18 September 2023 , 23:01
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Thousands of children born from sperm donors will start being able to track down their biological fathers in the coming weeks.
Changes to the donor anonymity law will mean young adults born via sperm or egg donation since the 2005 law change will be able to track down the people whose donations led to their conception.
The first people will turn 18 and become eligible to apply to the UK fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), for this information in October. The regulator said that around 30 donor-conceived 18-year-olds will become eligible to find their donor between October and December and more than 10,000 will by the end of the decade.
The law changed after the popularity of DNA ancestry tracking websites made it impossible to guarantee anonymity to donors.
Dr Marta Jansa Perez, of the British Fertility Society, added: "This is a very important landmark for those people who were conceived by the use of donor eggs or sperm since 2005 as when they reach 18 they will be able to receive identifiable information about their donors.
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"The British Fertility Society would like to encourage all donors to get back in touch with the clinic where they donated or to contact the HFEA to ensure that their contact details are up to date so that donor-conceived people can have information on their genetic origins if they so wish to."
Offspring can request their donor's full name, date of birth and their last known address. A number of exemptions meant around 1,800 babies have still been born using an anonymous donor since 2005.
Patients who created and stored embryos using an anonymous donor prior to the law change could use them after the law came into force. There was also a transitional period in which clinics were able to use any anonymous donations they had already collected.
Initially, 30 offspring born following the law change will be able to access their donor details in late 2023 before numbers increase in the following years.
Anonymous donors who registered before April 2005 can contact the HFEA to re-register as identifiable if they wish. Donors who do not want to re-register as identifiable can still update their non-identifying personal information such as their goodwill message or pen portrait.
The HFEA is keen to get all donor contact information up to date before October. Rachel Cutting, HFEA information director, said: "Not only will this enable the HFEA to notify donors of information requests from offspring, but it also reduces the risk of information being sent to a historic address.”
This ‘removal of anonymity’ law came about after studies carried out on adopted and sperm donor-conceived children found that they benefited emotionally from knowing who their biological parents were, regardless of whether or not they had any contact with them.
Fertility donors have no legal or financial obligations towards children conceived as a result.