Who's my Daddy? Reconfigurations of Genes and Kinship as Direct-to-Consumer DNA-Tests and Social Media are Becoming Available Technologies in Everyday Lives

Stine Willum ADRIAN (UiT-The Arctic University of Norway)

Since 2006 commercial Danish sperm banks have produced donor sperm for sale with both anonymous and non-anonymous donors with basic or extended donor profiles. It was however only after 2012 that medical doctors in Denmark were allowed to treat women with sperm from non-anonymous donors. Even though direct-to-consumer genetic tests today are cheap, available, and are being used by the public to find genetic relatives, and donor anonymity no longer can be promised to neither new nor past sperm donors, the question of anonymity has not seriously been questioned in the Danish Parliament, and today other issues such as surrogacy is on the political agenda. Current media stories do however illustrate, that donor's anonymity in practice is being breached due to the use of DNA-tests, sometimes as a side effect when these tests are used for other purposes such as health risk profiling or genealogy research. In other cases, DNA-tests are used to search for the donor or half siblings, in combination with the use of social media. These stories have increasingly become stories narrated in the news, documentaries and podcasts. Through an analysis of media representations of sperm donation since 2011 unfolding in Danish media, I ask how the question of anonymity and kinship is currently being normatively negotiated through a combination of the use of DNA-technology and social media, and what reconfigurations of kinship and genetics are emerging in these stories. Methodologically I draw on Adele Clarkes methodology of situational analysis, where I unpack how reconfigurations of genes and kinship emerge, and show that there is a need for a rethinking of gamete donation in the future.

Donor Anonymity and the Attitudes in Japanese Society Regarding Donor Information Disclosure

仙波由加里 SEMBA Yukari (Donor Link Japan / Ochanomizu University)

In Japan, the first donor sperm-conceived baby was reported in 1949. Since then, it is said that more than 15,000 donor offspring have been born in Japan, and some of these offspring want to obtain information about their donors. However, Japan still has no law that secures the right of donor offspring to know donor information; priority is still given to donor anonymity.

The first law addressing donor conception in Japan was enacted in December 2020. The law states that the woman who gave birth to a child is its mother, and the mother's husband is the father if he agreed to the use of the sperm. However, the law does not define the status of donors with regard to donor-conceived children. Nor does it recognize the right of donor-conceived individuals to access information about their biological origin. Instead, additional clauses in the law state that "necessary legal measures will be taken within a target of roughly two years" regarding such children's right to know their biological origin.

Legislation protecting the rights of donor offspring to know their donors was expected to be submitted in 2022. In March 2022, the Bipartisan Congressional Caucus created a draft bill regarding the right of donor-conceived person to know their origin. It stated that in order to guarantee donor-conceived persons' "right to know the biological origin," an independent administrative organization (Information Storage Organization) would store information such as the name, date of birth, and "My Number" (Japan's version of the social security number) of each member of the couple, the donor-conceived child, and the donor for a period of 100 years. A donor-conceived person or anyone who thinks that he or she may be donor conceived would be able to check whether or not his or her information is recorded, and the person would be able to request information about his/her donor. The donor would then be informed that the donor offspring had requested the donor's information.1) However, this draft bill was not submitted in 2022.

In November 2023, the following new proposal was presented by the Bipartisan Congressional Caucus.

If an independent administrative organization that stores the information of donors, recipients, and offspring receives a request for disclosure from a donor-conceived person who has reached adulthood, the non-identifying information of his or her gamete donor (specifically, height, blood type, and age at the time of donation) will be disclosed without consent of the donor. If the donor-conceived person wants more information including the donor's name, address, medical background, and so forth, he or she must make a new, separate application and will be informed of only the details that the donor agrees to disclose.2)

Kozo Akino, a ruling-coalition lawmaker involved in drafting the legislation, argues that assisted reproductive technology should not be pursued at the expense of the well-being of donor-conceived children. There have been reports from the media that "consideration is given to the right to know the origin" and "children's rights are prioritized" in terms of information about the donor being made available.3) However, if this draft becomes law, it means that the wishes of the donor will take precedence over the donor offspring's right to know their biological origin, and that the information available to donor offspring about the donor will depend entirely on the donor's wishes. Some donor offspring will not be able to obtain their donor's information at all. Can we say that this bill really recognizes donor-conceived people's right to know their biological origin? The bill has not yet been submitted as of March 2024.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which entered into force in 1990, argues that a child has rights to a name, nationality, knowledge of his/her parents, and to preserve his/her identity. Japan ratified the UN Convention in 1994; however, donor anonymity continues to exist.

