Proposals to bring donor-conceived people’s birth certification into line with that of all other UK citizens

Rupert Rushbrooke

In July 2007 the Joint Committee on the Draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill accepted the moral case for putting the mode of conception on the birth certificates of donor-conceived people. In this paper it is argued that the problem goes much deeper. For seventy years the paradigm under which people have been conceived and born using donated sperm or eggs has been that of "treating the childless", whereas the paradigm underlying everyone else’s conception and birth has been "creating a human being". This has resulted in a two-tier society whereby for most of its citizens the state collates, as far as is practical, their genetic identities, and allows them to have such information as is in its keeping. The exceptions are donor-conceived people, who have significantly inferior rights. In this paper it is argued that the same paradigm and the same rights should apply to all UK citizens.

In practice, this would involve four measures, all of them in line with adoption practice:

(iv) The Government would collect as many records as possible of DC-people conceived from the 1930’s to 1991, lodge the identities of the donors with the GRO, and make them available to the people concerned.

Importance of genetic identity
We know that genetic relationships are of great importance. Historically, when important relationships have been lost, when they have been unclear, and when they have been lied about, significant distress has often been caused: family scandals, hushed-up affairs, classic folk tales and celebrated novels, thousands of lesser works, TV dramas and soap operas. These stories are enthralling for onlookers and readers, precisely because of the depth of emotion involved, but the reality is that the people involved suffer greatly, and deceit exacerbates their pain _[1].


Scale and depth of deception
Only 10-20% of people who have a child by donor conception tell the child how she was conceived _[2]. As well as the scale of this deception, we need to understand its psychological depth. The identities of one’s genetic parents are foundation stones in one’s psyche. To lie to a child about her identity is to ensure that those deep foundations are not permanent, but brittle constructions that can collapse with an angry revelation, the discovery of a blood-type anomaly with a parent, an unguarded remark by a friend or relative who knows the truth, or even with a half-formed, half-conscious guess later in life, leading to a speculative letter to the HFEA, who will confirm the truth. Furthermore, the child is being lied to by the people she loves and trusts above all others. This lie is explicit and implicit, conscious and subconscious, occurring many times a day throughout her life.

Educating the parents to tell the child that he is donor-conceived is not enough, and not merely because we know from Sweden that this approach has only a partial effect _[3]. A person’s identity ought not to be in his parents’ gift, but something he has as of right.


History and meaning of birth certification
It is important to clarify what birth certificates have always meant to society in general. It is illegal to knowingly and willingly make a false declaration on a birth certificate _[4]. Nonetheless, it does not follow that one can assume with complete certainty that a birth certificate carries the names of that child’s genetic parents. The husband is assumed in law to be the genetic father of his wife’s children. Historically, it could hardly have been assumed otherwise, since without blood tests or DNA testing, it would have been next to impossible to prove that the husband could not have been the father. In cases where the mother was unmarried, the name of the genetic father may have been given incorrectly, deliberately or in error. Prosecution in such cases would have been similarly impractical. The only clear case would have been if a woman presented a baby at registration as being her own, and it became clear that it was not. In other cases, for various reasons, the name of the genetic father was not given at all. Notwithstanding these anomalies, we know that in 98-99% of cases the birth certificate provides the true identities of the genetic parents _[5].

Adoption fits into this overall picture of birth certificate information. Before 1927 there was no state control of records relating to adoption. After 1927 an adoptee had a birth certificate in the ordinary way, and was then issued with an adoption certificate. The latter showed the adoptive parents as the legal parents, but did not pretend that they were genetically related to the child. Until 1975 adoptees were not allowed access to their birth certificates, and therefore could never know their genetic parents. In 1975 this was reversed _[6], and over half of all adoptees apply for their birth certificates to discover their genetic origins _[7]. Even under the secretive 1927-1975 system adoptive parents were never allowed to re-register the child as their genetic child. The difference, therefore, between genetic parents and social parents has been quite clear in adoption law and practice.

In summary, the state has done what it reasonably could to ensure that birth certificates showed the names of the genetic parents of the child, and those of no-one else. It has made that information available to all its citizens, with the exception of adoptees, an anomaly corrected in 1975.


