Paper short abstract:

Contemporary and historic anxieties about removing anonymity in donor-assisted conception reveal the perception that actual or even virtual proximity between donor and donor offspring is dangerous and that the risks cannot be managed successfully by those who are personally involved.

Paper long abstract:

Gamete donors in most countries have been anonymised until recently. In the UK the practice of donor-assisted conception did not become subject to regulation for nearly fifty years during which the status of the donor-conceived child was considered to be illegitimate. In this situation, the secrecy promoted by doctors was a 'practical virtue' whose purpose was the protection of everyone involved. Keeping donors and recipients apart was thought to be necessary to protect the infertile man from the stigma of infertility, and prevent fantasies of an adulterous nature. In addition, keeping information from the offspring would avoid the possibility of the child abandoning its social father, it being thought inevitable that she or he would be drawn to the genetic father. Anonymity was thought to ensure against any legal, material or emotional claim by the donor upon the offspring, and vice versa.

Drawing upon ethnographic research I describe the views of men who donated semen, mostly when they were medical students, towards the possibility of having contact with their donor offspring. Issues include what the transformation of the genetic connection into a social one entails, ambivalence about what moral obligation is involved in this kind of relationship and the lack of a script or guidelines upon which to rely in this precarious social situation. I also note the increase in origins searching by donor offspring, the worry by some donors that the offspring may try to exploit them financially and the usefulness of theories of liminality in analysing the issues.