In some places such as the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, some states of Australia, Finland, Ireland, and France, the donor's identifying information is available to donor offspring either because anonymous donations are prohibited or because access to information is available upon approval. With the rapid spread of commercial direct-to-consumer DNA testing, some professionals and researchers argue that donor anonymity can no longer be guaranteed.4) Although commercial direct-to-consumer DNA testing is not popular in Japan yet, it can be assumed that the identity of anonymous donors will be revealed in Japan in the future because of influence from abroad. However, Japanese lawmakers are still reluctant to abolish donor anonymity.

In this presentation, I will show how policy makers involved in drafting donor-conception legislation view the right of donor offspring to know their origins, as well as what donor-conceived people think about that right. In addition, I will provide evidence of changing attitudes in Japanese society regarding the disclosure of donor information.

References

1. About the new draft bill regarding donor conception (in Japanese). Yomiuri Shimbun Online, 03/07/2022, https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/medical/20220307-OYT1T50118/

2. Emphasis on the right to know one's origin: Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill to be submitted to Parliament next year (in Japanese). Nihon Keizai Shimbun 11/07/2023, https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA07CK80X01C23A1000000/

3. Japan's proposed sperm-donor laws spark concerns among lesbians and single women 10/21/2022, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-21/sperm-donor-legal-framework-in-japan/101563310

4. Harper, J. C., Kennett, D., & Reisel, D. (2016). The end of donor anonymity: How genetic testing is likely to drive anonymous gamete donation out of business. Human Reproduction, 31(6), 1135–1140. doi:10.1093/humrep/dew065

Experiences of Australian Egg Donors Who Have Early Contact (Before 18) with Their Donor Conceived Children and Recipient Parents

Cal VOLKS (La Trobe University Law Department / Monash University Anthropology Department)

Genetic Strangers or Potential Kinship? Egg Donors' Experiences and Expectations in and beyond Anonymity

黃于玲 HUANG Yu-Ling (National Cheng Kung University)

This paper undertakes an exploration into gamete donation anonymity in Taiwan and how the changing cultural shift towards openness and transparency in the island. Enacted in 2007, Taiwan's Assisted Reproduction Act has established anonymous gamete donations as the prevailing model, safeguarding the rights of recipient couples and donors. Curiously, the welfare of offspring has been a marginalized consideration for two decades. Scrutinizing legal texts, media discourse, and drawing insights from in-depth interviews with thirty egg donors, this study delineates the intricate interplay of legal regulations, cultural perceptions of kinship, and organizational dynamics within IVF clinics collectively shape anonymity across legal, medical, and kinship practices. First, the Act, devoid of criteria addressing the offspring's welfare, build secrecy as a guiding principle, steering medical and kinship practices. Second, during clinic consultations and informed consent processes, anonymity is underscored as pivotal for the privacy and familial security of recipients and donors. Third, the public narratives, as portrayed in television shows, depict genetic kinship outside marriage as a threat to familial bonds, thereby reinforcing the anonymity regime. The commercialization of gamete donation among young women intensifies these trends. With the increasing emphasis on children's rights and the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law, the rights and interests of children born through assisted reproduction have gradually garnered attention from child rights groups and the government agencies. The recent amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act have also expanded the situations in which recipient couples and female donors may establish contact after donation. The future of donor anonymity will require more discussions among stakeholders and a more comprehensive institutional design.

Whose Story is the Story of Donating Egg and Sperm? On Adult Autonomy and Reproductive Connectedness in Third Party Conception 

Petra NORDQVIST (University of Manchester)

History of Artificial Insemination and Sperm Donation in Japan

由井秀樹 YUI Hideki (RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences / University of Yamanashi)

After the Second World War, the first child conceived through AID was born in Japan in 1949. Nonetheless, the utilization of artificial insemination with a husband's sperm dates back to the late 19th century in Japan. This presentation aims to delineate the pre-war implementation of artificial insemination in Japan, followed by a description of how AID was initiated in post-war Japan.

The methodology of introducing semen into a woman's womb through medical instruments surfaced in Japanese medical literature from the late 19th century, under the terminologies of 'artificial pregnancy（人工妊娠; jinko ninshin）' or 'artificial fecundation（人工受胎; jinko jutai）', mirroring Western nomenclature. The term 'artificial insemination（人工授精; jinko jusei）' gained prominence only in the 1940s.

