Qualifying kinship: how do UK gamete donors negotiate identity-release donation?
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Date
28/11/2017Author
Gilman, Leah Isabelle
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Abstract
With effect from 1st April 2005, UK law was amended such that gamete donors must
now consent to their identity being released to their donor offspring, should they
request it after the age of eighteen. This qualitative study investigates the views and
experiences of those donating in this new context. Drawing primarily on twenty-four
in-depth interviews with donors, supplemented by twenty staff interviews and
observation in two fertility clinics, I examine how donors make sense of their role in
relation to offspring, recipients and the wider community. I argue that donors make
sense of their role as “biological” parents to offspring through creative reference to
kinship repertoires, drawing on their own experiences of “doing family.” However,
crucially, kinship connections are always qualified in some way to show that they are
not quite family to donor offspring, and certainly not their “real” parent. Often this
discursive work involved emphasising their relationship to recipients or the wider
community (rather than offspring), framing the donation as a gift or a public act. In
addition, donors drew on their kinship expertise to dilute, reshape or “re-route” their
connection to offspring. Ultimately, this is a thesis about the limiting work involved
in “doing kinship.” I demonstrate that donors did this limiting work in highly
creative ways, not restricted to forgetting or ignoring connections. Instead, I show
that not constructing kinship claims can be as active a process as making them.