'Desperate' 22-year-old uses donor sperm, gets pregnant, then aborts baby

A 22-year-old woman from the United Kingdom (UK) who was "desperate" to have a baby turned to Facebook for a sperm donor and then, when that failed, an IVF clinic. Then she ended up aborting her baby due to a prenatal diagnosis.

Key Takeaways:

• Alannah Dunn decided to have a baby at 22 using a sperm donor and IVF to "fill the hole in her heart."

• After getting a sperm donor and donating nine of her own eggs to offset costs, she finally got pregnant.

• At 20 weeks, her baby was diagnosed with a life-limiting condition, and decided to have an abortion.

• Dunn then nearly died from abortion complications.

The Details:

Alannah Dunn was 22, living in New Zealand, and single when she decided that to fill the "hole in [her] heart." She decided she would find a man on Facebook from whom to obtain sperm.

"I get a lot of anxiety meeting new people, and I tried dating apps but just didn't meet the right person. I realised, 'why am I waiting for a relationship to have children, when all I really want is a baby now?" she said. "I'm not writing off a relationship, but having a baby is what I'm prioritising."

She purchased an at-home insemination kit and began messaging a local man who wanted to donate his sperm after previously having done so for a friend.

"I could have gone down the formal, legal route, but I was part of a Facebook group for people doing it independently, including donors, and wanted to do it that way, without any delays," she said, adding, "We met up, had proper conversations, and he didn't seem like a dodgy person. I felt very safe."

They signed a contract stating that no money was exchanged and that he would not have any parental rights, leaving his child without a father.

For 18 months, Dunn drove to the man's house, collected his sperm, went home, and inseminated herself. She became pregnant once, but had a miscarriage.

She eventually opted to go to an in vitro fertilization clinic instead. The waiting list for IVF was apparently three years in New Zealand, so she returned home to the UK because she felt she "could not wait any longer."

After some setbacks, she went to a private IVF clinic in June 2025. To save money, she participated in an "egg sharing cycle,"' in which she donated half of her eggs. She had 18 eggs removed, donating nine and keeping nine. The nine she kept were fertilized, and three survived to the blastocyst stage.

At this point, she had lost one baby to miscarriage, gave nine of her eggs to strangers to create her own biological children with no say in who raised them, and lost six other embryos before even attempting implantation.

Zoom In:

After developing and healing from Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome — a painful condition in which the ovaries swell and leak fluid into the abdomen as a reaction to the hormones used to force them to overproduce eggs — the first "viable" embryo was transferred in August. That embryo did not survive.

In November 2025, she became pregnant. At 20 weeks, she was told there was little to no amniotic fluid, her baby was missing kidneys and a urinary tract, and it was unlikely that her baby would survive.

Dunn said:

"My world just crashed. They said they couldn't see her bladder, kidneys or urinary tract, and she wasn't producing amniotic fluid, meaning her lungs wouldn't develop.

Her chest had a bell shape because there were no lungs, and they said she could be compressed due to being underdeveloped. Her skull was also being compressed and had not fused together, it was in fragments, because of the low amniotic fluid."

A few weeks later, she decided to abort this baby, named Effie, whom she had so desperately wanted, because she didn't want to watch her die.

Her baby girl was 24 weeks along when Dunn underwent an induction abortion, in which a feticide was injected into the baby girl's heart to put her into cardiac arrest. According to PA Media, Dun was also given a "medication to halt pregnancy hormones," which could have been mifepristone, the abortion pill. It counteracts the natural pregnancy hormone progesterone.

Two days later, Dunn was induced and gave birth to her stillborn daughter.

"I held her because I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't," she said. She then brought her home for two days with a cold cot to "spend time with her."

Then came the complications. Dunn suffered a severe hemorrhage, losing over 2.5 liters of blood, and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors removed retained placenta, meaning the abortion had been incomplete.

Dunn nearly died, and came close to losing her uterus.

