When it comes to the donation of sperm or egg, gamete donation, there is an inherent ethical conflict – the right to privacy of the donor and the child’s right to know their biological parent. Hanna Krushelnytska of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv discusses the legal nature of gamete donation in the International Journal of Public Law and Policy.
Technology and medicine have brought us to a point in human history unlike any other, where we can carry out biological processes in vitro that once could only be done in vivo. As such, there are now many people in the world who were born through an unconventional meeting of sperm and egg. Technically, we might talk of “assisted reproduction” or “artificial reproduction”, but there is, of course, nothing artificial about the person’s humanity. The law, however, is often slow to keep up with technological advances and the moral dilemmas they often bring with them.
Krushelnytska has looked at legislation around the world surrounding donor anonymity and the rights of the children born through assisted reproduction. The conflicts are essentially enshrined in different laws wherein they are regarded as medical laws in some contexts but also commercial law where the legislation encompasses the transactions and payments that might be made. Of course, the laws are asymmetrical when considering sperm and egg and how those are obtained and used.
There is an urgent need for tangled legal structures to be unknotted and the rights of donors and children to be clarified. How this might be done successfully given the inherent conflicting status of the various parties remains to be seen.
Krushelnytska, H. (2022) ‘On the legal nature of gamete donation’, Int. J. Public Law and Policy, Vol. 8, Nos. 3/4, pp.256–270.