.
S1 (08:26):
And you had an interesting experience as part of your
research for this piece. You actually went on one or
several of these apps that connects people in this way.
So tell us what happened.
S2 (08:36):
Yes. I joined one of the popular apps that connects
people looking for donor sperm with donors, and I only
joined it for about ten minutes, put a photo of
myself up, and I was inundated with messages from men, uh,
often with photos of themselves with their tops off, asking
if I was interested, and it felt very much like
(08:59):
a dating app to me. Rather than, I guess, a
place where you beat someone who is going to help
create a child.
S1 (09:09):
We'll be right back. And so back to the current case.
I'd love to know what Andrew Veitch, the sperm donor,
has told you in response to your story. Like, what
did he say about his motivations and what has he
said since these allegations have been exposed?
S2 (09:30):
Sage provided a pretty detailed response to us via his lawyer.
He said that he was conceived through IVF and motivated
by a desire to help other women, um, expand their families,
become mothers. He said he thought about donating to an
IVF clinic, but a family member dissuaded him against doing so,
(09:50):
and he also felt that donating to a clinic was
less personal. Uh, his lawyer said that informal donations allowed
people to get to know their donor and see their
features and get a feel for their character before going
ahead with an insemination. And she said that while IVF
clinics could feel artificial, informal donation felt a lot more natural.
(10:13):
But she also said that there were some downsides to
this and that that's that there's no rules or protections
governing informal donations. Veitch said that he did think about
the babies growing up and wanting to see him and
getting to know him, perhaps, but he said he didn't
think about the real consequences at the time. He didn't
think about child support, and he didn't think it would
(10:35):
end up like this.
S1 (10:37):
And so is there no regulation in this space at all?
You know, when it comes to informal sperm donation online
rather than through an IVF clinic.
S2 (10:45):
There's absolutely no regulation in this space. It's a really
murky space, legally, ethically. And it has major health implications.
Unlike sperm donors who donate sperm to a clinic, there
are no rules governing how many families that online sperm
donors can contribute to in clinics. It varies from state
(11:06):
to state, but I know in Victoria I think you
can contribute to ten families in New South Wales, eight families.
But there's nothing stopping prolific donors from contributing to many,
many more families than that in the informal sperm donation space.
S1 (11:22):
I mean, I can't be alone here when I hear
that and think, that's a bit scary. So what's the
next step here? Like, what are experts saying can be
done to monitor or regulate this kind of private sperm donation?
S2 (11:33):
Experts have been calling for many years for some sort
of voluntary informal sperm donor register. That's where you'd be
able to record how many families a sperm donor has
donated their sperm to. And it would also give the
offspring an opportunity to find their sperm donor later if
they haven't maintained contact. They would also like to see
(11:56):
family limits like those that exist with IVF clinics, which would,
I guess, stop the situation where you've got, uh, prolific
donors contributing to ten, 20, 30 families.
S1 (12:08):
And so is there any suggestion that the government is
taking this seriously? Because we know you spoke with Rebecca Kirner,
who's the chair of the Australia and New Zealand Infertility
Counsellors Association, and she wrote to federal Health Minister Mark
Butler three times to express, you know, real concerns about
the unregulated world of online sperm donors. So so tell
us about this.
S2 (12:28):
The federal government said that they were very aware of
the concerns in this space, but they didn't really outline
what they were doing to resolve these issues. I guess
it's a very hard space to regulate because people do
have autonomy over the relationships. They strike up with people,
and these meet ups are sort of existing outside any
(12:51):
regulated clinics. But there is obviously a rapid review of
Australia's fertility sector underway at the moment. That was prompted
by a series of IVF bungles involving Monash IVF, and
the state government of Victoria confirmed with me that that
was also going to look at this issue of online
sperm donation.
S1 (13:12):
So would it be safe to say that perhaps this
sort of space has been too hard basket for the
federal government until now, and now perhaps they're being forced
a bit to take a harder look.
S2 (13:23):
I think that's right. Yes. It's been a really difficult
space to regulate, and all the experts have been calling
for change are hopeful that this rapid review might make
some recommendations that would be a step closer to having
some sort of regulations for informal sperm donors to better
protect women, better protect donors and better protect donor can
(13:46):
save children.
S1 (13:47):
Well, thank you so much, Henrietta, for your time.
S2 (13:50):
Thank you sir.
S1 (14:01):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
(14:21):
support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
and sign up for our morning newsletter to receive a
comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and
insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks
(14:44):
for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
July 22nd. More Australians are turning towards using in vitro
fertilization to have babies every year. Often it's done through
(00:21):
regulated IVF clinics, but sometimes parents desperate for a child
search for a sperm donor on social media. But as
this extraordinary case will show, there can be many more
risks associated with, as one lawyer put it, the wild
west of online sperm donation. Today, senior reporter Henrietta Cook
(00:42):
on the case of a Melbourne man who fathered 27 children,
and the fallout after the women he donated to found
each other. So, Henrietta, let's start with Cathy's story. Cathy's
not her real name. You've protected her identity. But she
told you that she was searching for a sperm donor
(01:02):
to help her fulfill her dream of becoming a mother.
