Donor babies: A question of identity
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For many people around the world, donation of sperm or an egg can be the difference between becoming parents and not. But while this donation can make their dream of parenthood come true, what are the considerations for the end result, the child themselves? Donation and IVF can help jump the hurdles when it comes to the physical process of conception for would-be parents, but what about the emotional and psychological impact on the people who eventually find out they are not biologically related to one or both of their parents? Louise Mcloughlin, herself donor-conceived, hears from people around the world who have been faced with the news they are not the identity they assumed they were.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Unexpected elements is all about finding the surprising science angles to |
| 0:05.5 | everyday news. That's unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. Find it |
| 0:13.0 | wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:19.0 | I'm Louise McLaughlin. I'm a journalist and I'm also donor conceived. It means that |
| 0:24.7 | my dad, the man who brought me up, isn't actually my biological father. I didn't |
| 0:31.2 | find this out until I was in my teens. I spent the next decade and a half trying |
| 0:35.7 | to piece together where I'd come from. And although I felt alone, I'm just one |
| 0:40.7 | of hundreds of thousands of donor conceived people all across the world. And in |
| 0:45.9 | this program, we're going to hear from a few of them. Our stories contain |
| 0:50.5 | shock, sadness, rejection and betrayal, but also hope, love, acceptance, and joy. And |
| 0:57.5 | at their heart is the human need to know who you are and where you come from. |
| 1:03.5 | This is the documentary, Donor Babies, a question of identity from the BBC World |
| 1:10.5 | Service. |
| 1:14.5 | Donor conception is when people use the egg or sperm from a third party to help them |
| 1:20.5 | have a child. In the vast majority of cases, this is done in secrecy. And with |
| 1:26.5 | the strict understanding that if a baby is born as a result, the donor has no |
| 1:31.5 | obligation towards them legal or otherwise. But the thing about babies, they turn |
| 1:37.5 | into adults who want answers. And with the dawn of affordable DNA testing, these |
| 1:42.5 | secrets are becoming a thing of the past. And you can't overestimate the impact |
| 1:47.5 | that being told you're not who you think you are has on your life. In each of the |
| 1:53.5 | stories we're going to hear, the donor conceived person had no legal right to |
| 1:57.5 | discover the identity of their donor. And we'll hear why that can be a major |
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