Now, she has one embryo remaining and is fundraising for the £5,000 she needs to transfer that embryo to her uterus. She said she is already £10,000 in debt from the IVF process.

"It's my last chance to give Effie a sibling[;] it would mean to the world to me. It's all I've ever wanted," she said (emphasis added).

But a sibling for Effie is not "all she's ever wanted." She has wanted a baby to "fill the hole in her heart." Effie will not know her siblings here on Earth, either the one who is currently frozen or any future siblings her mother or father creates.

For Dunn, this path appears to have been about creating a child for herself, not creating children for the sole good of who they are as image bearers of God.

Why It Matters:

Dunn admitted that she has a background that includes trauma. According to research, childhood trauma can lead to a deep desire to have one's own children as a way to find the unconditional love and affection one may not have received as a child. If this is what fueled Dunn's efforts to have a baby, it's understandable. But it doesn't justify her actions.

First of all, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority says getting sperm from Facebook and other "informal" sources has "implications for everyone," including the child. "An increasing number of exploitative or serial unregulated sperm donors are breaking the law and putting anyone using their donation, and any children born, at risk of serious harm," it said. "Although this may seem like a cheaper or easier option compared to treatment at a UK licensed clinic, this could be outweighed by risk of significant lifelong consequences and costs from using an unregulated donor."

Risks include STIs, custody disputes, and hundreds of half-siblings whom they do not know but may meet one day, unaware they are biologically related.

Emma Dine said she knew she was donor-conceived from the age of 10, and was able to track down her biological father. She’s since been matched with at least 25 siblings. “I do little maths scenarios in my head,” she said. “About 5% of the UK population is on Ancestry.com. If we’ve identified 25 siblings on there alone – there’s going to be variables, but if you just directly extrapolate it, you’re looking at 500. Even if you take that down by a degree of magnitude, it makes me uncomfortable.”

Other issues troubled her; she said she would not date someone from the UK out of fear of accidentally dating an unknown sibling.

Second, children do care about their biology and where they "come from," as has been shared by countless adults who learned they were donor conceived. Dine said it is painful to know how she was conceived. "You hear about people’s parents meeting at Glastonbury,” she said. “This isn’t very glamorous or romantic, and the numbers add to that feeling. It does make you feel a bit mass-produced.”

Ellie, another woman conceived using a donor, wrote, “I’m the child of a stranger, who altruistically sold me, his biological daughter, to a family he would never meet. He signed away his rights to be a father to me, and my parents gladly bought the gift that would give them a child. They were ecstatically happy when my mother became pregnant, but no one considered how I would feel about the transaction that took place, how I would feel about having no right to a relationship with my biological father, no access to my paternal family, not even medical information.”

And finally, more lives are lost to IVF than to abortion. The process of IVF commodifies children and turns them into products, rather than the unique human beings that they are. The IVF process:

• treats human beings as commodities.

• creates human beings in a lab and grades them for 'quality assurance and quality control'.

• allows embryos to be indefinitely frozen.

• allows the destruction of embryos deemed 'non-viable'.

The risks associated with IVF are many for both the children who survive the process and the women involved in the process, whether donor, surrogate, or birth mother. Children are at risk of low birth weight, higher blood pressure, hormonal imbalances and advanced bone age, cardiovascular issues and cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, childhood leukemia, and even infertility.

For women, the Mayo Clinic lists risks including complications such as bleeding, infection, and damage to the bowel, bladder, or blood vessels from the egg retrieval process. There’s also ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and risks to a woman’s mental health.

The Bottom Line:

Dunn and the countless other women who take this path to motherhood likely do not have evil intentions. They are seeking the love and the beauty of being a mother, but in doing so, their children are left fatherless, confused, and very often, frozen or dead.

Unfortunately, this story is an example of how commodified children have become in the fertility industry, which puts adult desires over the best interests of children.

Dunn went into financial debt to create children, and when she learned her daughter had a serious medical condition, she chose abortion. Because when children can be mass produced and tested for quality, they are expected to live up to continually higher standards.