Exceptions of DC-people
The remaining exceptions are DC-people. When donor insemination began commercially in the 1930’s _[8], the doctors withheld the identities of the natural fathers (and, subsequently, natural mothers). The Government colluded with this until 2004, and then only insisted on identifiable donors for conceptions from April 2005 onwards. Also, as we have seen, most customers have withheld from their children the fact that they were donor-conceived. The Government could have prevented this deception through birth certification reform, but has never done so. This collusion with the doctors’ secrecy and with the customers’ lies is unprecedented in the state’s actions with regard to the genetic identity of its citizens.


Two paradigms
The primary historical cause of the discrimination against DC-people has been the political influence of the medical profession. The paradigm of donor conception was set by the doctors in the 1930’s as "treating the childless", and this remains in place. As a result, the institution of donor conception is seen as being the property of the doctors and their customers, giving an apparent legitimacy to the idea that the customers have rights that should always prevail.

The paradigm governing the conception and birth of everyone else (including adoptees) is simply that of "creating a human being". Consequently, when it comes to recording an individual’s identity and making that information available to them, no-one else is seen as a having a prior claim. If everyone is to be treated as intrinsically equal, however, it is this principle that must apply to DC-people as well.


Conflicting sets of rights
The two paradigms lead to two conflicting sets of rights.

The doctors claim that their customers have a right to privacy, and that this would be violated by birth certification reform. The term "privacy" implies a defensive attitude, but in fact their claim is extremely aggressive. Birth certification reform would make it almost certain that a DC-child would find out that she was donor-conceived once she became an adult, because she would sooner or later apply for a full birth certificate - for example, in order to apply for a passport - and she would then discover her DC-status. Knowing that their child would find out anyway, therefore, and knowing that it would be much better for her to be told properly, most customers would feel compelled to tell their child, while she was still a child. To argue against birth certification reform, therefore, on the grounds of the parents’ right to privacy is to argue that the parents should not be placed under any such compulsion. In addition, the state regulates and licences the clinics, and therefore knows both the DC-person’s DC-status and her genetic identity, and could easily provide these to her. Consequently, to support the doctors’ claim is to implicitly argue that DC-customers have the following rights: (i) to lie to their child about her identity, and (ii) to have the state collude in that lie.

This issue, however, is a rights see-saw. If DC-customers indeed have these rights, then it follows that DC-people cannot have the following rights: (i) to have the state do its best to record their genetic identity, and (ii) to have the state do its best to ensure that that information is given to them. These are rights, however, that the state accords to everyone else. If it need not accord them to DC-people, then DC-people must be intrinsically inferior to everyone else. This, of course, is a notion that can hardly be supported in a free and fair society.


Responsibility of the state
The doctors are acting logically in defending their customers’ right to lie, for two reasons. Firstly, it makes good business sense for the doctors to try to give prospective customers whatever they want. Secondly, the fewer rights are accorded to the people they create, the fewer restrictions will be placed on doctors and scientists in the future who want to create people using new technologies and under new social circumstances.

Whatever the doctors’ justifications and motives, however, the state has a higher duty to treat all its citizens equally. On this issue it has been culpable from the inception of DI in the late 1930’s, and increasingly so after it set up committees to look into donor conception (Feversham (1960) and Warnock (1984)) and still failed to act. Furthermore, DC-people may well seek legal redress under the Human Rights Act on this issue. Since the HRA is based on the principle that all citizens are equal, the Government would be likely to lose, and would then find itself under a legal duty as well as a moral one.


Government’s existing position
The Government has so far shifted its position to a point half-way between the two paradigms. It used to support the paradigm of "treating the childless", but they moved from this position when they decided that DC-people conceived from sperm or eggs donated on or after 1 April 2005 would have the right to know the identity of their genetic parents. Explaining that decision, on 21 January 2004, Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson said: "I firmly believe donor-conceived people have a right to information about their genetic origins that is currently denied them, including the identity of their donor." Nonetheless, the Government’s movement has only really been partial, since its decision confers no practical benefit on the majority of DC-people conceived after 1 April 2005. This is because, as we have seen, most parents do not tell their child of his DC-status in the first place. The Government could have rectified this by birth certification reform, but has not done so.


Proposals for birth certification reform
In order that all citizens be treated equally, there need to be reforms for all DC-people. There are therefore two parts to the following proposed reforms: those for existing and for future DC-people.


