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The history of gamete donation in the United States began in the late 1800s. Dr. William Pancoast, who performed the first insemination of donor sperm, claims to have done it secretly, not ever telling his patient that she had been inseminated with a donor's sperm, and not telling her husband until after the fact. Thus began a tradition of secrecy that most donor couples have practiced for almost a century-- telling no one (neither the child, the child's physician, nor the extended family, etc.) the circumstances of the conception. Anonymity-- the condition whereby both donor and recipient couple consent to the process but are unknown (and unidentifiable) to each other-- has occurred along with secrecy in donor insemination.
A third concept-- privacy-- is often confused with secrecy.Privacy refers to the fact that each of us has the right to establish boundaries between ourselves --or our families--and others. When we identify these boundaries we are not being secretive, but rather, we are saying that it is our basic human right to maintain some separateness from those around us. Hence, we are being neither dishonest nor deceptive nor withholding if we do not tell everybody, everything.
© Ellen Sarasohn Glazer, LICSW
Susan Lewis Cooper
