Dozens of people conceived using a donated egg, sperm or embryo in the UK will receive an unusual birthday present when they turn 18 this year, as they gain the right to learn the identity of their previously anonymous donor.
The UK is one of only a handful of countries to ban anonymous donors. guaranteed people who were donor-conceived after that date the right to information about their donor when they reached adulthood.
The first people conceived using a donor after the law came into force will soon be turning 18, says at the UK’s Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Around 187 people in the UK will gain the right by the end of 2023, she says.
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New Zealand is in a similar situation to the UK, having also banned anonymous donation in 2005; the first people to when they turn 18 will also become eligible this year.
Ettinghausen says it is unclear how many people will take advantage of the law in the UK, which allows an individual to request information about their donor, such as their name, date of birth and last known address, but evidence from other nations suggests it may be a small number.
Sweden was the first country to give people the right to obtain identifying information about a donor. Those born after 1985 were given the right to discover the identity of their donor when they turned , generally taken to mean 18.
at UmeĂĄ University in Sweden and her team that surveyed 900 people who were donor-conceived between 1985 and 2002. Of these, only 60 had requested information about their donor by December 2020. Most reached out within two years of turning 18, the team found.
She says the low number may reflect the fact that many parents using donations in the 1980s and 1990s in Sweden weren’t always encouraged to tell their children that they were donor-conceived. “Several parents were given conflicting information,” she says.
Changing attitudes
Attitudes may have changed, according to of heterosexual couples in Sweden who used a donor to conceive before 2005. “More than half the parents we surveyed had already told their children they were donor-conceived by the time they turned 7 or 8,” she says. This is expected to translate to more people reaching out to their donors when they turn 18, she says, and the same is likely to be true in other countries that no longer allow anonymous donors.
The Netherlands changed its laws more recently than Sweden, and figures from this country also reflect potentially changing attitudes. It , allowing people to find out about their donors , which began happening in 2021.
People conceived before the law change can also find out about their donors, if the donor consented. who had donated sperm before 2004 and had voluntarily removed their right to anonymity found that most had done so to give their biological offspring the right to know physical and social details about them.
According to , the most recent available, 359 people in the Netherlands chose to learn about their donors – many more than seen in Sweden over a far longer time period. at KU Leuven in Belgium says media attention around the issue in the Netherlands probably explains the difference. “The increased publicity in the media had led to donor-conceived people asking more questions and learning how to access that information also,” she says.
One major unknown is that there isn’t data on how many people are told that they were conceived using a donor, as disclosure isn’t a legal requirement in any country. “Even if there was a law, how would you go about it?” says Ettinghausen.
Telling children about being conceived using a donor can be difficult and is usually harder the longer you wait, says at the Donor Conception Network in the UK, a charity that helps connect people born in the UK before 2005 with their donors, if they have chosen to give up their right to anonymity.
“Like most things in life, it’s about preparing,” she says. “It’s not doing it on the fly, and thinking about how you are going to explain this.”
Unknown reaction
Other unknowns include how donors will respond when their biological children reach out to them. Anecdotally, Lampic says the reactions of donors to donor-conceived children vary and while for some it may translate to a few text messages, she knows of other donors who have subsequently been invited to weddings.
The lengthy gap between donating and hearing from your now adult biological offspring could also be a factor in how people respond. “Being a donor is now a lifelong commitment in some ways,” says Ettinghausen.
To mitigate this in the UK, all donors since 2005 have undergone psychological screening to ensure that they understand the implications of what they are volunteering for. Regulations vary in other countries, but Sweden also requires donors to go through psychological screening.
But Barnsley says it is unclear how well people understood the gravity of what they were doing. “Twenty years ago, they were very up for donating their sperm or eggs and now they’re perhaps reflecting and wondering – did they do the right thing?” she says. “A lot of life happens in that period.”
Donors in the UK aren’t obligated to respond to their donor-conceived children, but are encouraged by the HFEA to do so. Both groups are offered counselling to ease the process.
The experience will become increasingly common. In the UK, compared with the 187 people conceived using donors who are turning 18 by the end of this year, the number of adults gaining the right to access information about their donors will rise to 1281 by the end of 2024.
This annual figure will continue to grow over the next decade, reflecting a steady increase in donor conception in the UK over the years, with 3691 people due to gain this right in 2035 when they turn 18. The fertility authority in the Netherlands is also expecting a rise in numbers in the coming years.
Countries place limits on how many children an egg or sperm donor can conceive, for example the maximum is six in Sweden and 10 in the UK, but that still means donors could have several people contacting them in the next few years, says Barnsley.
Ettinghausen says that as the stigma against donor conception continues to fall, people reaching out to their donors will become more normalised. “You may find that in years to come, reaching out to your donor becomes a very standard rite of passage,” she says
The DNA alternative
In the years since countries like the UK have introduced laws allowing people conceived using donors to access information about their donors, cheap DNA tests have made it easier for anyone to find out more about their ancestry. Are such laws still needed?
at Lancaster University, UK, says the potential for DNA tests to help people find their donor is overhyped, because they rely on the donor or a close relative having done the same test. “If those links don’t exist, you won’t be able to identify if you’re genetically related to your parent or not,” he says.
Nevertheless, in part because of these tests, the UK’s Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA) encourages families who have used a donor to be as open as possible with their children.
The HFEA has also called for donors who donated before April 2005 to voluntarily remove their anonymity so that people can reach out to them through official channels rather than rely on DNA tests. As of November 2022, 260 donors in the UK have done so, the HFEA says – just a fraction of the close to 18,000 anonymous egg and sperm donor registrations in the country between August 1991 and March 2005.
