Beneath the rhetoric: The role of rights in the practice of non-anonymous gamete donation

The use of rights based arguments to justify claims that donor offspring sh ould have access to information identifying their gamete donor has become i ncreasingly widespread. In this paper, I do not intend to revisit the debat e about the validity of,such rights. Rather; the purpose is to examine the way that such alleged rights have been implemented by those legislatures th at have allowed access to identifying information. I will argue that seriou s inconsistencies exist between. the claim that donor offspring have a righ t to know the identity of their gamete donor and the way such a right is cu rrently met in practice. I hope to show that in systems where non-anonymous donation is practised, an. understanding of the proclaimed right of donor offspring to know their genetic identity is one composed of two different r ights - the right to know the circumstances of their conception and the rig ht to information identifying the gamete donor-can provide important insigh ts into this important area. of public policy.