The first public record of donor insemination (DI) was in the USA in the 1880s. It was carried out without the woman’s knowledge but the doctor told her husband afterwards. By the mid twentieth century, there were several UK clinics but DI (then and for a long time afterwards was called Artificial Insemination by Donor – AID). was still considered socially and morally unacceptable. Secrecy remained the norm for many years, with doctors telling patients – all heterosexual couples at this time – that it was better for the child not to know the circumstances of their conception. It only came to light many years later that some doctors were themselves not always open with their patients. For example, Mary Barton, an early ‘pioneer’, used her husband and a scientist at her London clinic as the main sperm donors but did not tell the parents.
The controversy around AID contributed to the establishment of The Departmental Committee on Human Artificial Insemination (1958–1960), or Feversham Committee as it was commonly called. It was set up following a 1958 Scottish divorce court case (MacLennan v. MacLennan), where a husband accused his wife of adultery, and she defended herself by claiming her pregnancy was the result of AID. Its remit was to investigate the legal, social, and moral implications of human artificial insemination, and decide whether new laws were required. It concluded that AID was “undesirable” and socially risky and recommended against legalising or regulating it within the National Health Service (NHS), warning that it threatened the institution of marriage.
It has only more recently been uncovered that a doctor running a DI clinic in the north of England was using sperm from one patient to treat another without their knowledge –so-called ‘stolen sperm’ – and that a doctor in the Midlands used his own sperm, again without the parents’ knowledge[1].
The scientific and clinical work continued and led to the birth of the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown in 1978, in England. The prompted the government to commission a new Committee of Enquiry in 1982 leading to the 1984 Report on Human Fertilisation & Embryology, commonly called the Warnock Report after its Chair Mary Warnock, a moral philosopher. Its role was primarily to consider whether to regulate the field of assisted reproduction and embryo research. Its key recommendations focussed on the need for an independent statutory authority to license and monitor fertility clinics and research and to establish a 14 day rule beyond which human embryos could not be used for research (the point at which the so-called “primitive streak” forms and twin division can no longer occur). It said that IVFshould be recognized as a legitimate medical treatment while setting clear ethical guardrails around surrogacy, gametes donation, and storage.
There was not a majority support for donors to be made identifiable but in my later conversations with Mary Warnock it was clear that this was in part a concession to enable other parts of their recommendations to go ahead, in particular that services should not be restricted to married couples. She herself said she never envisaged that parents would not tell their children of their origins.
The Committee had been divided on whether surrogacy should be prohibited or made subject to ‘stringent care and control’ as a ‘last resort’. However, within the year further ethical dilemmas hit the headlines through the so-called Baby Cotton surrogacy story and resulted in a hastily passed piece of legislation aimed at stopping commercial surrogacy, the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985
While awaiting the passage of primary legislation and with compulsory regulation looming following the Warnock Report, a Voluntary Licensing Authority and then an Interim Statutory Licensing Authority were established.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 led to:
- the creation of the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority), the world’s first statutory body of its kind (with publicly appointed members[2]) to play a role in both regulation and shaping policy. to license and inspect treatment clinics and embryo research; to publish a Code of Practice for clinics setting out both statutory duties and guidance; to establish the HFEA mandatory Register of Information to record all licensed cycles, donations and births (where known);
- clarification of parental relationships including that donors would be anonymous and recipient parents would be legal parents;
- for surrogacy, a requirement for a post-birth court process to transfer legal parenthood from surrogates to intended parents but only if they were heterosexual couples and met certain conditions
.
It was enacted on 1st August 1991.
It was to be another 14 years before donor anonymity was lifted and involved a lot of hard work spent campaigning!
The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) had given evidence to the Warnock Committee, including on the importance of openness and of lifespan understanding. It soon set up the Project Group on Assisted Reproduction, now simply called PROGAR – https://bit.ly/4dBheN9 which remains under BASW’s umbrella. I’ve been its Chair since 2013. PROGAR is a multi agency and multi-disciplinary group comprising figures from national children and family organisations, academics and, most importantly, DC adults and parents. Government civil servants and HFEA staff were in regular attendance at our meetings.
In 1993, the pro-openness Donor Conception Network for parents and families was established and became members of PROGAR. The emergence of collective parents’ voices and those of individual, and later collective, donor conceived adults exhorting openness was very powerful. However also powerful were the many voices against it in the ‘fertility establishment’, always claiming that there was no evidence of harm from secrecy – and never responding to our requests for them to show evidence of harm from openness – and claiming that lifting donor anonymity would stop men donating their sperm.
