Sperm Donation and the Right to Privacy

The New Bioethics 23 (2):107-120 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Sperm donation is an increasingly common method of assisted reproduction. In the debate on sperm donation, the right to privacy — construed as a right that refers to the limits of the realm of information to which others have access — plays a pivotal role with regard to two questions. The first question is whether the sperm donor’s right to privacy implies his right to retain his anonymity, the second is whether the gamete recipients’ right to privacy entitles them to withhold information about the circumstances of their conception from their donor-conceived offspring. In this contribution, I tackle these two interrelated questions. In part, I defend the view that there is a prima facie right of sperm donors to remain anonymous. Part widens the perspective by taking into consideration the welfare of donor-conceived offspring. I argue that anonymity may harm the child only if the gametes’ recipients decide to disclose information about the circumstances of her birth to the child. Non-disclosure of these circumstances, however, is morally problematic because it may not necessarily harm, but wrong the child. In section, I attempt to rebut some arguments in defense of non-disclosure. In part, I defend the view that the best practice of sperm donation would be ‘direct donation’, i.e. that the identity of the donor is known from the time of conception. Part concludes.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,109

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Anonymous Sperm Donation.Shari Collins & Eric Comerford - 2012 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (2):213-230.
The moral complexity of sperm donation.Rivka Weinberg - 2008 - Bioethics 22 (3):166–178.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-07-23

Downloads
49 (#356,975)

6 months
14 (#190,862)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Oliver Hallich
Universität Duisburg-Essen

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations