Artificial insemination by anonymous donors has always had a whiff of hubris about it – the notion that you can specify physical and mental traits you’d like in your child’s biological father, as if ordering clothes online (albeit with a worse returns policy) is jarring, as is the fact that it amounts to eliminating fatherhood in all but the most basic biological sense. I don’t have any strong views on the use of donor sperm for married couples wanting a child that is (half) biologically theirs; using sperm from a relative makes a certain visceral sense, although it would complicate relations with the in-laws and extended family immensely.
But whether the procedure is used for frivolous or profoundly well thought out reasons, there are a number of risks implicit in the whole concept. And one of them is that we’re not yet capable of knowing exactly what someone’s genes have in store for them, or how the genes of both parents will combine in any given instance. But this story, about a sperm donor with congenital heart trouble, who fathered 24 children, 9 of whom have this problem as well, should be sobering.
Now of course, this man may well have fathered children “naturally,” and those children would also have a high risk of carrying this gene; a sperm bank is no guarantee of a perfect child, and neither is natural conception. But one of the things fertility clinics sell is the idea that you can choose your baby. And it’s highly improbable that one man would father 24 children the old-fashioned way.
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Can’t be very picky over here in the UK. We have a serious shortage of sperm – under UK law, there is no guarantee of anonyminity once any offspring reaches adulthood. Give sperm, and eighteen years later an unexpected child may come knocking. Unsurprisingly this puts many men off of donating.
Quite understandable. I think it’s a bad law, but that’s just the way it works.
Suricou: I’m interested in approaches to regulating fertility therapy, including limits on anonymity. While I take issue with retroactively nullifying anonymity – if you give sperm under the assumption that your identity will not be disclosed, it’s not quite kosher to have the rules changed on you midgame – I put a higher value on the rights of a child to know his or her heritage than I do on the rights of a donor to remain nameless, since donors choose to donate while babies don’t choose to be conceived. On the other hand, I support anonymity for parents who give up a child for adoption, because I suspect that this protection might well tip the balance for some people between abortion and adoption of an unwanted child.
It’s a fairly ugly situation either way, though. I don’t envy someone finding out he’s a father based on a donation two decades ago – or, more specifically of whom he’s a father, given that the intent of a donation is to help a woman conceive – or his wife suddenly becoming a stepmother. On the other hand, it must seem outright cruel to a child of donor sperm to know that somewhere, there are records of who fathered you and what his medical history is, but that you’ll never get to access it.
The best compromise I’ve seen is one that provides full disclosure of the donor’s medical and family history, without identifying information. What do you think of that?
That sounds like a perfect solution to me. Everyone should have access to the medical history of their biological parents, not for any abstract reason of rights, but simply because it is medically significent information. Anonymise them, and there is no longer an issue of privacy.
It’s be worth keeping the actual parential ID on file, just for the unlikely eventuality that either parent or offspring is diagnosed with something serious and genetic years after the donation – the other should be informed. But that’s the only reason I can see to use the information.