tto think it should be illegal to travel abroad for anonymous egg/sperm donation?

[ZoeCM]

If the government can ban people from travelling outside the UK for FGM, why can't they ban this? It's absolutely appalling that clinics will destroy all records of a child's biological parent in this day and age. Yes, the child can potentially trace their parents through companies such as AncestryDNA, but there's no guarantee they'll be successful. It's a massive abuse of power.

Anonymous donation is all about what's best for the recipients and the donor, never the child. AIBU to think it should be illegal to travel abroad for this purpose?

Allowing adults the opportunity to find out about their genetic background isn’t teaching children that genetics matter above all else. That’s just daft.

Its 100% possible to bring up your donor conceived children to love you and understand you are their parents, and they your children-loved just as much as genetic children would be- and also let them know they have some genetic links with someone else.

So I can order a dna test online and it will give me the name and contact information for my genetic parents? Wow. Excellent science magic.

The rhetoric is off the chain. What’s next lambasting English parents that have and raise their babies outside England because they’re “orchestrating the creation of a person cut off from their ethnic history?”

Do we all need to be like the Virgin Mary and make sure we get to our husbands’s place of birth to have our own DCs?

‘Genetic history’ isn’t the correct term to use for biological mum and/or dad.

Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges, and you'll just Alienate people. I'm not entirely sure how it would even be possible to make traveling across for anonymous donation illegal. When we travel we follow the laws of the country we're in. Saying this, I don't disagree with you about anonymous sperm donation being unethical.

My husband is infertile and we'll need to use a donor. We've spent almost 2 years delving deep to find as much information as we can because like most parents, we want to make sure we maximise the chances of good outcomes for any children we have.

The majority of studies, and the majority of donor conceived children say that a known donor is the optimal route because donor conceived children have better outcomes if they can access their genetic mirrors, their medical history and where possible their donor/donors relatives to maintain biological links and answer questions as they come up. Obviously this can't always happen, and lots of places like the UK do make information and the option of contact accessible from when a child turns 18.

For what it's worth, I personally think it's unethical, and cruel for a parent using a donor to actively prevent a child from accessing basic information about themselves. I think the bare minimum should be open ID once the child turns 18.

However while I do hold these views
The much bigger issue is the lack of donor regulation in some countries. Lots of countries have absolutely zero limits on how many families a person can donate to. In the UK a donor can donate to a maximum of 10 families. Donor's also lose anonymity when the child is 18.

In the USA on the other hand, there is no limit to how many families a man can donate to, and a donor can remain completely anonymous. This opens up the potential for issues such as accidental incest. There have been stories where men haven't been told that their donations will be split into multiple "straws". So one donation can be split into 4-8 straws. There was one man who has fathered something like 90 children due to the unethical and unregulated practices. I personally feel there should be an international regulation of how many families a man can donate to via a clinic. It's something that should be the same across the board for ethical and safety reasons. Obviously it wouldn't prevent out of clinic donations but it would be a start in addressing major issues in the donation industry.

And no, I don't feel like any of this is anything like FGM.

Apologies for the huge essay. Like I said, this has been our journey for the past two years, so I have done and still do a lot of reading and research

@Jjiillkkf the poll is about making it ILLEGAL. Which apart from anything else is impractical.

The poll does not indicate whether or not people believe it is advantageous for children to be able to trace their parentage.

Or you were unwanted and unplanned after a seedy ONS where your mother didn't even bother to get your father's name versus your mother and father wanted you so much they invested time and money to get you, your mother went through painful and invasive procedures to have you and a kind woman/man donated an egg/sperm to make it all positive. You have always known you much you were wanted and are loved.

There’s something else important that I think is being missed here. It’s not just ‘genetic history’ which is being withheld.

I have noticed as I have got older that my own cousins have become more important to me. Having adult discussions about certain traits we have in common and so on, helping me to make more sense of myself and even to make more sense of my own children.

So the child is also being denied access to that entire family tree and all the living relatives in it, when they are denied that link. It’s not just genetic code or names on some certificates. It’s people - relatives.

I think it would depend upon how much I resented having no access to my genetic history/family. In one case it was carelessness, the other was deliberateness. I think I would resent deliberateness much more than carelessness in that situation.

Article about egg donation here. Personally I do not feel at all comfortable with young uni students being targeted as potential egg donors.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/fertility-clinics-using-social-media-persuade-young-women-sell-eggs-2217424

We are all different and personally I resent that I was a mistake and knew that from an early age. To me knowing my parents worked so hard to get me and wanted me so much would outweigh genetic history.

Again we are all different, I haven't seen any of my cousins in years, I think I saw a couple of them about 12 years ago at a funeral. I have no contact with them, nothing in common with them, no desire to see them. I have lots of cousins, well I did but I suppose some of them could be dead.

But you are not in a situation where your parents worked hard to get you but you don't know your genetic history. So just like men can't know what it's like to be women, you don't know how you'd feel if you were in that situation.

I know what it feels like to be a mistake, for one of my earliest memories to be that my mother contemplated suicide when she found out she was having me. I hope you don;t know what it feels like to be in that situation.

Returning to the question of how this could ever be enforceable, assuming you were able to somehow identify that a family had gone overseas for donor treatment that you'd now made illegal, what would the remedy be? Mandatory abortion of any pregnancy conceived in this way? I can't see how that could possibly be considered ethical, and the potential for disastrous mistakes seems quite high even if you thought it was reasonable. Imprisonment of the parents? That would clearly be immensely traumatic and likely harmful to the donor conceived children involved. If your basic premise is that anonymous donor conception is harmful to the children involved, then you need to identify a remedy that doesn't harm them further if you want to make their conception illegal - because people absolutely do go ahead and do things even though the law says they can't.

Which is an article focused on egg donation in the U.K., which is (of course) not anonymous...

Excellent points! I can imagine any court case forcing an abortion would last well after the baby is born, so mandatory abortion would be right out. Confiscating the ‘illegally conceived’ baby and having them raised in state care would not be in the baby’s best interests.

I can’t see how this is ever going to be enforceable?

💐 If it’s any consolation, I was an accident, my mum was going to have me aborted, my dad tried to dissuade her and her friend basically reassured her that she’d be alright, so here I am. She did have two abortions after me though, which a weird thought.

This is assuming a picture perfect ideal though isn’t it?
A lot can happen in 18 years. The donor will likely have a wife and family that they possibly didn’t have at the time of donation, maybe even school age children, other things going on. There is much more to consider than the original donor child, it’s complex and can impact a lot of peoples lives. An automatic right to the donors name, dob, last known address isn’t necessarily going to result in any kind of relationship with them, much less being part of another, extended family.

The is true. And I think it’s time society had a proper, sensible discussion about all the ethical issues surrounding donor conception and surrogacy.

Currently we are allowing the scientific advances dictate how people are made, rather than following considered ethical principles.

Haven't read the thread. All I know is we went abroad for our final throw at IVF after 9 failed attempts. We now have a beautiful little boy and I can't thank the sperm and egg donors enough. I'm sorry we will never know them but I totally respect their anonymity. So no, I can't agree.

And yes, we will discuss it with him when the time is right

This 100000%. I know what I’d prefer!

This is the crux of the matter- different things are important to different people.

Some donor conceived people won’t care and they shouldn’t have genetic parents forced on them, and some will care and should have the option to contact their donor.

So donor conceived children should be anonymous and donors should be traceable.

What will you do if he feels a deep need to know his genetic parent (s)?