Reforms for existing DC-people
From the late 1930’s until the Warnock Report in 1984, donor conception was allowed to proceed with no legal controls or regulatory body. After 1984 it was clear that both were needed, and this was done in the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which created a legal framework and also set up the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Until then, the names of the donors had been stored by the individual doctors in their private or NHS clinics, and had not been given to the GRO. Some of this information will have been destroyed, but the state should now collect all such records as it can find, and lodge the relevant information with the GRO, and make it available to DC-people conceived up to August 1991.

The obvious course of action in 1990 was to ensure that from then onwards this information went to the GRO, but thinking was still so embedded in the paradigm of "treating the childless" that this course of action was not taken. Instead, the identifying information was given to the HFEA. All this information should be transferred to the GRO and made available to DC-people conceived after August 1991.


Objections to reforms for existing DC-people
Retrospectivity is often presented as a moral stumbling-block in itself, but there are two reasons why it is not. Firstly, the principle has already been established with adoption. Secondly, the retrospectivity arises from the principle that all citizens should be treated equally. Historically, progress on human rights has often involved retrospectivity in this sense. When women were enfranchised in 1928, all of them were given the vote, not merely women born from that time onwards. All adoptees were given the right to their genetic identity in 1975. It is in the identical sense that all DC-people should be given the right to their genetic identity.

It is also suggested that there is a moral problem with breaching the promise of anonymity made to the donor. All this promise amounted to, however, was a de facto contract affecting the doctor, the customers, the donor and the person created, whereby it was agreed that the donor be anonymous. The contract had no moral validity, however, since it was not agreed to by all the affected parties. Nor, since it was injurious to their interests, can it be assumed that the person created would have agreed, had it been possible for them to do so.


Reforms for future DC-people
For most people, birth certification simply involves a birth certificate. This gives the names of both genetic parents. Since they are also the legal parents, the birth certificate also stands as the certificate of that person’s legal identity. This remains true even if only one parent is involved. For example, the father may be unknown, and consequently only the mother is on the birth certificate, and she is also the only legal parent. The birth certificate still stands as the certificate of that person’s legal identity.

Everything changes, however, if one or both legal parents are not genetic parents of the baby _[9,10]. In such cases, two certificates are needed: a birth certificate to show the genetic parents, and a second certificate to show the legal parents. The latter certificate will also explain why the genetic and legal parents are not the same. This, of course, is what happens with adoption, where the baby is given a birth certificate and an adoption certificate. It is important to stress here that it is only the second certificate that makes the procedure different to normal. The birth certificate of a baby that is going to be adopted is completed in exactly the same way, and under exactly the same legal conditions, as the birth certificate of anyone else.

It is proposed that donor conception be handled as closely to this model as possible. The baby’s birth certificate will be completed with the names of the genetic father and genetic mother, and a new category of "donor conception certificates" will be created. These will be the direct equivalent to adoption certificates, and will carry the names of the baby’s legal parents. With donor conception, one parent (generally the mother) will often be on both certificates, but two certificates are still needed to deal with all the individuals and roles involved. An important difference from adoption is that both certificates will be under the same name _[11]. This leads to a procedural difference from adoption practice which is dealt with in (ii) below.

It is worth bearing in mind that certificates are not stored as certificates at the GRO. All the relevant information is recorded by the GRO, and when a particular certificate is requested, the relevant subset of information is put on a blank certificate of that type, and is issued.

There are eight elements to the proposed reform, as follows.

(i) Information from the clinics
The state-regulated actions affecting the identity of an adoptee all take place after the baby has been born. With donor conception, however, everything that affects the child’s identity takes place much earlier, which means that the only effective measures whereby the child’s rights can be protected must start earlier as well. In practice, the information must come from the clinics while the woman is still pregnant _[12].

This leads to a conflict between medical law, in which the patient comes first, and family law, in which the child comes first. Under the paradigm of "creating a child" it is the child that the state should put first. On the other hand, it is unnecessary and undesirable to pass information to the GRO until the pregnancy is established. At 24 weeks a baby has a good chance of survival if born alive, and this figure may fall as medical treatments improve. It is therefore proposed that the doctor will be required by law to send details of any case of sperm or egg (or both) donation to the GRO, once 16 weeks have elapsed since the procedure was carried out, (i) if the woman has attended the clinic for a follow-up visit within the 16 weeks, and the doctor has tested her and established that she is pregnant, or (ii) if the woman has not attended for a follow-up visit within the 16 weeks, and so no test can be conducted. If she has attended for a follow-up visit within the 16 weeks and found not to be pregnant, then no information will be passed to the GRO. This ensures that normally the GRO is only given information when a baby will, in fact, be born.

