Research into practice

This article draws on three recent studies¹ of the
views of people conceived following donor insemination and supports
recent calls for a change in UK law to allow people born as a
result of donor conception to learn more about their genetic
origins.²

The studies by Turner and Coyle, and Hewitt draw on an
international network of donor-conceived children and adults, most
of whom have discovered the truth of their origins comparatively
late in life or in unplanned or less than ideal circumstances or
both. Most of these people had little information about their donor
and were unlikely ever to learn his identity.

The third study, in contrast, studied the experiences of young
people aged between 12 and 17 who had been told about their origins
at a young age and are in a position to learn the identity of their
donor.

These studies provide evidence that:

• Donor-conceived children can be informed about their origins in
  sensitive and age-appropriate ways without damaging family
  relationships.
• People learning earlier about their origins are able to
  accommodate this information more readily than those told later.
  Those told later often wish they had been informed earlier – and
  frequently comment on feeling that information had been withheld
  from them and that they had an awareness of “difference” about
  themselves and their families.
• Appropriate disclosure is not a one-off event, but a process
  developing over time.
• Inadvertent or poorly-managed disclosure may generate negative
  feelings about the concealment of this information and may damage
  family relationships.
• Lack of information about the donor leads to frustration and
  identity problems for many donor-conceived people and may be a
  barrier to some parents being open since they feel ill-prepared for
  any further questions that may be generated by disclosure. Some
  donor-conceived people consider that only knowledge of the donor’s
  identity will help them to make sense of their own identity and
  that this information is their fundamental civil right.
• Most donor-conceived people who are able to discover the
  donor’s identity indicate an interest in doing so, but they are not
  interested in knowing their donor as a substitute parent nor with a
  view to making financial or emotional demands on him.
• An individual donor may have contributed to the creation of
  more than one donor-conceived child and may also have a child or
  children of his or her own. Some donor-conceived people have
  indicated a wish to identify and locate any siblings they may
  have.

The parallels between the experiences of donor-conceived people
and adopted people denied information about their genetic origins
are self-evident. At present, UK law protects donor anonymity, and
consequently prevents the identification of other genetic
relatives. The government is considering whether this law should be
changed. While there are unsubstantiated claims that the
identification of donors might jeopardise the supply of sperm for
donation, the evidence from donor-conceived people is that such
pragmatic considerations, even if they were to be substantiated,
should not be allowed to trump the case for disclosure and
truth.

Eric Blyth is professor of social work at the University of
Huddersfield.

² See J Feast, “Misconceived secrecy”, Community
Care 4-10 July, 2002