ABSTRACT
Access may be restricted by what can be termed global factors. These include resource allocation and funding for the technologies, the availability of information to couples experiencing infertility, cost, geography, and gender. Selection may also be examined in terms of the formal and informal criteria applied. Marital status is the most prominent factor in selection. The underlying issue of access and selection is whether criteria should be determined by public and social policy or by the couple or individual and a health professional, normally a doctor. Under Sweden's law on donor insemination a doctor must ascertain the couple's psychosocial circumstances as well as ensure that they are both medically fit. Clinics may also limit services to those couples with a certain minimum duration of infertility, the "right" motivations for wanting a child, and no history of child abuse by either partner. Advanced infertility procedures involve issues far beyond those a doctor normally deals with in most other areas of medicine.
