According to Cryos International, European Sperm Bank and SellmerDiers, more women are contacting private sperm donors to avoid being treated at fertility clinics, Danish daily Jyllands-Posten reported.

“We have a vision to help women have the children they want, and we think the law pushes women into a market where neither the women nor the children are helped,” Helle Sejersen Myrthue, director of Cryos International told the paper. 

A new law came into force in July 2018, preventing sperm banks from sending sperm directly to private addresses so that women could inseminate themselves at home. 

According to the Tissue Act, insemination must take place in approved fertility clinics, hospital wards, or by authorised health staff.

Jyllands-Posten reported that the ban had created a market for the private exchange of semen on closed internet forums and groups on Facebook, for example.

The sperm banks are concerned about this as such sperm would not screened for hereditary diseases, for example.

But Bugge Nøhr, chief physician and head of clinic at the Fertility Clinic at Herlev Hospital said women should also be aware that they are twice as likely to conceive when insemination is carried out a clinic rather than at home.

The Ministry of Health has been discussing the proposal with sperm banks and the Danish Patient Safety Authority (Styrelsen for Patientsikkerhed), but a number of matters need to be considered before the ministry will move forward with it, the paper reported.