Sir, – As a former obstetrician I read with interest Dr John Waterstone's "Why it's wrong to ban anonymity for egg and sperm donors" (Opinion & Analysis, March 3rd), which is critical of the Assisted Reproduction Bill. He makes a strong case that lack of anonymity for donors may not be in the best interests of the donors, nor of the prospective parents. These are the people with whom he deals and it is understandable that his sympathies lie with them.
However, the most important person in all of this is the baby who hopefully will be produced.
Over the years I have been very struck by the need people feel as they grow up to know their biological origins. Removing anonymity may well reduce the number of donors and so the number of infertile couples who can obtain the babies they seek, but surely the interests of the offspring of these procedures must override these understandably desperate desires. – Yours, etc,
Dr CONOR CARR,
Ballinasloe,
Co Galway.
Sir, – Dr John Waterstone is of the opinion that “the belief that a donor-conceived child has a right to identify and meet his or her donor, which supercedes the rights of the parents to privacy and autonomy, is obviously arbitrary”. However, the European Court of Human Rights has recognised the importance to a child of accessing information about his or her identity, and the case law of the court would appear to require some state intervention to facilitate this.
Further, if the Children’s Amendment, Article 42A, is ultimately inserted into the Constitution, the donor-conceived child’s right to knowledge of his or her genetic parentage (which is arguably a corollary of the child’s constitutional right to know its natural mother as enunciated by the Supreme Court in 1998) would surely be considered one of the “natural and imprescriptible” rights of the donor-conceived child that could indeed supercede the right of its parents to privacy and autonomy.
The donor-assisted human reproduction provisions of the Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015 should be welcomed as they will at least limit the possibility in this jurisdiction of collusion between profit-oriented private fertility clinics and intending parents knowingly to create children who will never be able to know their genetic identity. – Yours, etc,
Dr BRIAN TOBIN,
School of Law,
NUI Galway.