The London Sperm Bank has just launched a Tinder-style smartphone app that would allow them to choose a sperm donor to father their child, based on certain qualifications, reports the Mirror.
The “order a daddy” app allows women to browse for sperm donors, one of whom could potentially become the daddy of their child, by choosing those with particular physical characteristics such as those that relate to the height, weight as well as hair and eye colour.
They can also choose the donor’s level of education and read a description of his personality.
Applicants come from a wide range of professions including law, medicine, finance, engineering, hospitality and performing arts.
After picking a donor, women have to pay £950 through the mobile app for a sample of the sperm, which will then be delivered to the clinic where they are treated. If the ideal donor is not immediately available, users can opt to set up a wish-list that will send an alert once someone with the desired attributes makes a sperm donation.
London Sperm Bank, who launched the app, believes it is a first of its kind.
Scientific director Dr Kamal Ahuja said, “You make all the transactions online, like you do anything else these days. This allows a woman who wants to get a sperm donor to gain control in the privacy of her own home and to choose and decide in her own time”.
About half of the IVF clinics in Britain, which include private and National Health Service (NHS) institutions, already registered to use the service. However, critics have blasted the app, saying it trivialises parenthood.
Josephine Quintavalle, from campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said, “How much further can we go in the trivialisation of parenthood?”
“This is reproduction via the mobile phone. It’s digital dads. Choose Daddy. This is the ultimate denigration of fatherhood,” Quintavalle added.
