Donors and parents should be able to decide for themselves whether the identity of a sperm donor should be kept secret or not, according to Belgium's Advisory Committee on Bioethics.
Sperm donation is currently done anonymously in Belgium. Although fertility centres and sperm banks retain the personal details of donors, they aren't allowed to disclose them to prospective parents or children.
The Committee has now advised Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke to drop the mandatory anonymity and instead introduce options for both donors and prospective families, reported De Morgen.
With more options, donors could choose to remain anonymous or let their identity be revealed to the child at a later stage. Similarly, prospective parents could choose to get sperm from an anonymous or an identified donor. The Committee called for databases with the sperm donors' identities and choices, as well as guidance for parents and donors.
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"There are no good reasons not to leave that decision to those involved," said Committee chairperson Paul Cosyns in De Morgen. "It is more democratic to let people choose than to require anonymity."
Experts argue that with companies increasingly offering DNA and lineage analyses, anonymity is no longer guaranteed anyway.
Contradictory advice
Furthermore, the Committee maintains that children should have the right to know their genetic origins: "The current regulation is strange," bioethicist Heidi Mertes (University of Gent) told De Morgen. "The option to be identifiable isn't available at all for those who want it."
Lawmakers Els Van Hoof (CD&V) and Valerie Van Peel (N-VA) have already proposed bills to make anonymous sperm donation impossible.
"The question is whether such a multi-track policy would pass in the Constitutional Court," said Van Hoof. "After all, it creates inequality between two groups of donor children: those who are lucky that their donor and parents have chosen identifiability, and those who are unlucky."
According to Vandenbroucke's cabinet, the minister himself favours abolishing the mandatory anonymity of sperm donors but will wait for Parliament to debate the matter before taking action.
