The push towards common european legislation with respect to the right to know one’s genetic origins
- Autores: Gian Luca Montanari Vergallo, Nagale Mario di Luca
- Localización: Medicina y Ética: Revista internacional de bioética, deontología y ética médica, ISSN-e 2594-2166, ISSN 0188-5022, Vol. 30, Nº. 3 (julio-setiembre/July-September), 2019, págs. 1009-1030
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Twenty years since it was opened for signature, the Oviedo Con- vention needs updating. It does not deal with the issue of the donor- conceived children’s right to know the identity of the gamete donors.
The European Court of Human Rights has recently stated that:
a) the right to know one’s biological background is protected by arti- cle 8 of the Convention on Human Rights; b) such a right must be balanced with the biological mother’s right to anonymity (anony- mous birth).
In order to find such balancing, a possible solution might be to require judges to summon mothers to ask them whether they would like to reverse their decision to be anonymous. If the mother reaffirms her intention to remain unknown, the court may not allow the child to learn of her identity and contact her.The authors also analyze two other issues not taken into account by the European Court: a) the balancing between the right to know one’s origins and the gamete donors’ right to anonymity; b) whe- ther the donor-conceived children’s right to know would make it mandatory for legal parents to disclose conception procedures.
These problems and the importance of the interests at stake induce the authors to argue that the choice to keep using the above mentioned article 8 as yardstick is far from ideal. It appears to be far preferable to deal with these issues while updating the Oviedo Convention or in such a way as to incentivize the enactment of legislation that would be uniform throughout the European Union.