During the 1920s, a few practitioners fervently advocated for and practiced 'artificial pregnancy'. However, until the early 1940s, medical professionals tended to underestimate the procedure due to its limited success rates.

The post-war era was characterized by Japan grappling with the aftermath of defeat, compounded by concerns of overpopulation. Against this problem, medical practitioners actively engaged in contraceptive research, refining methods such as ovulation phase estimation, including basal body temperature, which augmented the efficacy of artificial insemination protocols.

Since then, artificial insemination, encompassing both AIH and AID, became emblematic of cutting-edge medical advancements. While the birth of the first child conceived through AID garnered attention, controversies surrounding the utilization of donated sperm persisted. Legal and ethical debates ensued, with some equating AID with adultery, while others viewed it as a means of fortifying family structures. Moreover, while some eugenicists welcomed AID as a means of racial improvement, such an idea was criticized as being against humanity.

Proponents of AID, primarily medical scientists, positioned it as a last-resort intervention for infertility treatment. Consequently, secrecy surrounding AID procedures, including nondisclosure to the child and anonymity of the sperm donor, became standard practice. Moreover, such secrecy was used as a logic to defend AID.

Medical students were commonly used as sperm donors. However, a medical doctor who started AID in Japan said that in his first case he used a married man as a sperm donor. One woman, who had been a Member of Parliament, criticised his attempts as disrespectful to the donor's wife. Although exceptional, one university hospital used male relatives of patients as sperm donors. This was a strategy to ensure that the responsibility for the birth of a disabled child rested with the patient rather than the doctor. Children born with AID of such a strategy may be able to obtain information about the donor from their parents. However, they may face relationship difficulties specific to kinship. 

"Aging of Eggs" and Assisted Reproductive Technology: Population Policies to Combat Declining Birth Rate in Japan

柘植あづみ TSUGE Azumi (Meiji Gakuin University) 

The term "egg aging" or "aging of oocyte" was first used in Japan with a TV program in 2012. Still, it became widely used and generally recognized in 2015, when the Cabinet's Outline of Measures for Society with Declining Birth Rate stated the need to expand the knowledge that it becomes more difficult for women to conceive as they age, etc. 

The Cabinet's Outline explicitly stated the need to educate junior high and high school people about this. The aim is to encourage women to marry and give birth at an earlier age by making them aware of the fact that as the age of women who wish to conceive and give birth increases, it becomes more difficult to conceive, miscarriage becomes more likely, and aneuploidy (abnormal number of chromosomes) can occur in the eggs.

In Japan, where the birth rate is declining, in addition to socio-economic reasons, the attitudes of unmarried women towards marriage and childbirth are changing. In other words, the proportion of never-married women aged 20 and over who intend to marry is declining, and the average number of children desired by never-married women has also been declining. 

At the same time, the number of infertility treatments, especially ART continues to increase, and data suggest that older women are spending large sums of money to repeat ART many times due to ART failure. The Government has moved from subsidized support for ART to public health insurance (30% of actual costs) in 2022, further increasing the number of people receiving ART. However, for older people, and due to the small number of ART procedures involving donated eggs, the only option in Japan is to repeat ART with a low success rate at great expense.

This report argues that Japan's fertility policies incorporating ART and the spread of the discourse of 'aging eggs' have showed an ideology that discourages women from continuing their careers and that the choice between ART with donated eggs by traveling abroad and egg cryopreservation - both of which have become commercialized and the imposition of reproductive responsibility on women - are discussed, with data presented.

Our questionnaire research data and interview data show that women who had at least one baby using donated eggs from a third party had a conservative conception of family, and they were concerned about the government's efforts to confront the declining birth rate. Some younger women who have not married and have children yet consider egg cryopreservation for having their children later. However, the method does not have enough positive data to be successful.

It can be said that ART and surrounding medical technologies are popularised by the population policy combating the declining birth rate. Although it also has an additional burden on women who keep the fertility treatment, they seek to be mothers because Japanese society is one in which being a mother is very valuable.

Anticipatory Governance of Gamete Donation and Anonymity Politics in Taiwan 

吳嘉苓 WU Chia-Ling (National Taiwan University)

The Life Experience of Becoming Parents Through Egg Donation

白井千晶 SHIRAI Chiaki (Shizuoka University)

This report is a longitudinal study of the experience and evaluation of becoming parents through egg donation.

