SECRETLY CONNECTED? ANONYMOUS SEMEN DONATION, GENETICS AND MEANINGS OF KINSHIP Jennifer M. Speirs Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 2007 Dedicated to the memory of Izzy Speirs a beloved wife, mother and sister, a much loved and respected friend, kinswoman and colleague, and a stotter of a sister-in-law. Stotter, stoater: excellent, admirable, exactly what is required (Scots, esp. Glasgow). Acknowledgments I am overawed by the number of people who have supported, exhorted, pushed, pulled and accompanied me on the journey of producing this thesis. Many of them will never have the occasion to read it, such as library staff across the length and breadth of the UK who facilitated internet access whilst I was doing fieldwork, the staff in the ticket centre of Edinburgh’s Waverley station who helped to plan my travel, and the staff in the David Hume Tower Senses Cafe, particularly Joan who made it her job to ensure that students eat cheaply but well. For perseverance and (almost) unremitting cheerfulness the reward goes to my principal supervisor Professor Janet Carsten and second supervisor Professor Lynn Jamieson. Their encouragement to believe that I could write a PhD thesis, their attention to detail, their kind but astute and prompt feedback, and their sharing of practice wisdom and intellectual knowledge, were crucial to the achievement of the project. I take this opportunity to thank also my thesis examiners, Professor Anthony Good (Edinburgh) and Dr Bob Simpson (Durham) for their careful analysis of my thesis and their interesting and thought-provoking comments and questions during my viva. Over the years I have benefited from help and encouragement from many other social anthropologists and I thank Soraya Tremayne (Oxford) and Monica Konrad (Cambridge) for their invitations to present my work in progress, and Jeanette Edwards who gifted me a copy of ‘Born and Bred’. Conversations with the late Dr Jonathan Telfer in Adelaide about social anthropology, social work, Janet Carsten’s research, and adoption, are a very precious memory. It has been a privilege to be encouraged by members of the Department of Social Anthropology in Edinburgh, and particularly by the late Dr Charles Jedrej, by Professor Jonathan Spencer, course co-ordinator of the Scottish Training in Anthropological Research (STAR) Advanced (post fieldwork) Course in 2007 and, I suspect, of much else besides which was to my benefit, and by Dr Iris Jean-Klein whose observation that Winnie the Pooh was not stupid, he just had a differently constituted knowledge, has been a constant source of reassurance. I thank also the patient university library staff and the admirable administrative staff of the Graduate School office, especially Sue Grant, who all dealt with problems and queries with a cheerful efficiency, and Ian McNeil, School Computing Officer, for whom no query from me about computer problems was ever too stupid. Funding for most of my fieldwork and writing-up costs came from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) studentship tenable at the ESRC Innogen Centre, for which I am most grateful. Members of Innogen’s academic and administrative staff were all unfailingly encouraging about my research and my small contribution to the programme of the centre. The ESRC funds the Post Graduate Forum on Genetics and Society (PFGS), a multidisciplinary network of new researchers working in and around areas of genetics and society, and my participation in several PFGS workshops and conferences in the UK provided ideal opportunities for presentation of work in progress. I heartily thank my fellow PFGS students for their interest, conviviality, and robust discussions on these occasions. Postgraduate students at Edinburgh University who also had study space in the inspirational 18th century flats at 10 and 12 Buccleuch Place were a constant source of intellectual and emotional support, especially Weining Cheng and Kelly Davis (Social Anthropology), Ruth Lewis (CRFR), and additionally for I.T. lessons and chocolate exchange, Lucia (“Comrade”) Siu (Sociology) and Michael (“Mr”) Ofori- Mensah (African Studies). Support from family and many friends both near and far were crucial by way of providing hospitality during my fieldwork, and by showing that life continued outside of my PhD project. In particular I thank my cousins Alison, Hilary, Rosemary and Angus and their families, friends Arthur, Libby (and Marouf), Elizabeth S, Elizabeth W, Lorna, Barry, Frances, Linn and family, Ruth and John, Ann and Donald and also Dave and Brenda in Siabost bho Dheas, and ‘the ladies who breakfast’ after the 9 a.m. service at St Andrews and St Georges Church. For practical kinship, memorable food and wine, love, laughter and companionship in sorrow, I thank