If it says they are anonymous, then they are anonymous in the agreements. Now, with the advent of 23andMe and the different DNA testing operations out there, people are finding out who their donors were, which isn’t always a good thing. Many donors are young college students who are looking at the process clinically, as if they were donating a kidney. A young woman might view donating her eggs as no different than passing an egg during her monthly period. They are not looking at it like they are giving up a child for adoption, nor do they want to look at it that way. So when a child comes knocking at their door because they found them through 23andMe and says, “Hey, you are my mother,” that’s not really a good thing. It undermines the anonymity that most donors prefer or intended to have when they first made their donation.
My contract would clearly specify that it is an anonymous donation and that if somehow the identity is discovered, the information would not be shared with the child without the permission of the parents. We also don’t want an egg donor to find the child that she contributed the eggs for and come knocking at the door, saying, “Oh, that’s my child!” Same for a surrogate with the child that she gave birth to. Maybe the donor needs a kidney now and wants the child from her eggs to donate their organ. That’s just one example—the sky is the limit in terms of what can emerge from this situation.
