Rights for Donor Conceived and Adopted People

In the United States, donor-conceived and adopted people do not currently have the right to accuracy on their birth certificates. Instead of a birth certificate listing who actually provided sperm, egg, and a womb for the child, it lists who the child's legal parents are. The question of whether this is ok is fraught. I tend towards abhorring secrecy in this matter and I think everyone has a right to know who their biological relatives are, if for no other reason than to know whether they might have inherited any health conditions.

Cartoon from the internet of a family with baby, father, mother, sperm donor, egg donor, and surrogate.

Birth certificates are generally amended at adoption and in many states the original birth certificates are then sealed so that nobody including the adoptee could see the originals. This makes it was easy and convenient for adoptive parents who don't want to be honest to pretend their adopted children are biologically theirs. In the case of donor conception or surrogacy, no updates have been made to reflect this as a possibility so the couple with legal custody is listed as the parents with no mention of these children's biological reality. This makes is simple for people who want to keep their children in the dark about their parentage to do so.

Photo of a birth certificate with a red stamp that says "DENIED" across it.

That said, adoption and donor conception are two separate issues so let me address them separately.

In the case of adoption, I can think of no decent reason why the child's birth parents shouldn't remain on the birth certificate. If a birth certificate is a record of birth, then I don't see the reason for putting someone on a the birth certificate when that person wasn't part of the child's creation, even if that person later adopted the child. That said, I don't see any harm in it either. Including both biological and legal parents seems like it should satisfy the adoptive parents' desire to be on their child's birth certificate and adoptees' desire for a record of their birth parents.

"Keep calm and give us our birth certificates." 

In the case of donor conception, the issue feels a bit more complicated. In that case the legal parent(s) decided to have a child and had a donor and/or surrogate help with the process. Assuming again that a birth certificate is a record of birth, then I think the legal parent(s) (including the non-biological parent if there is one) should be on the birth certificate because they were part of the creation of the child. I can understand the parents' emotional reasons for wanting to exclude the donor(s)/surrogate, since the legal parents were the ones who decided to have a child. If it were me having a child in this way, though, I wouldn't mind having the donor and surrogate listed on my child's birth certificate. Mostly because I really hate the idea that you could grow up never being allowed to know the identity your donor(s) or surrogate. Again, a birth certificate that lists biological and legal parentage seems ideal here for meeting everyone's needs.

In conclusion, what I'd really like to see is a revamping of birth certificates so there is a place to put both biological background and legal parentage. This would be the most fair option for adoptees and donor-conceived people. It would also make it impossible for people to hide important facts from their children and it would help future generations doing genealogy searches. And since the legal parents would be on the birth certificate as well, they wouldn't have anything to complain about as far as I can see.

What do you think?

On a side note, I did an internet search about this issue and found a much better written blog post than mine here.