And then she came across Andrew Veitch.
S2 (01:08):
That's right. Like thousands of other women, Cathy decided to
go onto social media to find a sperm donor. She
chose to do this because it was quicker than accessing
donor sperm in an IVF clinic, and she also didn't
have the money at the time to afford that treatment.
While you might fork out four and a half to
(01:30):
7500 dollars for IVF at a clinic using donor sperm,
these women basically were able to receive sperm for free.
So she posted an ad requesting what she wanted in
a sperm donor. A man called Andrew Veitch responded to
her post and they then arranged to meet up. She
(01:52):
says at the time that she was quite vulnerable. She
was very desperate to have a baby, and I guess
that's what was driving her to go online to search
for someone. The ten women I spoke to for this
story said they were attracted to Andrew because he seemed
very respectful. He told them he was an engineer. He
shared documentation showing that he had a very high sperm count,
(02:15):
which was about five times that of an average male's.
He said he was healthy. There were no family history
of disease. He seemed like the perfect sperm donor.
S1 (02:25):
And what actually led her to start looking into her
sperm donor further? And what did she find out?
S2 (02:31):
So Kathy discovered about six weeks ago that there were
quite a few women who had also conceived using sperm
from Andrew Veitch. They discovered one another after one of
them posted on a Facebook page asking for other donors
to come forward. They were quite shocked to discover the
(02:51):
scale of Andrew Veitch's donating. They discovered that there were
at least 15 women who had conceived using his sperm,
and that had led to 27 half siblings. These siblings
mainly lived in Victoria, and there was one in Queensland,
and many of them lived within a few kilometres of
(03:13):
one another, and some of them even discovered that they
had come into contact with one another in the community,
without actually realizing they were related. Five of the ten
women who I spoke to said that they had felt
pressured to have natural insemination or sex. They said that
he told them it would improve their chances of falling pregnant.
(03:33):
He denies this and said that he never did that.
We're not suggesting that Veitch committed any crime or did
anything illegal. He hired a lawyer who wrote to them,
kind of confirming how many children had been born as
a result of his donations. And at the moment it
stands at 27 half siblings. They came to me and
(03:57):
wanted to share their story because they are concerned that
there's more kids out there who might be related to
their children.
S1 (04:09):
And on that point, you've actually written that online sperm
donation is growing in popularity. So how much so and why?
S2 (04:17):
That's right. We don't have any exact figures. It's a very, um,
it's completely unregulated space. There's no way of telling how
many babies are born as a result of this. Adam Hooper,
who runs a very popular Facebook page called Sperm Donation Australia,
told me a few years ago that he believes that
more babies are being born through these informal channels, like
(04:40):
his Facebook page, than all the IVF clinics put together.
I think about five years ago, I think, she said,
there was almost 430 babies born as a result of
his page alone. But yeah, we really just don't know.
There's no data collected on this because there's no requirement
for these births and conceptions to be recorded on any
(05:02):
sort of register. Most of the people using these services
are either same sex couples or solo mothers by choice.
There are a few heterosexual couples as well, but they're
mainly people who can't afford IVF or don't want to
wait for ages for sperm, and are put off by
going down that path and dealing with lengthy delays. And
(05:24):
I guess all the red tape as well associated with
IVF clinics. For the past five years, there's been a
sperm drought in Australia. Fewer men are donating to clinics
where donations can only be made on an altruistic basis,
so you can only be compensated for reasonable expenses associated
with the sperm donation, such as travel to the clinic. So,
(05:46):
as a result of this, people have sought online forums
and apps to find sperm donors themselves, bypassing these clinics
and leading to pregnancies sooner rather than later. Many of
the women who use online donors are worried that they
will no longer be in their fertile window if they
(06:07):
wait for sperm to become available through IVF clinics. So
there's real urgency in terms of falling pregnant.
S1 (06:14):
And I think one of the most interesting things about
the piece that you've just written is that it sort
of raises a number of issues that people might not
otherwise think of if they're considering IVF. I mean, I
can understand the desperation and the vulnerability of these women
who want to have a child. They might not be
able to afford IVF, which can be so expensive. So
it's understandable, you know, they would turn to social media,
perhaps to find a donor. But tell me about some
(06:36):
of the risks that this case has brought to light.
S2 (06:39):
Yeah, some of the risks, I guess, are siblings unknowingly
coming into contact with their relatives when they're older. They
might start a relationship with one another if they're not
aware of who exactly they're related to. Particularly given that
quite a few of these families live within kilometres of
one another. So that's a really real fear for these families.
(07:01):
Another risk is that there's no health screening of the
donor sperm. So unlike an IVF clinics where sperm is
screened for STIs and genetic diseases, that doesn't occur in
in this space. There's also risks for the donor as well. Um,
if natural insemination occurs, then they can technically become the
(07:23):
parent and can be liable for child support payments. So
that's something many people are not aware of either. Um,
and I guess as well, you know, can be really
quite confronting for children to discover that they have so
many half siblings. One of the academics I spoke to
said that knowing your origin story is really, really important
(07:44):
in terms of having a sense of your self-identity. So
that's that's a really big issue at play as well.
