Conceiving People

In the United States, tens of thousands of children are conceived every year with donated gametes. When people decide to create a child with donated gametes, they’ll typically have to make a moral decision about whether the identity of the donor will be available to the resulting person. This quickly raises additional moral and even existential questions about the value of knowing about the circumstances of our own conception.

In Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation (Oxford UP, 2021) Daniel Groll argues that because donor-conceived persons are likely to develop a significant and worthwhile interest in knowing the identity of their genetic progenitor, their intended parents have an obligation to use a non-anonymous donor.

Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.