For many years, PROGAR used ‘welfare-based’ arguments and the principle of ‘harm from secrecy’ to counter arguments that changes would affect supply of donors and/or threaten the sanctity of the raising family. We produced written briefings, spoke at meetings, engaged sympathetic journalists, clinicians, members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords etc etc. All, of course, without the use of social media and with even email and the internet in its relative infancy.
However, we gradually started shifting to using more human rights based arguments – after all the UK had ratified the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, passed in 1989 (but at this stage, still largely silent on how it applied to donor conception).
Then came the passing of the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998, which came into force on 2nd October 2000, bringing certain rights and freedoms from the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law.
In December 2001, the Chair of PROGAR was invited to give a keynote address to the HFEA Annual Conference entitled ‘Why Anonymity?’ Quite a breakthrough and a reflection of slowly changing attitudes.
At the same time, the Department of Health launched a public consultation titled Providing information about gamete or embryo donors which ran to July 2002. In May 2002 PROGAR seized the opportunity to hold a national day conference in London, funded by the prestigious Nuffield Foundation, entitled ‘Donor Information Consultation: Providing information about sperm egg and embryo donors’. The keynote speaker was Baroness Mary Warnock with whom PROGAR had been in discussion for some time as she moved towards being willing to state publicly that anonymity was the denial of a fundamental moral right. She shared the platform with other senior national figures, including the Chair of the influential Parliamentary Heath Select Committee, academics from a range of disciplines – and of course DC adults and family members. The presence of Mary Warnock in particular and her willingness to speak out publicly ensured massive media attention both nationally and internationally.
The results of the Department of Health’s national consultation showed strong public and (some) stakeholder support for donor-conceived individuals having access to their donor’s identity at age 18.
In 2002 came the hugely important case brought by the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) on behalf of Joanna Rose and E.M. (a minor) vs Secretary of State for Health. The court found there was a human rights case to answer. So although it didn’t proceed any further in the courts, this was enough to add pressure to the case for lifting donor anonymity.
By this time, the HFEA got both a new Chair, Suzi Leather, followed soon after by a new Chief Executive, Angela McNab. This signalled a change in its culture towards openness. PROGAR held meetings with them. The two of them were then instrumental in getting HFEA members and staff behind openness.
PROGAR secured a meeting with Hazel Blears, the new Public Health Minister in the Department of Health and came away feeling there may be a shift there too.
In January 2003, the Public Health Minister Hazel Blears, whom PROGAR had met with earlier, announced that the Government accepted ‘a strong argument in principle” for donor-conceived individuals to be able to find out the identity of their donors. Rather than enforcing an immediate change, she announced a six-month delay to allow for targeted research and consultation with fertility clinics and donors regarding potential impact on donor supply. She also announced government funding to help establish a voluntary contact register for donor-conceived individuals and donors prior to the start of legislation.
Public support to the announcement in the media was largely receptive.
Ken Daniels, Eric Blyth and myself undertook the research with past donors to investigate their views about voluntarily providing information to DC adults (our findings showed support among past donors, with some caveats).
After Adoption Yorkshire, for whom I was a Trustee, was approached (and agreed) to establish the voluntary register which was the first in the world to use DNA to help DC adults and donors from pre 1991 to connect. It was called UK DonorLink and was launched in April 2004. I was its national adviser for the first for 10 years. Its current successor is the Donor Conceived Register and the Registrants Panel originally set up by UK DonorLink was retained and was the forerunner of DCUK!.
Hazel Blears’ successor as Public Health Minister, Melanie Johnson, subsequently returned to the HFEA Annual Conference the following year (21 January 2004) to confirm the Government’s decision to end donor anonymity.
The 2004 Regulations to lift donor anonymity were implemented in April 2005. They were prospective, from the date the donor registered not the date of conception of any offspring from their donations. As they were not made retrospective (PROGAR’S lobbying for this gained no traction at all from elsewhere), those born between August 1991 and April 2005 were the only group with no access at all to a register that might enable them to identify their donor and this remains the case today.
There was a transitional period until 31 March 2006 with exceptions to allow the same donor to be used by parents wanting ‘full’ genetic siblings in their family and to allow stored embryos created with donated gametes to be used by those who created them. Recent HFEA data shows that greater numbers than previously thought are not eligible for the release of identifiable donor information.
