During the Christmas break, the UK Department of Health announced its intention to hold a public consultation on egg and sperm donor anonymity. Sometime in the future, the law protecting donor's identities may be changed.
However, reading some of the newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking that the law has already been changed and that anyone who has donated eggs or sperm in the past, or plans to do so in the future, will be identified. This is just plain wrong. Even if the law is changed sometime in the future à after a consultation has taken place - those people who have already donated will not have their identities revealed at any point in the future. It's their right, right?
The debate around gamete (egg and sperm) donation has been dominated of late with talk of rights. Some say donors have incontrovertible rights to privacy. Others say it is a basic human right to know one's genetic parents. But the problem with framing this debate in terms of rights is that the terms are often used but rarely explained. It might seem unfair that someone born of gamete donation cannot know their genetic mother or father when they desperately want to. But does this mean they have a right to that information?
Further, who would have the responsibility of providing them with this information? If, at the age of 18, people born of donation were automatically given the name of their donor, it would come as a shock if their parents hadn't already told them how they were conceived. Perhaps, in order to avoid this terrible situation, parents should be compelled to tell their children how they were conceived. But if this were to happen, wouldn't it mean that all parents were so obliged? Will a woman have to confess to having an affair if it resulted in a child assumed by all to be her husband's?
In all of this debate, two rights seem reasonable: the donor's right to confidentiality and the recipient's right to access donor conception treatment in the first place. As a society, we generally accept that medical information should not be shared with others without the patient's consent. We also accept that prospective parents should be allowed to make decisions on behalf of their future children. What remains unsolved is whether children really do have a right to know their genetic origins and, if they do, whether it is sufficiently pressing to override the rights of both donors and parents.
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