my dear brothers John and Alasdair, my savvy sister-in-law Susan, and my admirable nephews and nieces-in-law Andrew and Rachel, David and Catherine, Sandy and Julie, and Tom and Kirsten. To the elders of the youngest generation, Tasha and Magnus, thank you for making me feel special. Many people working in the field of infertility, and many others keeping an eye on what they are doing, were generous with the attention which they gave to my research questions, and with advice, ideas, sharing of memories and access to documents. I thank members of the British Fertility Society (BFS) and especially members of its Executive Committee, other members of the medical, scientific and nursing professions in the UK and Scandinavia, Gwen Skinner at the Department of Health in London, and Peter Mills at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. BFS conferences were sponsored and supported by pharmaceutical and other commercial businesses whose representatives were always happy to discuss my project and to keep me supplied with free ball point pens. Many thanks also to the National Gamete Donation Trust Advisory Council, to colleagues in post-adoption agencies, the British Infertility Counselling Association and the Scottish Infertility Counselling Group, and to staff of Doctors.net.uk. For engaging discussions on professional, personal, ethical and political aspects of donor-assisted conception I am grateful to current and recent members of the British Association of Social Workers’ Project Group on Assisted Reproduction: Amanda, Ann, David, Elizabeth, Jennie, Julia, Marilyn, Olivia, and especially Eric Blyth who demonstrated his faith in me by providing a reference for my PhD application. I am profoundly grateful for the information, personal stories, comments and exasperations shared by people with a personal involvement in donor-assisted conception as donors, donor-conceived individuals, family members of donors, parents of donor-conceived children and young people, members of DC Network, UK Donorlink and the Donor Conception Support Group of Australia. Finally I acknowledge my great indebtedness to the semen donors who agreed to be interviewed by me and to share their views, feelings, and memories, especially because, having been socially obliterated, they were not supposed to exist as persons at all. I hope that they will feel that their trust in me was worth their while. University of Edinburgh Scotland December 2007 ABSTRACT The use of donated human semen in the UK was developed by medical practitioners as a means of circumventing male infertility and helping childless women to achieve a pregnancy. Uncertainty about the legal status of donor-conceived children and moral concerns about the possible effects on the marital relationship of the recipients worked to maintain donor insemination (DI) as a largely hidden practice in which the donors remained anonymous to the recipients and unrevealed to any resulting donor offspring. Donors were not expected or encouraged to take any interest in what became of their donations even after the practice became subject to regulation by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. This thesis is based on a set of unstructured interviews with medical practitioners and other health professionals currently or formerly working in clinics providing DI services in the UK, and with men who donated semen between the 1960s and early 1980s mostly when they were medical students. Participant observation was carried out at conferences and other meetings of organisations and individuals with professional or personal involvement in donor-assisted conception, and a survey was made of infertility clinics’ policies concerning the use of semen from donors known personally to recipients. Discussions with donors revealed ambivalent and mixed feelings about their involvement in providing semen, often for payment, and about their lack of information regarding the outcome of their donations. The idea of possible contact with donor offspring is influenced for these semen donors by their perceptions and experiences of what it means to be a parent and by the significance attributed to physical resemblances between genetically related people. In this situation of ambiguity and uncertain obligation, there is no existing script for managing possible new kinds of kinship relation. The historical tension in DI services between opportunity and risk because of possible defects or disease in donated semen is now echoed in professional uncertainties about whether to allow semen donation where the donor and recipient are known personally to each other. I show that for some people, including donors, this brings the practice into a kinship frame, whilst for others it confuses family boundaries because of the