Importantly, new Donor Registrations did not drop, contrary to the fears of some – and contrary to statements that one can still hear said today!
Pre 2005 donors were allowed to re-register as identifiable and even though there was no publicity surrounding this, despite lobbying. A number have done so.
The HFEA also ran a public consultation from late 2004 called the SEED Review (Sperm, Egg and Embryo Donation), with the final report published inOctober 2005. This was the first major comprehensive review of gamete donation policies. It established the rule that donation must be “cost neutral”, capping donor expenses/loss-of-earnings compensation at £250 per donation cycle. It also approved and standardized the framework for egg-sharing schemes.
In March 2005, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a major report called Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law recommending sweeping changes to how assisted reproduction and donor conception were regulated in the UK. Those giving oral evidence included DC adults, DC parents and PROGAR members. Its key recommendations of relevance to DC were:
- The Committee supported ending donor anonymity and emphasized that donor-conceived people have a fundamental right to access information about their biological origins.
- The child’s right to genetic identity outweighed the convenience of anonymous donation in relation to whether the supply of donors was affected.
- There should be a shift away from historic secrecy toward openness, encouraging parents to tell children about their donor origins early in life.
It also supported the lifting of barriers to DC treatments for single women, lesbian couples and minority groups and said that policies should reflect psychological evidence on parenting quality rather than rigid, traditional family definitions.
This coincided with a Department of Health national consultation reviewing the 1990 Act.
From 1st April 2006, the HFEA shifted from allowing a maximum of 10 children per donor (as had been recommended by the 1984 Warnock Report) to a maximum of 10 families per donor, with no limit on the number of the children within each family. The argument was won by those advocating for parents who wanted to have subsequent children using the same donor who would thus be full genetic siblings.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 brought in some changes to legal parenthood (including extending eligibility following surrogacy to same sex married couples and couples in civil partnerships or living together in an enduring family relationship); changed the wording of the ‘welfare of the child’ requirement from ‘need for a father’ to ‘need for supportive parenting’); and established the voluntary Donor Sibling Register for those aged 18 and over but not to non-DC children of donors (PROGAR lobbied for this). It also solidified the infrastructure allowing donor-conceived individuals to apply, when eligible, to the HFEA Register for identifying details about their donor. Moves to abolish the need to get signed consent from patients to inform other health professionals (such as midwives and obstetricians) about their treatment also failed, this retaining this aspect of ‘secrecy’.
Soon afterwards, in 2010-11, the HFEA ran another review – “Donation: Have Your Say”,commonly called The Donation Review Final decisions were made by the HFEA in October 2011 with the implementation in April 2012. This included that: the old “expenses-only” system was replaced by fixed flat-rate compensation; reaffirmation that a single donor’s gametes can be used to create a maximum of 10 families; that donors travelling from overseas were permitted to receive the fixed compensation rate.
Some later changes include:
2019 Regulations – eligibility for Parental Orders following surrogacy was extended to single applicants, providing they have a genetic link to the child
2023 – Opening the Register for the first 18 year olds eligible to apply for identifying donor information – PLUS
Consultations on new legislation:
- The Law Commissions of England & Wales and Scotland consulted on surrogacy law reform from June to October 2019 and reported in March 2023, recommending legislation that included changes to the birth registration system to include information about donors used in surrogacy arrangements.
- The HFEA consulted on ‘Modernising the regulation of fertility treatment and research involving human embryos’ from February to April 2023 but explicitly ruled out from its consultation making any changes retrospective. It reported in November 2023. Among other matters, it recommended a shift towards donors being identifiable from birth.
The government announced that it had no plans at present to introduce new legislation on either.
Summary
In this account, I’ve tried to pick put some of the key changes and consultations along the route to the lifting of donor anonymity but can’t really do justice to the sheer hard work and detail of what went into this lengthy campaign. Any errors in the account are down to my memory and looking back!!
I’ve not included, for example, the consultation on the ‘welfare of the child’ which resulted in a relaxation of the assessment requirements, introduction of a higher ‘child welfare’ threshold for denying treatment; and reduction in the number of routine enquiries – all of which we expressed our concerns about. Nor about a Nuffield Council of Bioethics report which risked putting back our campaign and which we then had to put time and energy into challenging.
Over time, there were very gradual shifts towards openness among a range of professionals and organisations and the general public together with the slowly growing research evidence base. And then the final stages moved more quickly.
