The purpose of<unk>  is to provide pregnancies for women whose male partner is infertile or, more commonly, for women who do not have a male partner. The development of fertility medicine such as ICSI has enabled more and more heterosexual couples to produce their own children without the use of third-party gametes which has reduced the demand for<unk>  from this social group. However, at the same time, social attitudes and the social/legal framework has changed in that single women and LGBT+ women and couples can more easily have their own biological families and do so with the aid of<unk> . The desire to have a baby is a natural human instinct and increasingly single women and LGBT+ couples form the highest percentage of those using sperm donors in order to have a baby. Direct sexual contact between the parties is avoided since the donor's sperm is generally placed in the woman's body by artificial means (but see Natural Insemination). One of the intentions of<unk>  is generally that there should be no direct physical or genital contact between the parties. The sexual and physical integrity of both parties is thus preserved. However, a woman who becomes pregnant by a sperm donor will be the recipient of his genetic material. If the woman becomes pregnant, the resulting pregnancy will be no different from one achieved by sexual intercourse, and the sperm donor will be the biological father of her child in the same way as if intimate sexual relations between the donor and the woman had taken place. Donor sperm is prepared for use in artificial insemination in intrauterine insemination (IUI) or intra-cervical insemination (ICI). Less commonly, donor sperm is prepared for use in other assisted reproductive techniques such as IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Donor sperm may also be used in surrogacy arrangements either by artificially inseminating the surrogate (known as traditional surrogacy) or by implanting in a surrogate embryos which have been created by using donor sperm together with eggs from a donor or from the 'commissioning female' (known as gestational surrogacy). Spare embryos from this process may be donated to other women or surrogates. Donor sperm may also be used for producing embryos with donor eggs which are then donated to a female who is not genetically related to the child she produces. Procedures of any kind, e.g., artificial insemination or IVF, using donor sperm to impregnate a female who is not the partner of, nor related to the male who provided the sperm, may be referred to as donor treatments. A Swedish study concluded that 94% of potential donors would be willing to donate to single women and 85% would be willing to donate to lesbian single women or lesbian couples. A review of two studies found that 50 to 68% of actual donors would donate for lesbian couples, and 40 to 64% would donate to single women.
Sperm donation
Egg donation
Semen cryopreservation
LGBT reproduction
Testicular sperm extraction
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection
Posthumous sperm retrieval
In vitro fertilisation