Receiving egg donation is not the goal; rather, parenthood for the parents and life for the child begin at the point of egg donation.

The experience and evaluation of egg donation are influenced by the person's life course up to that point, interacting with the environment and society, and changing with the person's life stages. Therefore, longitudinal studies are needed, not just a snapshot (cross-sectional) analysis of the experience of becoming a parent through egg donation.

In this report, the author analyzes a case study of ongoing interviews with a Japanese woman.

The results show that the meaning of egg donation for the woman, the position of her genetic link, her attitude towards disclosure to her child and to others changed over time and with the growth of her child. The results also suggest that these changes are influenced by the interaction between the micro-relationships surrounding her (parent-child relationship, family, and kinship relationships) and the interaction with the macro-society, such as the times, society, and legal system.

Egg Donation and the Right to Know Half-Siblings

小門穂 KOKADO Minori (Osaka University)

Does a person born by gamete donation have access to information about his/her half-siblings, that is a person born by the same donor, and is this part of the right to know one's origins? 

The right to know one's origin has been considered as the right to be informed of the circumstances of one's birth, in other words telling, and to be informed of the donor's information. On the other hand, information related to donation is not limited to data about the donor. People born through gamete donation may know others born from the same donor through genetic testing or other means. For example, PMAnonyme (https://pmanonyme.asso.fr), a French association of people born by gamete donation, indicates on its website that 117 people were able to meet their donors through genetic testing, and 513 people were able to meet their half-brothers (as of January 23, 2024. https://pmanonyme.asso.fr/cartes-des-decouvertes/). In France, where gamete donors remained anonymous until 2021, since donor-conceived people could not obtain information about their donors, these associations have played an important role in promoting exchange between the parties.

When considering the right to know one's origins, how is knowing about those born to the same donor considered?

This paper will focus on how egg recipients in Japan think about people born to the same donor. We will also refer to the memoirs of those born through sperm donation as clues to thinking about knowing information about half-siblings.

In Japan, assisted reproductive technology (ART) has long been practiced in the absence of legislation, however, a new act established the filiation of donor-conceived people at the end of 2020. With this passage, some argue that ART involving third-party donation has been approved. So far egg donation is rare, and those who wish to have this procedure often choose to engage in reproductive tourism. The most popular destination for egg donation is estimated to be Taiwan. This act in 2020 does not indicate anything about the right to know one's origin, and it is reported that a new bill is currently being considered. The proposed bill would allow the disclosure of information such as the donor's height, blood type, and age at the time of donation if the donor-conceived people so desires after reaching adulthood (18 years old), and the disclosure of personally identifiable information such as the donor's name only if the donor consents.

Since 2019, we conducted interviews with egg donation recipients who live in Japan. Some received their egg donation in foreign countries, while others received them in Japan. Some have information about the donor, while others' donors are anonymous, but many are proactive about telling their children about the donation. Some egg donation recipients are concerned that their children may become romantically involved with someone born to the same donor. Therefore, based on interview data from egg donation recipients, we will examine how they think about the person born from the same donor and how they try to communicate this to their children.

Concurrently, from the literature review, we will also examine the right to know one's half-siblings.

Proposal for a New Analytical Framework to Govern Surrogacy: Insights from Theories of Vulnerability and Relational Autonomy 

雷文玫 REI Wenmay (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)

The Market in Third-Party Reproduction in South Africa

Andrea WHITTAKER (Monash University)

In this presentation I outline the growing trade in oocytes in South Africa, for local, regional and overseas intended parents. Oocyte provision/donation occurs within a specific context in South Africa. Firstly, I provide a description of the economy surrounding ova donation and the system of ova banks which broker donors. I describe the selection of ova donors and the racial and tribal divisions that are differentiated through the process. Third party donation is highly secretive within the African context, even more so for sperm donation. Although donation is 'altruistic' it provides an attractive fixed amount of compensation to providers. Local ova donors are usually young women undertaking ova donation as a means of securing income to fulfil educational aspirations, pay debts or make purchases while also helping others form a family. Local women who are deemed 'high quality' may have their ova frozen and exported with no extra compensation and little knowledge of the profit made on their oocytes once batched and exported. While South African ova are exported overseas, sperm is often imported from overseas, with many clinics doubting the 'quality' of local sperm.

