The law on “access to personal origins” says donors must consent to their identity being disclosed to any resulting biological children if the latter request it when they become adults.
People have “the right to know how they came into the world”, said Adele Bourdelet, of the ADDED association for donor-conceived children. While the requirement to be identifiable applies to future donors, a commission will be set up to help today’s donor-conceived adults discover more about their biological origins if they wish to.“The reform had become inevitable because society has changed,” said Dr Florence Eustache, vice-president of the CECOS federation of hospital fertility clinics.
When artificial insemination was introduced more than four decades ago, infertility was something of a taboo subject and parents might have hidden from their child that they were conceived using donor cells.