Legal Commentary

Use of sperm and egg donations is common practice in the United States. Couples or individuals who have trouble conceiving or lack a partner resort to use of donor eggs or sperm. The donors are usually young, often college or medical students. Many donate for financial reasons and some for altruistic reasons. But the one thing many of them share is the lack of a desire to form future ties with the born offspring. Thus, unsurprisingly, a strong norm of anonymity has prevailed. Most children born of sperm or egg donations are not told they are conceived through such a donation. And even more importantly the donors are guaranteed anonymity and thereby protection from future contact from the conceived offspring.

But all of this is changing now. Eleven jurisdictions worldwide including: Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Finland and three Australian states have prohibited donor anonymity. In these jurisdictions a child can find out who is the person who donated the egg or sperm that lead to his conception. In the United States the anonymity norm still prevails. Yet, important voices, including Professor Naomi Cahn, in her new book: Test Tube Families, call for adopting the prohibition on anonymity in the United States. The main argument for prohibiting anonymity is the conceived children's need for the genetic information in order to develop their identities.

Advocates of prohibiting donor anonymity realize that prohibiting donor anonymity can deplete sperm and egg resources as fewer individuals will be willing to donate. But, they argue that the effects are only short-term and in the long-term donations are unaffected. I decided to dig deeper into the empirical data in three representative jurisdictions in which anonymity was prohibited: Sweden, Victoria (an Australian state) and the United Kingdom. The overall picture emerging from the empirical data reported in my study revealed a disconcerting scenario of dire shortages in sperm and egg supplies accompanied by long wait-lists. Faced with acute shortages the fertility industry in these jurisdictions tried to recruit older donors who tend to be less inhibited by the disclosure requirement. Yet, this strategy did not fill the gap for sperm. As for eggs it could not be effective because eggs donated by younger women are more  likely to result in a successful pregnancy.  As a result, individuals and couples pained by infertility are increasingly engaging in fertility tourism to countries in which anonymity is not prohibited.  I believe that the picture emerging from these three jurisdictions points to the need for great caution in adopting a prohibition on donor anonymity in the United States.