New Legislation in Germany for Donor Insemination
This article written by Claudia Brügge (DI-Netz) and myself has just appeared in BioNews 906:
For decades, Germany has been nationally and internationally regarded as a country with little regulation regarding third-party reproduction: treatment with donor sperm and donor embryos (egg donation is forbidden). Recently however, the German government has passed a law that will regulate the right of offspring conceived by donor insemination (DI) to access their biological origins.
In Germany, as in many countries, it has been difficult for donor conceived people to obtain information about their donor from clinics. In many cases, children conceived through sperm donation had to take legal action, as legislation clarifying the documentation period was only introduced in 2007. Prior to this, there was no legislation mandating a minimum period of documentation storage, and many clinics only kept records for 10 years.
In 2018, the Sperm Donor Register Act (SaRegG – Samenspenderregistergesetz) will be introduced. As a result of this Act, clinics will have to ensure that the data about the donor and the mother is supplied to a central register and documented for a minimum of 110 years.