This procedure is designed to overcome the fact that customers might simply not contact the clinic after they realised they were pregnant, or might tell them they were not pregnant. In such cases the GRO would never know that sperm or egg (or both) donation was used. The very high proportion of customers who currently deceive their child suggests that such behaviour would be highly likely to occur.

(ii) Full birth certificate (overview)
The DC-child will be registered with a full birth certificate in the usual way. This will carry the names of both the child’s genetic parents, and those of no-one else _[13]. This birth certificate will not be accessible by the child, however, until he reaches the age of 18. This is in line with adoption practice _[14]. In order to avoid the possibility of anyone else accessing this sensitive information and giving it to the DC-person, when he may not be psychologically ready, the birth certificate will not be publicly accessible until either five years after the DC-person has accessed it, or until after the DC-person has died.

The donor will have the right to contact those of his children who are over 18, via an intermediary, in the same way that birth parents can currently contact adoptees. He will have no more right to the birth certificate of any of his children, however, than any other member of the public. This means that he will only have all the relevant information if his child wishes him to have it. This is to protect the DC-person from contact that he may not wish to have. Again, this is in line with adoption practice.

(iii) Full birth certificate (registration procedure)
The information from the clinics will be checked by the GRO to ensure that they have sufficient information to be able to match it with the individual woman concerned, when she registers the birth (as can be expected will normally happen). The information will then be stored on a database, provisionally called the Donor Transparency Register (DTR). The DTR will be accessible by the existing computerised registration system.

Once the birth has been registered, the system will automatically check the DTR database and see whether a match exists. If so, the official will put the name of the donor (or donors), accessed from the DTR, onto the birth certificate. The registration official will not have access to any information on the DTR until this point has been reached. Even then, the official will only see the information that relates to that individual woman registering that birth.

The name of the other genetic parent (assuming that only one donor has been used) will then be added to the certificate in the usual way.

(iv) Short birth certificate
A short birth certificate will be available from the GRO. This will be indistinguishable from the short donor conception certificate (see (vi)).

(v) Full donor conception certificate
The child will have a full donor conception certificate, stating his legal parents’ names, and those of no-one else _[15]. It will also state that the child was conceived by donor conception, showing which type or types of donation were used.

(vi) Short donor conception certificate
The short form of this certificate will only show the legal name of the child, its sex, its date of birth and its place of birth. It will withhold the information that donor conception was used. This follows adoption practice, where the fact of adoption is withheld. This is done to protect an adopted child from having people at his school, for example, (who have no need to know that he is adopted) from having this information. Schools only require a short certificate.

Full and short donor conception certificates will therefore be the direct equivalent of full and short adoption certificates.

(vii) Counselling and support
Explanation of the birth registration process will need to be provided for prospective customers as an addition to existing counselling. All counselling, however, should be seen to be independent of the medical establishment, and therefore it is proposed that the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) should take over the entire counselling programme. BAAF is independent and has the necessary experience in adoption with regard to infertility, identity and birth registration. It is proposed that funding will come from the Government directly to BAAF.

(viii) DNA-testing
There will be no DNA-testing of the registrants or of their baby unless the registrants request it. They might do so, for example, if they are claiming that the woman’s partner, not the sperm donor, is the natural father. If the test confirms their claim, then the partner will be entered on the birth certificate. If not, then the name of the donor will be entered.


Objections to reforms for future DC-people
Four objections have been made to birth certification reform: (i) lack of evidence of a problem, (ii) the possibility that a child would find out too soon, (iii) the unenforceability of a universal right to one’s genetic identity, and (iv) the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality.

