What are the legal rights of egg donors and their recipients?
Egg donation is, as yet, unproven in the courts. In other words, there have not really been enough lawsuits brought forward for there to be a well established case law for egg donors. In general, we anticipate that egg donors are going to follow the same rules as those that were established for sperm donors in the past. There is enough case law to be able to speak about sperm donors. In general, the courts have protected the anonymity of egg donors in the past and we anticipate that the same will be true going forward. Having said that, there are now, of course, Internet groups that are getting together in order to find out half siblings of couples that have used a particular sperm donor or perhaps an egg donor, so that these half siblings can get together. In some cases, egg donors and the children are meeting up on the Internet in order to share stories and get to know one another. It's not clear what's going to happen to the legal protection of egg donors and recipients in an era when actually this kind of openness exists.
