From Sex to Humanity: How to be Human - A Guide in Two Parts (Part 2)

Sex and sexuality are central to our being and socio-biologists are keen to emphasise the role they play in determining every day actions. But the result of our sexual origins is that we are bound into an intricate web of personal and social relationships.

Ever since giggling over rabbits in school biology lessons, we knew where we came from. There was the Daddy that bought the sperm and the Mummy that supplied the egg – and, at least in the case of mammals, a place for it to grow. But take a moment to think about it. Once we step out of the classroom into real life, our parents donate much more. They come with families of their own - a pedigree that stretches back further than records can tell.

Most of us take this for granted and think of it only occasionally. We see our grandparents from time-to-time, and a few of us are lucky to meet our great grandparents. And we know their stories. We are told what they did in the war, about the time they spent in far-flung countries; we might even hear of the time that a wayward uncle spent in jail.

The stories become part of our own identity. The family as it emerges in the way its history is retold infiltrates our very being, which is why it can be so painful to discover that the family you had always believed you had, was in fact fake.

This happened to Christine Whipp, a woman born in the south west of England in 1955. She was brought up believing the person she called ‘Dad’ was her father, only to discover just after she was 40 that her true Dad had been an anonymous sperm donor. She’d always suspected that there was something wrong with the family. After all how come she had blond hair instead of her ‘father’s’ genetically dominant dark hair. Her sense of who she was didn’t map with the story she was told. In Christine’s case the act of sex that initiated her arrival in the world had been disjointed, impersonal and occurred in a doctors consulting room, but it was still intrinsic to her being.

Courtesy of Digit 52 - Alamy Images Ssssh...Keep it quiet...You are turning into your parents!

The issue is now more than one of simple scientific curiosity, but is now pawed over by lawyers and politicians alike. A case crawling little faster than a snail through the English high court is challenging the law that guarantees anonymity to adults who donate sperm or eggs. It’s difficult to see how this law can stand. Your genetic heritage and the family you are therefore linked to is a part of a person, so deliberately withholding that information must infringe the person’s rights and therefore stand contrary to European human rights legislation.