Disclosure of donor insemination to the child: the impact of Swedish legislation on couples' attitudes

Abstract

The question whether or not parents of children conceived after donor insemination (DI) tell their offspring about its biological background was addressed. Swedish legislation from 1985 gives the child born after DI the right, when grown up, to receive identifying information about the sperm donor. Until now no information about compliance with the law has been available. All parents who gave birth to a child by DI after the new legislation in two major Swedish fertility centres (Stockholm and Umeâ) received a questionnaire containing questions about the issue of informing the child. The response rate was 80%. The majority of parents (89%) had not informed their children, whereas 59% had told someone else. As a response to an open question, 105/132 parents chose to comment on their answer about not having informed their child. Of these families, 61 intended to tell their child later, 16 were not sure and 28 were not going to inform the child. Compliance with the law must be regarded as low since only 52% of the parents had told or intended to tell their child. In addition, concern is raised about the children who run the risk of being informed by someone other than their parents.

Attitudes towards gamete donation among IVF doctors in the Nordic countries—are they in line with national legislation?

“…The guidelines by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare stress that the physician, as a part of the psychosocial investigation, must ensure that the couple will tell their child about her/his genetic origin. However, a study from year 2000 of Swedish parents after donor insemination indicated poor compliance with these guidelines [8]. A slight majority had told (11%) or intended to tell (41%) their children about the donation, which is a necessary prerequisite for offspring to exercise their legal right to obtain identifiable information about the donor.…”

“…In a study from the US [7], physicians were the only group of health professionals who encouraged or supported non-disclosure for couples who conceived using gamete donor treatment. Such types of behaviour among doctors involved in assisted reproduction may be related to the limited compliance with national legislation on disclosure among Swedish recipients of donor sperm [8,9].…”

To name or not to name? An overview of the social and ethical issues raised by removing anonymity from sperm donors

“…Research conducted before removal of anonymity suggests that most children are ignorant of their donor offspring status [22][23][24][25]. Other European studies revealed that most couples did not intend to tell their children of their DI origins [26][27][28]. More recently, Golombok et al [25], in a study of 94 families with children conceived by DI, found that only 8.6% of DI children had been informed about their genetic origins, compared with 50% of in vitro fertilization (IVF) parents and 95% of adoptive parents.…”

The Removal Of Donor Anonymity in The UK: The Silencing Of Claims By Would-Be Parents

“…However, the fact that semen volume and motility decrease continuously with age 42 (Eskenazi et a!., 2003), and that such sperm is less capable of fertilising an egg, makes older sperm donors less desirable in practice. Moreover, despite having a significant impact on the donor profile, the Swedish Act has not been successful in changing disclosure patterns (Gottlieb, Lalos and Lindblad, 2000;Lalos et a!., 2003).…”

“…The research evidence identifies three main reasons for secrecy: first, that couples may view the decision not to disclose as protecting them from negative societal reactions, and preventing their child being considered different from others (Lalos, Gottlieb and Lalos, 2007;Nachtigall et al, 1997); second, that male partners may have concerns that the acknowledgement of infertility would cause their masculinity to come under suspicion (Courtenay, 2000;Glover et al, 1996;Miall, 1996;Nachtigall, Becker and Wozny, 1992); and third, that family relationships (particularly father-child) would be damaged if the child's real genetic identity was revealed (Gottlieb, Lalos and Lindblad, 2000;Lalos, Gottlieb and Lalos, 2007). I found that the users of Repromed express similar concerns.…”