The Guardian reports on impending changes to gamete donation regulations in the UK: Donor children will have right to know. That is, when they turn 18, they will be given the names of their donors.
On the one hand:
... an umbrella group called Progar, which brings together organisations involved in adoption and representing donor children, warmly welcomed what it described as a "forward-thinking decision" by the government. "Removing donor anonymity means that donor-conceived people are no longer the only group of people from whom the state withholds biographical information held on official records," said Elizabeth Wincott, Progar's chairwoman.
On the other hand:
Alan Pacey, of the British Fertility Society, which represents the clinics, said the news was good for donor children, but they were concerned [...] that donor numbers would drop. "There is a danger that if we cannot recruit donors we may find that many infertile couples will be unable to receive treatment."
(You might remember that an Australian clinic was trying to recruit Canadian college student donors by offering them free trips a few weeks ago. The underlying issue there was the same—New South Wales has passed a law requiring eventual disclosure of identity.)
As an illegitimate child happily married to an azoospermatic guy, with whom I want to raise a child, I'm not sure where my sympathies are supposed to lie.
However unfortunately or unfairly, there is no preexisting right to know who one's biological parents are (biological asymmetries mean that it's far more likely that the father's unknown, of course). Would it suck to know that the information is locked in a file cabinet someplace, but that no one will ever let you read the file? Yes. But, for plenty of people there simply is no file folder, anywhere.
I do wonder if there might be a strong cryptographic soution—a way to actually lose information permanently, yet maintain verifiability of whatever the donor has agreed to transmit.
I'm glad that, should we choose this route, we'll have the full gonzo spectrum of US cryobank options available. There are people who really want a donor open to eventual disclosure, and that should of course be an available option. But requiring it goes too far.
UPDATE Go read getupgrrl reminding us that efforts are underway to possibly wildly increase regulation of ART and related things in the US. Follow her links! Read the commments, too!
And don't forget what's happened in Italy.
(I feel like I should make it clear that it's not that I'm opposed to governmental involvement. Heck, if they'd provide research money, and oversight of how it's used, I bet our doctors would know a lot more about how to get this stuff to work than they do now. But I fear that the religious ideology of a few could be imposed on us all—particularly given the current administration.)
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