Conceiving People

Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated gametes (sperm or eggs). Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will. Questions about what donor-conceived people should know about their genetic progenitors are significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What is the value of knowing who your genetic progenitors are? How are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? In Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation, Daniel Groll argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not, Groll argues, because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to really care about having genetic knowledge and parents should care about what their kids care about.