There are calls for a change in birth certificate regulations after a woman conceived by sperm donation had her adopted father erased as parent.

There are calls for a change in birth certificate regulations after a woman conceived by sperm donation had her adopted father erased as parent.

Emma Cresswell, 26, has won a six-year legal battle to have the man who she thought was her father removed from her birth certificate. Cresswell only discovered as an adult that she was conceived by a sperm donation, following a heated argument with her adopted father. Incensed at being deceived by her parents and feeling increasingly distant from her mother’s partner, Cresswell fought to have her adopted father’s details taken off her legal documents.

“I had thought I was one person for so long and then I found out that a whole side of that wasn’t true”, She said.

Cresswell is now campaigning for biological parentage to be stated in addition to legal parentage on a child’s birth certificate. Dr. Marilyn Crawshaw of the University of York agrees:

“The birth certificate gives you nothing to go on. I know of people who believed they were at risk of genetically transmittable diseases because they thought the parents named on their birth certificate were their biological parents.”

Sperm donor campaigns for more information for children of sperm donors
Xavier Symons
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Xavier Symons

Xavier Symons is a bioethicist and scholar in residence at the Kennedy Institute for Ethics at Georgetown University.

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