From a small beginning in a suburban lounge room in January 1993 the DCSG has grown tremendously over the years. From a group of 22 adults in Sydney we have spread to a membership of over 1000 people covering all states of Australia and as well as U.K., Canada, USA, New Zealand, Germany, China, Japan, United Arab Emirates..

Before we existed there was no long-term support for donor conceived families, donors or adult donor offspring. Other infertility support groups just didn’t cover many of the issues that donor conceived families face over the years. There were no groups at all for people who had donated their reproductive tissue or for those conceived by donor egg, sperm or embryo.

Since we began there has been a noticeable increase in the number of stories in the media about donor conception. A number of very brave families within the group have allowed their stories to be told to enable a greater understanding of donor conception and in this I include donor offspring, recipient parents and donors. After every story that we have done there has been an increase in membership and ‘thank-yous’ from people who have finally found others who understand that they have experienced.

The first major event held by our group was the Donor Issues Forum in 1996. This was funded by a grant from the Law Foundation of New South Wales plus donations from a few clinics. It was the first consumer run forum looking at donor conception held anywhere in the world. This event was made extra special in that we were able to get together people from all areas of donor conception: doctors, social workers, recipient parents, donors (both male and female) and adult donor offspring. People attended the forum from a number of states as well as from New Zealand.

After the forum we put together the book “Let the Offspring Speak” made up of papers presented at the forum plus extra ones written by donor offspring in the USA. We self-published the book in 1997 with a loan from the NSW Department of Community Services. The book is now out of print but has sold 1000 copies around the world.

We have recently produced another book “Experiences of Donor Conception – parents, offspring and donors through the years” Caroline Lorbach 2003 (Published by Jessica Kingsley UK) [more information]

Our group has earned a lot of respect from government agencies in Australia. We have had members as consumer representatives on the Western Australian Reproductive technology Council, the Infertility Treatment Authority (Victoria) and also on the NSW Reference Group looking at reproductive technology. We have earned the right to be represented on these groups by our insistence that we have very important issues that need to be looked at and that we as consumers have the experience needed to address these issues. We have also made many submissions over the years to both state and federal inquiries that have dealt with our issues.