S1 (07:50):
And four years ago, you actually wrote about a woman
who reported that she was sexually assaulted by a man
who offered to donate his sperm informally without there being
the safeguards of a regulated IVF clinic. So is the
safety of women a particular concern here, too?
S2 (08:04):
There have been reports of women being allegedly sexually assaulted
when they've gone to meet up with a sperm donor,
and often they're in quite a vulnerable position. They really,
really want a child and they can find themselves, um,
I guess in a dangerous situation, potentially with someone who
wants to have sex with them.
S1 (08:26):
And you had an interesting experience as part of your
research for this piece. You actually went on one or
several of these apps that connects people in this way.
So tell us what happened.
S2 (08:36):
Yes. I joined one of the popular apps that connects
people looking for donor sperm with donors, and I only
joined it for about ten minutes, put a photo of
myself up, and I was inundated with messages from men, uh,
often with photos of themselves with their tops off, asking
if I was interested, and it felt very much like
(08:59):
a dating app to me. Rather than, I guess, a
place where you beat someone who is going to help
create a child.
S1 (09:09):
We'll be right back. And so back to the current case.
I'd love to know what Andrew Veitch, the sperm donor,
has told you in response to your story. Like, what
did he say about his motivations and what has he
said since these allegations have been exposed?
S2 (09:30):
Sage provided a pretty detailed response to us via his lawyer.
He said that he was conceived through IVF and motivated
by a desire to help other women, um, expand their families,
become mothers. He said he thought about donating to an
IVF clinic, but a family member dissuaded him against doing so,
(09:50):
and he also felt that donating to a clinic was
less personal. Uh, his lawyer said that informal donations allowed
people to get to know their donor and see their
features and get a feel for their character before going
ahead with an insemination. And she said that while IVF
clinics could feel artificial, informal donation felt a lot more natural.
(10:13):
But she also said that there were some downsides to
this and that that's that there's no rules or protections
governing informal donations. Veitch said that he did think about
the babies growing up and wanting to see him and
getting to know him, perhaps, but he said he didn't
think about the real consequences at the time. He didn't
think about child support, and he didn't think it would
(10:35):
end up like this.
S1 (10:37):
And so is there no regulation in this space at all?
You know, when it comes to informal sperm donation online
rather than through an IVF clinic.
S2 (10:45):
There's absolutely no regulation in this space. It's a really
murky space, legally, ethically. And it has major health implications.
Unlike sperm donors who donate sperm to a clinic, there
are no rules governing how many families that online sperm
donors can contribute to in clinics. It varies from state
(11:06):
to state, but I know in Victoria I think you
can contribute to ten families in New South Wales, eight families.
But there's nothing stopping prolific donors from contributing to many,
many more families than that in the informal sperm donation space.
S1 (11:22):
I mean, I can't be alone here when I hear
that and think, that's a bit scary. So what's the
next step here? Like, what are experts saying can be
done to monitor or regulate this kind of private sperm donation?
S2 (11:33):
Experts have been calling for many years for some sort
of voluntary informal sperm donor register. That's where you'd be
able to record how many families a sperm donor has
donated their sperm to. And it would also give the
offspring an opportunity to find their sperm donor later if
they haven't maintained contact. They would also like to see
(11:56):
family limits like those that exist with IVF clinics, which would,
I guess, stop the situation where you've got, uh, prolific
donors contributing to ten, 20, 30 families.
S1 (12:08):
And so is there any suggestion that the government is
taking this seriously? Because we know you spoke with Rebecca Kirner,
who's the chair of the Australia and New Zealand Infertility
Counsellors Association, and she wrote to federal Health Minister Mark
Butler three times to express, you know, real concerns about
the unregulated world of online sperm donors. So so tell
us about this.
S2 (12:28):
The federal government said that they were very aware of
the concerns in this space, but they didn't really outline
what they were doing to resolve these issues. I guess
it's a very hard space to regulate because people do
have autonomy over the relationships. They strike up with people,
and these meet ups are sort of existing outside any
(12:51):
regulated clinics. But there is obviously a rapid review of
Australia's fertility sector underway at the moment. That was prompted
by a series of IVF bungles involving Monash IVF, and
the state government of Victoria confirmed with me that that
was also going to look at this issue of online
sperm donation.
S1 (13:12):
So would it be safe to say that perhaps this
sort of space has been too hard basket for the
federal government until now, and now perhaps they're being forced
a bit to take a harder look.
S2 (13:23):
I think that's right. Yes. It's been a really difficult
space to regulate, and all the experts have been calling
for change are hopeful that this rapid review might make
some recommendations that would be a step closer to having
some sort of regulations for informal sperm donors to better
protect women, better protect donors and better protect donor can
(13:46):
save children.
S1 (13:47):
Well, thank you so much, Henrietta, for your time.
S2 (13:50):
Thank you sir.
S1 (14:01):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
(14:21):
support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
and sign up for our morning newsletter to receive a
comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and
insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks
(14:44):
for listening.
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