I referred above to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989. I am pleased to report that the interpretation of how it applies to DC children (and hence the adults they will become) has moved on apace in recent years. There is now broad acceptance that DC children have the right to know of their origins and to know the identity of their legal, genetic and gestational ‘parents’. This was reinforced in the Verona Principles on Surrogacy 2021 https://iss-ssi.org/surrogacy/ and the more recent Child Identity Protection/Brocher documents for policy and practice – Launch of new tools for policy makers and practitioners to protect children’s rights in third party reproduction and surrogacy – Child Identity Protection
That said, none of these developments guarantees that raising parents will be open with their child about their origins: it remains their ‘choice’ and the need for education (including among professionals) and pressure remains. No-one has yet found a way forward on that!
Marilyn Crawshaw, July 2026
Marilyn Crawshaw – https://www.york.ac.uk/business-society/people/marilyn-crawshaw/ has been involved in trying to influence policy and practice in relation to donor conception policy and practice since the mid 1980s. This has been through her experiences as a maternity and gynae social worker; an academic conducting research with DC adults, DC parents, donors, adoptive parents, and professionals; a policy adviser; a lay HFEA Social & Ethical Inspector and member of its stakeholder groups; and an activist. She has been a member of PROGAR since 1994 and its Chair since 2013 and also has strong links internationally with others working and/ or lobbying in this field.
Timeline version:
1880s. – first public record of donor insemination (AID). Iin the USA. Carried out without the woman’s knowledge; husband informed afterwards
By mid twentieth century – several UK clinics. AID considered socially and morally unacceptable. Only for heterosexual couples – told it was better for children not to know. Later emerged doctors were not always open with patients about whose sperm was used.
The Departmental Committee on Human Artificial Insemination (1958–1960), or Feversham Committee set up – to investigate legal, social, and moral implications of human artificial insemination, and decide whether new laws were required. Concluded AID was “undesirable” and socially risky; recommended against its legalisation.
1978 – birth in England of Louise Brown, world’s first IVF baby
1984 Report on Human Fertilisation & Embryology, commonly called the Warnock Report after its Chair Mary Warnock, a moral philosopher. Remit – to consider whether to regulate the field of assisted reproduction and embryo research. Recommended need for an independent statutory authority to license and monitor fertility clinics and limit embryo research). Said IVFshould be recognized as legitimate medical treatment; need for ethical guardrails around surrogacy, gametes donation, and storage. Donors to be anonymous.
1985 Surrogacy Arrangements Act in response to ‘Baby Cotton’ surrogacy story – aimed at stopping commercial surrogacy.
Voluntary Licensing Authority then an Interim Statutory Licensing Authority established.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, enacted 1st August 1991. Created HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority), the world’s first statutory body of its kind. To regulate and shape policy. to license and inspect treatment clinics and embryo research; to publish a Code of Practice for clinics setting out both statutory duties and guidance; to establish the HFEA mandatory Register of Information to record all licensed cycles, donations and births (where known); Also:
- clarification of parental relationships including that donors would be anonymous and recipient parents would be legal parents;
- for surrogacy, a requirement for a post-birth court process to transfer legal parenthood from surrogates to intended parents but only if they were heterosexual couples and met certain conditions
.
Early 1990s – British Association of Social Workers (BASW) set up the Project Group on Assisted Reproduction, now simply called PROGAR – https://bit.ly/4dBheN9. A multi agency, multi-disciplinary group with DC adults and parents as members.
In 1993, the pro-openness Donor Conception Network for parents and families established.
Key debates going forwards were focussed on the welfare of children involved – opponents of lifting donor anonymity arguing there was no evidence of harm to them and that it would lead to shortage of donors. Advocates argued there was ‘harm from secrecy’ (including from adoption and family work and on health grounds) – and that decision was not about ‘supply and demand’.
1998 UK’s Human Rights Act 1998, enacted 2nd October 2000.
In December 2001, Chair of PROGAR was invited to give a keynote address to HFEA Annual Conference entitled ‘Why Anonymity?’
Department of Health public consultation titled Providing information about gamete or embryo donors ran to July 2002. I
May 2002 PROGAR held national day conference in London, funded by Nuffield Foundation, entitled ‘Donor Information Consultation: Providing information about sperm egg and embryo donors’. Keynote speaker was Baroness Mary Warnock who for first time stated publicly that anonymity was the denial of a fundamental moral right. Other influential figures on the platform – included DC adults and family members. Major media coverage.
Department of Health’s national consultation reported – strong public and (some) stakeholder support for donor-conceived individuals having access to their donor’s identity at age 18.
