Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of John CrownJohn Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 7:



In page 14, between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following:“(6) Notwithstanding any other part of this Act, an intending mother may decide to use, for the purpose of a DAHR procedure, an anonymously donated of a gamete or embryo.”.
The four amendments in my name deal with the tricky issue of anonymity, on which I am aware that I am in something of a minority. I have a particular perspective on anonymity, as I indicated in the Chamber on another day and in another context, because I occasionally cause infertility. While we are conscious that the rights of the child are paramount, an existential right comes into play here. Someone who cannot be conceived or born is losing a certain set of rights as well. I have a great fear that access to a large swath of treatments currently available to people who suffer from infertility, namely, gamete donation, will decrease as a result of the loss of anonymity.

Combined, these amendments would allow an intending mother, the woman who desires to become pregnant, to request an anonymous donor and permit someone to donate anonymously. Someone who has created an embryo through donor-assisted human reproduction would be able to donate anonymously and a couple who have created an embryo through whatever means would be able to donate that embryo anonymously to another couple who do not have the biological capacity to create an embryo of their own.

I am well aware of the trickiness of this issue. The data suggest when anonymous donation ended in England donation ended with it. While it has been argued that we will still have access to imported sperm from Denmark, which is apparently much the largest source of sperm for donation in this country, I am worried that, as people fully understand all the implications arising from the end of anonymity, sperm donation will, in time, also decrease.

This may sound a little extreme but another issue that is also slightly troubling is the question of what will happen if the total number of donations available from Denmark does not decline, whereas the total number of donors who provide these donations declines. Let us imagine that 90% of those who are happy to donate anonymously decide they will no longer donate if they can be traced, while the remaining 10% decide to continue to donate. This would mean a much smaller number of people will act as the biological parents of a much larger number of children in this country and other countries, with all the questions that would arise as a result of consanguinity, etc.

I am conscious that there is a significant ethical problem with this amendment and I do not dismiss the right of people to know their biological origins. However, I ask people to remember that if this Bill is passed without the amendments, many people who would otherwise have existed will simply not be born.

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