As DNA Donors’ Secrets Emerge, What Should the Children Know?
By Amy Dockser Marcus,
The Wall Street Journal
| 05. 27. 2022
Tyler Sniff took a home DNA test at 32 years old and unexpectedly learned that the man who raised him was not his biological father. When Mr. Sniff shared the discovery with his siblings, they asked their parents for an explanation. Their parents revealed that they had used an anonymous sperm donor in order to conceive their six children.
The realization that his parents had kept his origins a secret from him stunned Mr. Sniff, now 34, an environmental lawyer who lives in Atlanta. He began researching the rules surrounding donor conception. There were federal regulations about blood tests donors must take and state laws addressing that the parents and not the donor are recognized as responsible for the child. But when it came to Mr. Sniff’s right to know his own genetic background, the government was mostly silent.
Mr. Sniff, who has since co-founded an advocacy group, recognizes that his parents’ decision to use an anonymous donor is responsible for his existence. “I am grateful for my life,” he says. But as an adult, he felt his right to...
Related Articles
By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024
An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.
The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...