2002 – National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) on behalf of Joanna Rose and E.M. (a minor) vs Secretary of State for Health. Court found there was a human rights case to answer. So although it didn’t proceed any further in the courts, this was enough to add pressure to the case for lifting donor anonymity.
HFEA got a new Chair, Suzi Leather, and a new Chief Executive, Angela McNab. Change in its culture towards openness.
January 2003 – Public Health Minister Hazel Blears, announced that Government accepted ‘a strong argument in principle” for donor-conceived individuals to be able to find out the identity of their donors. Announced a six-month delay to allow for targeted research and consultation with fertility clinics and donors regarding potential impact on donor supply. Also announced government funding to help establish a voluntary contact register for donor-conceived individuals and donors prior to the start of legislation.
After Adoption Yorkshire agreed to establish the voluntary register, the first in the world to use DNA to help DC adults and donors from pre 1991 to connect. Called UK DonorLink and launched in April 2004. Its current successor is the Donor Conceived Register and the Registrants Panel originally set up by UK DonorLink was retained and was the forerunner of DCUK!.
January 2004 – Melanie Johnson, new Public Health Minister, confirmed the Government’s decision to end donor anonymity at HFEA Annual Conference
2004 Regulations to lift donor anonymity implemented prospectively in April 2005 with a transitional period to 31 March 2006. Those born between August 1991 and April 2005 only group left with no access to a register.
New Donor Registrations did not drop!
Pre 2005 donors allowed to re-register as identifiable; despite no publicity campaign at any stage since, a number have done so.
Late 2004, HFEA public consultation – SEED Review (Sperm, Egg and Embryo Donation), final report published October 2005. First major comprehensive review of gamete donation policies. Said donation must be “cost neutral”, capping donor expenses/loss-of-earnings compensation at £250 per donation cycle. It also approved and standardized the framework for egg-sharing schemes.
March 2005, House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published major report: Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law. Those giving oral evidence included DC adults, DC parents Strong recommendations including:
- The child’s right to genetic identity outweighed the convenience of anonymous donation in relation to whether the supply of donors was affected.
- There should be a shift away from historic secrecy toward openness, encouraging parents to tell children about their donor origins early in life.
Supported lifting barriers to DC treatments for single women, lesbian couples and minority groups and said policies should reflect psychological evidence on parenting quality rather than rigid, traditional family definitions.
Coincided with Department of Health national consultation reviewing the 1990 Act.
From 1st April 2006, HFEA shifted from allowing maximum 10 children per donor to maximum 10 families per donor and no limit on number of children within each family.
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 – included changes to legal parenthood (including extending eligibility following surrogacy to same sex married couples and couples in civil partnerships or living together in an enduring family relationship); changed wording of the ‘welfare of the child’ requirement from ‘need for a father’ to ‘need for supportive parenting’); established the voluntary Donor Sibling Register for those aged 18 and over but not to non-DC children of donors. Solidified infrastructure allowing donor-conceived individuals to apply, when eligible, to the HFEA Register for donor identifying details.
2010-11, another HFEA review – “Donation: Have Your Say”,commonly called The Donation Review Final decisions implemented in April 2012. Included replacing “expenses-only” for donors to fixed flat-rate compensation; permitted donors travelling from overseas to receive fixed compensation rate.
Some later changes include:
2019 Regulations – eligibility for Parental Orders following surrogacy extended to single applicants, providing they have a genetic link to the child
2023 – Opening the Register for the first 18 year olds eligible to apply for identifying donor information – PLUS
Consultations on new legislation:
- The Law Commissions of England & Wales and Scotland consulted on surrogacy law reform from June to October 2019 and reported in March 2023, recommending legislation that included changes to the birth registration system to include information about donors used in surrogacy arrangements.
- The HFEA consulted on ‘Modernising the regulation of fertility treatment and research involving human embryos’ from February to April 2023 but explicitly ruled out from its consultation making any changes retrospective. It reported in November 2023. Among other matters, it recommended a shift towards donors being identifiable from birth.
The government announced that it had no plans at present to introduce new legislation on either.
[1] The UK is not unique in such historical happenings. There are also present-day reports coming to light in, for example, The Netherlands, the USA and Canada. Several US States now have so-called ‘fertility fraud’ laws and the first research paper on the impact of ‘fertility fraud’ was only published recently.
[2] Controversially, the Act did not include a requirement to include at least one member with lived experience
Leave a Reply