August 2025: This week Leah submitted evidence from the project to the NHS Evidence Review of LGBT+ Health which was commissioned by the Department for Health and Social Care. You can download and read the full submission by clicking the expand button on the image to the left. Details of the review and evidence submission process are available here: NHS England » LGBT+ health 

We hope that evidence from the Digital Donor Conception study, and a consideration of the evidence on informal donor conception more broadly, will help to address LGBT+ reproductive health inequalities, which intersect with other forms of inequalities (e.g. relating to economics, ethnicity and disability). The overarching message of our submission is that supporting LGBT+ reproductive health will require both removing barriers to clinical donor conception for all groups and improving support and (legal) recognition for those who choose informal routes. Our evidence submission supports the recommendations of the Fertility Justice Campaign.

June 2024

In this blog post, PI, Leah Gilman argues that the 'just say no' approach evident in many 'official' responses to informal donor conception is inadequate. Instead we must listen to the experiences of parents, donors, donor conceived people and their families who choose or who are impacted by this route to donor conception. This is necessary in order to improve support and recognition for all families formed via donor conception

Moving beyond a 'just say no' approach to informal donor conception (progress.org.uk) 

May 2024

We are pleased to say that we will now be offering a £20 voucher to all participants in phase 2 of our research.

This decision has been approved by the The University of Sheffield's Research Ethics Committee and was taken after extensive discussion within the research team and with advisory board member Jenny Okona-Mensah (Fertility Network UK). 

We hope that this will signal our recognition and gratitude for participant's contributions to our research. We know that sometimes participants travel or take time out of work/leisure/family time to take part and we want to recognise this. It is important that participants know that this does not impact their rights to opt-out of or withdraw from any aspect of the research.

We will be sending all previous participants a voucher too over the coming months.

Read our March 2024 blog post which shares our intention to move public discussions of informal donor conception beyond the 'just say no' approach often evident to date:

The Digital Donor Conception Study: Kickstarting a ‘Grown Up’ Conversation about Informal Donor Conception – Sociological Studies Research (socstudiesresearch.com)