(i) Lack of evidence of a problem
There is a surreal quality to doctors’ suggestions that proof is needed that DC-adults need to know their genetic identity. Their suggestions seem to be based on the peculiar assumption that the needs of DC-people, in this or any other regard, might be different to those of other human beings. Nathanson (2007a) asks, "what is the evidence that withholding [the true facts of their genetic parentage] causes any harm?" and describes the Joint Committee’s proposals as "a swingeing solution to an illusory problem". Harris (2007) has suggested that "there is no proper evidence that children or adults suffer from not knowing who their ‘real fathers’ are, whether from IVF or from infidelity". "No proper evidence" can only mean that these areas have not been scientifically researched, but of course none of these areas can be researched because of the inherent secrecy involved. This claim is part of the industry’s long-standing claim that research must be done before reforms can be introduced (see Rushbrooke (2004)), whereas in fact human beings’ need to know their genetic identity is so well known that there should be a moratorium on donor conception unless and until the doctors can prove that DC-people are undamaged.

(ii) Possibility that a child would find out too soon
Nathanson (2007b) claims that "putting it on the birth certificate means that the child may find out unexpectedly far too young". In fact, this could not happen under the above proposals. Currently, if a child under 18 has not been told that he is adopted, and he applies to the GRO for his birth certificate (using, obviously, his adopted name) the GRO will realise that he does not know that he is adopted, and they will write to his parents. In the same way, if a DC-child under 18 were to apply for his birth certificate, the GRO would contact his parents.

(iii) Unenforceability of a universal right to one’s genetic identity
It is sometimes argued that if there is a right to know one’s genetic identity, it follows that this right must be enforced by any means, however extreme. For example, it is argued, the state would then be under an obligation to DNA-test everyone potentially involved in every child’s birth. Since we find that excessive, it is argued, this shows that we do not in fact believe that such a right exists. This argument, however, involves talking about rights in a most unusual way.

For example, we have a law against burglary because we believe that householders have the right not to be burgled. If householders have no such right, what are burglars doing wrong? The existence of laws against burglary, and public investment in police, courts and prisons, are sufficient proof that we take this right seriously. Nonetheless, burglary continues, and we are aware that householders’ rights could be better upheld if we gave the police totalitarian powers. We are reluctant to give them such powers, but it would be absurd to conclude from our reluctance that we regard householders as having no rights on the matter. All it shows is that we believe that the state should uphold their rights in a way that is proportionate and reasonable.

Similarly, nothing of consequence follows from the reluctance of the state to take disproportionate and unreasonable actions to uphold the rights of all citizens to know their true genetic identity. All that is necessary on this issue is to clarify what actions open to the state are proportionate and reasonable.

The state has historically provided its citizens with such information as it already has about the identity of those citizens’ genetic parents, or such information as it could readily obtain. In this way it has protected its citizens, as far as it can, from having their rights violated by others. This seems to have been both proportionate and reasonable. In addition, it seems proportionate and reasonable that the state should never act on its own initiative to violate its citizens’ rights itself, as it currently does with donor conception.

(iv) Principle of doctor-patient confidentiality
The doctors may claim that this principle is applicable on this issue. There are several problems with this argument, however, even viewed within the terms of the paradigm of "treating the childless". Firstly, it is not clear that donor conception is a medical issue at all. In some cases there is no infertile partner, which means no medical condition even exists, and in all other cases the infertile partner’s medical condition is ignored. It would be more accurate to argue for "client confidentiality". Secondly, it seems to be an abuse of any kind of confidentiality if the objective is to allow people to benefit themselves by lying to a child. Thirdly, this principle has in any case been conceded by the doctors. Since 1991 the clinics have sent details of all births (including customers’ names, procedures used and identities of donors) to the HFEA, and this is not done for the benefit of the customer, but expressly for the benefit of the person created. Fourthly, the conflict between medical law and family law ought to be decided in favour of the child as early in the pregnancy as is necessary in order to safeguard his interests. Fifthly, a donor conception certificate gives no more information about the parents’ infertility than an adoption certificate. Either implies that at least one parent is infertile, but does not imply which one. There are nearly a million adoptive parents in England and Wales, and therefore nearly a million precedents for this situation. Sixthly, the number of administration officials who would ever see the certificate is going to be very small, they will be bound by professional rules of confidentiality, and in any case there is no obvious reason why they would be interested.

The main point here, however, remains that the doctors’ concern for their customers’ privacy must be of less importance than society’s concern that all its citizens be treated equally.


