Elizabeth Howard, a woman from England who was conceived through sperm donation, was on the Right Hook programme on Newstalk yesterday (11/3).

Howard, who wrote this article for the Guardian last year about the experience of being the child of an anonymous “donor”, made it clear to George Hook that she thought all sperm donation was unethical.

“I don’t think removing anonymity really helps” she said, citing the fact that parents don’t have to tell their children that they’re donor-conceived at all, and donors are under no obligation to have any kind of relationship with their child. The fact that a donor-conceived child will always grow up separated from their mother or father – she hates the word “donor” – amounts to State-sanctioned child abandonment.

Howard’s daughter got cancer at the age of one – while she thankfully recovered, it’s apparently a form of cancer linked with a genetic disease which also causes bowel cancer, which may come from her genetic father’s side of the family.

The Government’s Children and Family Relationships Bill does not require clinics to record the genetic medical history of sperm and egg donors.

Howard spoke movingly about her own sense of loss growing up as a donor-conceived child, and called on Ireland to ban the practice outright.

“If this is now an issue in Ireland, and it’s an option to say ‘we’re going to take a human rights stand here, and we’re not going to consciously deprive children of the right to grow up with their parents, I think that would be great.

“If you could treat it as a human rights issue, and not just focus on the parents, because so often in these cases, the focus is on the infertile parents, the gay couples, the people who can’t conceive a child in the normal way, and their supposed right to have a child, and there’s no thought to the feeling of the child they produce.”

Listen to the whole interview (8 minutes long) here.