The Gamete Donor Register, Kinship, and Belonging: State-Organized Openness in the Nordic Context of Transnational Egg Donation

Donor conception is an area where increased emphasis on “openness” has produced major changes to legal, medical, and kinship practices. Anonymous gamete donations are becoming prohibited, and donor registers with identity-release systems are becoming common. These reforms assume that it is in a child's best interest to know the “truth” about their genetic origin, and that this overrides intended parents’ right to privacy. Drawing on ethnographic material from commercial fertility clinics in Finland, this article discusses how the assisted reproductive donor identity-release register as a governmental sociotechnical device acts as an instrument of (un)relatedness in treatment practices at the level of both individuals and nations. The register intervenes in these practices in such a way that the principle of openness is maintained but transformed from site to site. It is devised to naturalize parenthood based on intent, with no perceived threat to child welfare or family privacy. In the context of the transnational egg donation market, the register works as a guarantee of the white Nordic kin-ness of Finnish donors. Consequently, it has become a technology that assists strategic familial, national, ethnic and racial belonging.