Right to know your parents

IMAGINE what it must be like, says Marilyn Crawshaw, to be a teenager desperate to find out about your biological parents and to be told by some anonymous official you're not entitled to the information. It is, after all, she says, information about who you are.

If anyone has a right to it, surely it is you yourself. "And if somebody says we've got that information, but we're not going to let you have it - I can only imagine what that feels like."

It's an issue that is at the heart of the legal battle involving a six-year-old York schoolgirl and a 28-year-old postgraduate student from Brisbane, Australia, named Joanne Rose, which went before a High Court judge last month.

Lawyers for the two are using the Human Rights Act to argue that they - and other children born from sperm donors - should have the right to more information about their biological fathers to save them from "anger, frustration and hurt".

As the law stands in the UK, a child who believes he or she may have been born as a result of assisted conception has the right at 18 to approach the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which keeps a central register of information about donors.

But while they are allowed to ask for confirmation they were born with the help of donated sperm, eggs or embryos, they are not entitled to any other information about their biological parent.

Lawyers representing Joanne Rose and the six-year-old York girl have first to establish that the Human Rights Act applies to their situation.

If they are successful there will then be further legal action in an attempt to win a right in the UK for individuals to ask for 'non-identifying' information about their biological parents, which stops short of enabling them to identify who the donor was.

The lawyers also are seeking the right to establish a 'voluntary contact register' through which donors who voluntarily agreed to be identified could be contacted by their genetic offspring.

Some people, however, want to go further.

What is really needed, says Marilyn Crawshaw - a teaching and research fellow in York University's social policy and social work department - is a change in the law to guarantee children born as a result of assisted conception the right to know who their biological parents are.

Everyone else in this country, Marilyn says, has that right.

For most, conceived and brought up by their biological parents in the normal way, it is not an issue. For adopted children there is the legal right, at 18, to find out about their biological parents.

But not for those born as a result of assisted conception. "And if it is right for everybody else," says Marilyn, "why not for this group?"

Marilyn is a member of campaign group PROGAR (Project Group on Assisted Reproduction) which is lobbying for equal rights under the law for such children - and also pressing for better support for families who have had a child through assisted conception.

The Department of Health is consulting at the moment on what, if any, donor information should be made available.

The arguments for a change in the law are compelling, Marilyn insists.

There is the moral and civil rights argument, which holds that people should have the right to access information stored about them in official records.

Then there is the medical argument.

With our increasing knowledge of genetics, there is growing recognition of a number of conditions for which we have an inherited predisposition - such as, for example, breast cancer.

To deny children the right to knowledge about their genetic history therefore places them at an unfair disadvantage, Marilyn says.

"Think of a situation where you go to see your doctor, for example for a routine health check. The doctor asks 'is there any family history?' You will have to answer you don't know 50 per cent of your genetic history."

But perhaps most overwhelming of all is the argument about a child's emotional well-being.

Who we are doesn't just come down to who our biological parents are, Marilyn stresses. The people who bring us up, love us and nurture us through childhood are our parents, irrespective of whether they contributed their own genes to us - and the input they have on who we are cannot be overstated.

But, argues PROGAR, our genetic heritage is an important part of who we are, too. "It is as limiting to deny the potential significance of genetic and biological heritage as it is to deny that of social heritage," the organisation says.

For Marilyn, it comes down to the natural right of children to know about those whose genes they carry.

There is, she says, far too much secrecy surrounding donor-assisted birth, with parents often advised not to tell anyone, including their children. She believes that is wrong. "It means you are asking parents to lie to their children," she says.

But if a child knows from an early age one of its parents is not also its biological parent, that child is bound to have questions, Marilyn says.

"If you say, there was this nice man who gave his sperm, or this nice woman who gave an egg, some children will be curious.

"They may ask things such as 'are they good at football' or 'did they used to ride a horse?'"

At the moment, that is information children are denied.

The issue of whether children should have the legal right to find out about donor parents is a complex one, Marilyn accepts.

Many parents of children conceived with the help of a donor are themselves worried about their child knowing the truth. "They worry that their children will reject them," Marilyn says.

But all the evidence from adoption shows that does not happen, Marilyn insists. If anything, honesty and openness strengthens the bond between parent and child.

The other common objection to a child's right to know is that potential donors may be put off.

If that is the case, then so be it, says Marilyn. But the evidence from other countries that have already changed the law - Sweden is the one most often cited - is that after an initial dip in donor numbers, donations pick up again.

PROGAR does not want the law changed retrospectively: so people who donated sperm or eggs in the past on the assumption it was done anonymously have no reason to worry.

And the law at the moment is very clear on the obligations of donors - there is no obligation to provide financial or other support to a genetic child born as a result of a donation by you.

Ultimately, Marilyn says, the right of a child to know as much about his or her own identity as possible must take precedence.

"People conceived in this way are the only group of people in the country who are denied access to information held on them in state records," she says. "Why single this one group out?"

Why, indeed.

Updated: 12:04 Friday, June 07, 2002