The right of the donor to information about children conceived from his or her gametes

Abstract

The field of gamete donation for medically assisted reproduction purposes is evolving. While anonymous gamete donation was long the preferred practice, a new focus on the rights and interests of donor-conceived children has led a number of countries to shift towards an open-identity system. However, this evolution appears to overlook whether information exchange could also be of interest to the other parties involved, in particular the gamete donors. In this article, we analyse the question whether donors should be granted a right to some information about the offspring conceived by their donations. We constructed five arguments which donors could use in support of such a claim: (i) It can be of great importance to the donors' and their own children's health that they receive medical information (in particular, evidence of an unsuspected genetic disease) about the donor offspring; (ii) basic information (such as whether any children were born) could be a way to acknowledge donors for their altruistic behaviour; (iii) general information (information about the child's wellbeing) about the donor offspring could ease the donors' potential concern about and sense of responsibility for the offspring; (iv) basic information could provide an important enrichment of the donors' identities; (v) identifying information would be useful for donors who want to contact the donor offspring. No strong arguments in favour of granting donors the right to identifying information were found. An exchange of this type of information should only be accepted when all parties agree. Taken together, the four first arguments form a strong case for granting donors a right to several types of anonymous information about the donor offspring. © 2013 The Author.