Dr. Joanna Rose:

The Senator is exactly right in what he said. I referred to my court case and I provided a list of court cases that donor offspring have brought and are bringing forward around the world. Research such as that of Susan Golombok did not forewarn of serious human rights violations that have been found now in our favour in terms of the right to know one's identity. In Germany, children now have the right to know information about their genetic donor parents throughout their lives and anonymity is overturned retrospectively. I refer to Narelle's law in Victoria. It is all based on interviewing adults or children and saying everybody is fine. The are long-term complexities, as in adoption and the stolen generations in Australia. Those children might be raised in happy loving families but there are consequences for adults in terms of integrating their identify, as to whether they want to know who their genetic family is or what their ethnicity is. I was raised Jewish and then that was taken away. Other donor offspring are suddenly discovering they are Jewish when they are in the 50s or 60s. These kinds of lived realities and complexities are not appropriately understood. The only real appropriate research that exists is in those other groups of people who have had that separation and loss, for example, through adoption or the Australian stolen generations. Those are the roots to which we need to turn. While this is a new notion - it is a social experiment - being human is not something new. Our human response to not knowing our genetic roots or kin has been well documented for thousands of years. Unfortunately, there is the notion that it is happening anyway so we have to legislate for it and come up with the least restrictive, most liberal option. The Senator is exactly right. I do not believe that is the right way to approach this practice.