Image – Shutterstock: Reproductology laboratory assistant at work
A Scottish NHS board is calling for women to donate their eggs in a new public advertising campaign. SPUC is concerned at the implication this could have on the donor-conceived children in the region.
NHS Tayside has launched a public appeal to recruit egg and sperm donors, citing more than 200 people across Scotland currently waiting for treatment. Around 50 couples in Tayside alone are on waiting lists, with delays expected to grow due to a shortage of donors.
The campaign, which includes advertising on buses and public information stands, encourages people to consider donation as a way to help others “achieve their dreams of having a child.”
Sara Beveridge, a senior nurse specialist involved in the programme, said donors could be “the missing piece in someone’s jigsaw,” playing on the emotional impact infertility can have on couples.
It is another reflection of a rising problem in Western society: the belief in a “right to children.” Increasingly they are seen as a commodity to be obtained, rather than individuals with needs and rights of their own.
A further concern is the expectation that women should undergo invasive medical procedures to provide eggs for others. Egg donation is not a simple act. It involves hormone treatment, medical intervention, and potential health risks, yet the campaign frames it largely in terms of helping others fulfil their desire for a child.
The NHS should not be encouraging women to take on these risks to meet rising demand for IVF, particularly when in 2025 there were between 165 and 175 children in Scotland waiting for adoptive parents—almost the same number as people requesting donor eggs. To top this off, there were 18,710 abortions in Scotland in 2024. This was the highest number on record.
The issue is not that there are not enough children. The ones that exist are just killed and ignored as commissioning parents fulfil their own desires to create children.
There are also concerns about the impact on children born through donor conception. Although anonymity was removed in UK law in 2005, allowing individuals to trace their biological origins at 18, this does not change the fundamental reality that such children are intentionally separated from one or both of their natural parents from the outset. The child’s right to know and be raised by their mother and father is often overlooked in discussions that focus primarily on adult desires.
In addition, IVF itself leaves a trail of ruined children and blood. The process frequently involves the creation of multiple embryos, many of which are never implanted and are ultimately discarded or frozen indefinitely. This is no way to treat human life.
Peter Kearney, SPUC’s Communications Manager, said: “NHS Tayside’s targeting of vulnerable women for the sake of their eggs is not progressive or benevolent, it’s predatory. The Scottish National Health Service has kowtowed to Western culture’s new default: ignoring the rights and needs of children. Donor conception is done to placate the will of adults, not better the lives of little ones. Paired with the havoc wrought by IVF on the smallest members of the human family, their call is abhorrent.
“SPUC stands for the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception and the beauty of adopting children in need, not the commissioning of children from poor women who give up their eggs for money.”
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