Legal identity certificates
Another possibility would be to provide a general "legal identity certificate" in all cases when one or more legal parents were not genetic parents (donor conception, surrogacy or adoption). This document could be more discreet than the above proposals, withholding the reason for the certificate being necessary. The person concerned could then apply to the GRO for further information. The danger of such increased discretion is, of course, that some people may not discover the true status of their identity.


Conclusion
The birth certification issue is a conflict between DC-customers and DC-people. While it is understandable that the doctors support their customers, the state has a higher moral and legal consideration, which is to treat its citizens equally. This means that the state should no longer apply the pro-customer paradigm of "treating the childless" to the conception and birth of DC-people. Instead, it should apply the paradigm of "creating a human being" to the conception and birth of all its citizens.

Accordingly, these proposals would achieve two things: (i) to ensure, as far as possible, that future DC-people are told that they are donor-conceived, as is already the case for adoptees, and (ii) to allow all DC-people to have such information as the state possesses as to the identities of both their genetic parents, as already happens for everyone else.


Notes
[1] See Laing (2006) for an excellent historical summary, and Velleman (2006) for an insightful contemporary perspective.

[2] It may be even less. The estimate of 10-20% includes only a small proportion of parents who have actually told their child. The remainder have only stated that they will do so. See Cook et al. (1995), Brewaeys et al. (1997) and Brewaeys et al. (2005).

[3] Sweden has only used identifiable donors since 1985, but the birth certificate does not show the person’s DC-status. Counselling parents to tell their children has had partial success. In a recent study approximately 60% of couples reported that they had told their child (Lalos et al. (2007)).

[4] Currently applicable law is the Perjury Act (1911).

[5] Urban myths suggest paternity fraud rates of up to 30%, but UK screening studies have given rates of 1.34% (Brock and Shrimpton (1991)), 1.46% (Chataway et al. (1999)), 1.4% (Livingstone et al. (1994)) and 2.7% (ibid). The median of these is 1.43%. See also Gilding (2005) and Turney (2005) for new information on this myth.

[6] The 1975 Children Act (Section 26) retrospectively allowed all UK adoptees access to their birth certificate for adoptions from 1927 onwards (in other words, in all cases where the state had the records).

[7] A third get their records through the official route (Rushbrooke (2001)). Estimates vary as to how many get their records by other means, and estimates of the full percentage therefore vary as well. The most conservative estimate of the full percentage is 55% (Triseliotis et al. (2005)).

[8] The industry started with Mary Barton in the 1930’s (Pfeffer (1993)).

[9] The way birth certification is handled for surrogacy will need to be reformed as well. The term covers at least two quite different procedures: (i) commissioning couple provides egg and sperm, surrogate gives birth to their genetic baby and then gives it to them to bring up, (ii) surrogate gives birth to her own genetic baby, using the commissioning father’s sperm, and then gives it to the commissioning couple to bring up. In addition, a sperm donor can also be used. In all cases, however, the birth certificate should show the identities of both genetic parents and the gestating mother. The legal parents should be on the surrogacy certificate, together with the type of surrogacy used.

[10] It may be worth noting that step-parenting happens much later, and is handled quite differently.

[11] An adoptee’s name is changed at adoption, which means that she will have two names: a birth name (on the birth certificate) and an adopted name (on the adoption certificate). A donor-conceived child will only ever have one name.

[12] Most of the network required for transmitting this data already exists. Data about births is already sent from all 115 UK clinics to the HFEA (85 use encrypted email, which is secure and cheap). Under the above proposals this data would be sent several months earlier, and would include all donor conception treatments, not just births. The HFEA would therefore act as a collection point for the data, which they would then forward to the GRO.

[13] With egg donation the gestating mother’s name ought to be on the birth certificate as well. She provides a small amount of genetic material to her foetus and has obviously played a major role in the physical creation of that person.

[14] Some people believe that DC-people should be given the identity of their natural father (and/or natural mother) before they are 18. This may be entirely reasonable, in which case this should also apply to adoptees.

[15] There may be only one legal parent, of either sex. There may be two legal parents: male and female; both male; or both female.


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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Dr Joanna Rose, Dr Jacqueline A Laing, Dr Alexina McWhinnie and Myfanwy Walker-Swales for their invaluable advice and editorial comments.