Mother-Daughter Ova Donation Ignores the Rights of the Child
Gudrun Schultz

An independent ethics committee at McGill University approved a Montreal woman’s request for permission to freeze her eggs in storage for the future use of her seven-year old daughter, born with a genetic condition that will likely leave her infertile. Melanie Boivin’s decision to donate her eggs for her daughter’s use made international headline news in April. The case was presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology on July 3, by Dr. Seang Lin Tan, director of the McGill Reproductive Centre and pioneer of the technique used to successfully freeze human ova.

The ethics committee’s approval marked the first time a mother has donated eggs for her daughter’s use, although daughter-to-mother egg donations have already occurred. If Boivin’s daughter, Flavie, should decide to use her mother’s eggs, she would give birth to her half-sister or brother. Ms. Boivin would be both the child’s biological mother and grandmother.

McGill University Health Centre’s ethics committee justified the decision to approve the Montreal woman’s donation on the grounds that she was acting out of love for her daughter, according to Dr. Tan.

The committee’s decision was “worrying,” leading Canadian ethicist Dr. Margaret Somerville told LifeCanada News in an email communication. Dr. Somerville is the founding director of McGill’s Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.

“The current line of argument against any restrictions on the use of new reproductive technologies is that as long as one wants and will love any resulting child, what one does to get that child is no one else’s business and is ethical—this is the ‘absolute rights to reproductive autonomy” advocates’ line of argument,” Dr. Somerville wrote.

“The problem is that while love is necessary for a child it’s far from all that a child needs, and it’s not a sufficient justification to make sure that one is acting ethically.”

There are a growing number of children who were born through in-vitro fertilization techniques and now are publicly objecting to the means used to achieve their birth. Anonymous sperm donation has been a particular source of difficulty for those whose mothers were inseminated with sperm from an unknown source, leaving the children with no knowledge of their genetic heritage or history of their biological fathers.

“They believe that an ethical wrong was done to them—especially if the donation was anonymous—and that society was complicit in that wrong by providing its resources to make their conception through gamete donation possible,” Dr. Somerville wrote in an op ed for the Ottawa Citizen April 27.

She referred to an emerging doctrine in ethics known as “anticipated consent,” which asks whether or not the persons most affected by the consequences of an ethically charged decision would reasonably be expected to give their consent, if it were possible for them to do so.

“The answer we are now getting from many people conceived through gamete donation is that they would not have consented,” Dr. Somerville stated.

Multiple websites dedicated to helping children of donors locate genetic relatives—including the identity of their biological father and any potential siblings—have appeared over the past few years. One site, DonorSiblingRegistry.com, has more than 8,985 active members and claims to have facilitated matches between more than 3,711 half-siblings (and/or donors) since the site was started in 2000.

At the heart of the issue is the question of the child’s right to genetic continuity with its parents. Does it matter, or is it all just a question of science with little significance for the individuals involved? The increasing ranks of donor offspring who want to know their genetic heritage suggests it matters a great deal to them.

In the case of Melanie Boivin and Flavie, the child that would be born from her eggs if her daughter decides to use them would certainly be able to track its origins. For Dr. Somerville, the confusion of natural family relationships that would result from cross-generational egg donation would constitute a grave injustice to the child.

“I believe children have human rights regarding the conditions of their coming into being,” she wrote, “and a situation in which one’s half sister is one’s gestational mother, and the child is the biological child of its gestational mother’s own mother and the gestational mother’s husband, in my view crosses the ethical line and is unacceptable.”