In the second part of this paper, I examine how South Africa with its high-quality IVF services is promoted as a destination source of oocytes for reproductive travellers. South Africa is promoted as having readily available source of oocytes a variety of racial types, white, African and South Asian, making it a destination for women seeking oocytes from Australia, the US and elsewhere on the continent (some of whom are single mothers undertaking double donations). South African ova donors also travel overseas to provide oocytes and there is a growing trade exporting frozen oocytes to US ova banks and elsewhere. Our findings suggest this trade has increased following COVID which increased confidence of ova vitrification and shipping. This is viewed by several clinics as a potential lucrative source of income: another form of extractive industry involved in the transformation of raw material (Nahman 2013) – in this case, bodies and oocytes – to create economic values (profit), while at the same time creating affective values (care, pregnancy, children, parenthood).

From 'Racial Matching' to 'Selective Mixed-Race Privilege': Taiwanese Gay Fathers' Strategic Navigations of Racial Hierarchies in Donor Ova Selection

陳容 CHEN Jung (University of Cambridge)

In the blossoming global fertility markets, donor gametes are commercialised and racialised, which reflects the circulated hierarchical divisions of race/ethnicity across national borders. With the burgeoning trends of LGBTQ+ family-building through the use of transnational third-party reproduction, prospective queer parents are also required to make choices regarding the selection of the racial/ethnic backgrounds of gamete donors. Consequently, scholarship in the field of social studies of reproduction shows emerging interests in the crafting of queer families' racial contours. For example, research in the contexts of the US and European countries, including the UK, Span, and Scandinavian regions, reported that queer parents deployed the strategy of 'racial matching' to create family resemblances and a sense of connectedness based on the racial make-up of their children. This article seeks to build on the scholarship that has been examining LGBTQ+ people's decision-making on choosing donor gametes to investigate the ways in which gay men in Taiwan perceive and conceive their 'racial imaginaries' to navigate donor ova selection process, which is facilitated by global commercial egg banks and influenced by local understanding of racial hierarchies. Data from 53 in-depth interviews with gay fathers and fathers-to-be are combined with findings based on eight months of fieldwork in order to characterise gay men's reproductive journeys to become fathers and to examine how race as a device (re)shapes their reproductive practices.

Drawing on the literature in critical race theory, queer theory, and LGBTQ+ family studies, firstly, I set the scene by illustrating how 'race as a technology' animates the commodification of donor ova in the fertility industry and how local sociocultural constraints compel queer families to seek recognition by 'fitting in.' Then, I investigate the ways in which gay men feel, understand, and interpret race/ethnicity when selecting donor ova through a comparative analysis of those who seek third-party reproduction, respectively, in the US, Russia, and Thailand. I observe that, due to the lack of Asian ova donors in the US, gay men who choose the US as their destination often settle on Caucasian donors. Similar tendencies can also be found in the cases of those who go to Russia. Gay fathers who conceive their children in Thailand with Asian ova, however, are more likely to draw on the 'racial matching' discourse as a 'normalisation strategy' that enables them to assimilate into Taiwan society. Considering the fact that around 96.4 % of Taiwan's population is of Han ethnicity, with 2 % of indigenous peoples and 1.1 % immigrants, and Westerners account for only 0.1 %, gay fathers' mixed-race surrogacy-born children are comparatively 'standing out' in everyday lives. Gay fathers in my study, particularly those conceiving mixed-race children, employ what I coin as the 'resistant accommodation' strategy to both contest heteronormative assumptions of procreation by addressing the use of biotechnologies and 'foreign biomaterials' for crafting queer relatedness and align their racialised choices with the prospects of constructing cosmopolitan citizenship for children. This article characterises the ways in which gay men in Taiwan render family racial contours meaningful in transnational third-party reproduction. By doing so, I argue that the then 'invisible and unmarked' white supremacy in Western countries travels and transforms into the apparently visible white privilege in Asian societies such as Taiwan, which gives rise to the 'selective mixed-raced privilege' and reinforces existing racial hierarchies.

Keywords: Taiwanese gay fathers, donor ova, racial hierarchies, mixed-race privilege, resistant accommodation

Transnational Choreography and Reproductive-scape: Practices and Experiences of Transnational Reproductive Journeys by Lesbian Motherhood in Taiwan

胡郁盈 HU Yu-Ying (Kaohsiung Medical University)