Spanish law still protects donor anonymity. Consumer genetic testing no longer guarantees it.

Picture this: the year is 2044. A young woman in Lyon turns eighteen and is given a consumer genetic test as a present. The results show a half-sister in Hamburg and a second cousin in Valencia. When she was little, her parents told her she was born thanks to a Spanish donor and that the donation was anonymous. On the clinic’s website, which her mother kept in her bookmarks, it still says “100% anonymous donation”.

In Spain, donor anonymity tends to be discussed as a debate about the future: whether the law will change one day. I think the question for a clinic is more immediate. What is it promising today, in writing and in several languages, to patients who come from countries where the rules are already different?

What the law says.

Article 5.5 of Spain’s Law 14/2006 on assisted reproduction techniques states that donation shall be anonymous and that banks, registries and centres must keep donors’ identities confidential. Children and recipients may obtain general information about the donor that does not include their identity. Only exceptionally, where there is a real danger to the child’s life or health or where criminal procedure requires it, may the identity be revealed, and then only on a restricted basis. That paragraph has not changed since 2006, and I have found no bill before parliament that would amend it.

What is at stake is not small. According to the Spanish Fertility Society’s registry, 53.4% of the 2023 cycles of patients living in other countries were egg donation cycles.

What is moving around it.

In April 2018, Portugal’s Constitutional Court declared absolute secrecy about donors’ identity unconstitutional, because it violated the right to personal identity of people born from a donation. In 2019, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommended abolishing anonymity for future donations, without retroactive effect, and creating national registries. And in January 2020, Spain’s Bioethics Committee considered a reform of article 5.5 removing anonymity appropriate, also without retroactive effect, and urged the government to set up the national donor registry the law has provided for since 1988.

Closer to your waiting room is what is happening in your patients’ own countries. France, the United Kingdom and Germany, three of the four countries that send the most patients, already recognise some right to know the donor at home. In the UK, for donations made since April 2005; the fertility regulator estimated that by 2030 some 11,427 people could request their donor’s name. In Germany, for sperm donation since July 2018. In France, since September 2022, a person born from a donation can request the donor’s identity on reaching adulthood. According to the 2023 registry, those three countries account, by my calculation, for 53.7% of the cycles of patients from abroad.

The blind spot: the law protects a name, DNA does not need one.

In 2022, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, ESHRE, published good practice recommendations on the information that donors, recipients and donor-conceived people should receive. Its conclusion is clear: with millions of people in consumer genetic databases, the anonymity of donors and their relatives is no longer guaranteed, even where the law protects it. That is why it recommends telling recipients that legislation allowing anonymity may change, even retrospectively, and what these tests can reveal.

The same document notes something Spanish clinics know well: countries that allow anonymous donation are visited by patients from countries where identifiable donation is the norm. In other words, part of the demand from abroad arrives precisely because of a promise that genetics no longer allows anyone to keep in full.

A law can protect a name. It cannot stop someone from taking a DNA test.

What I do not know.

I do not know what would happen to demand from abroad if Spain changed the law, and I would distrust anyone who claims to know. The ESHRE recommendations cite a Danish study in which between 51% and 67% of sperm donors would stop donating without anonymity, and a small Australian survey in which many donors accepted being identifiable. Nor do I know whether reform will come. What I do know is that the information a clinic gives today will be read in twenty years’ time by people who have not been born yet.

Where I stand.

I do not think a clinic should alarm its patients or take a position on its website about whether the law should change. I think it should stop promising more than anyone can guarantee, and explain calmly, in each patient’s language, what Spanish law protects, what it cannot protect and what has changed in the patient’s home country. The clinic that informed well will be the one families recommend when their children start asking questions. Promising absolute anonymity means promising something that no longer depends on the clinic.

What I would check.

• What your website says. Every instance of “anonymous”, “100%”, “never” or “guaranteed”, in every language version, including FAQs and ads.
• What is explained before signing. Whether the information given to recipients mentions that the law may change and what consumer genetic tests can reveal, as ESHRE recommends.
• What is explained to donors. The same on the donor’s side, since donors also sign on the strength of a promise.
• Each patient’s country. Whether your team can explain what rights that child would have in France, the UK or Germany, and what they will have with a Spanish donor.
• What is kept and where. What non-identifying donor information the clinic will be able to provide in twenty years, and whether it will be able to find it.

Where to start.

1. This week

   Read the website closely

   Find every promise of anonymity in every language and note where it appears.

2. This month

   Review with your advisers

   With your legal adviser and ethics committee: what can be stated, how to say it and what to change in the information given before consent.

3. This quarter

   Write by country

   One page per country of origin explaining, in its language, what Spanish law says and what has changed in the patient’s home country.

4. Every year

   Watch for reform

   Check whether the law changes in Spain or in the countries that send you the most patients, and update the website before your competitors do.

Think of a girl who will be born next year thanks to your clinic. In 2045 she turns eighteen, with a phone and perhaps a DNA kit she was given for a birthday. The law that protects your donor today may or may not still be in force. The question is whether it will still matter.

Now read your website through the eyes of the mother looking at it today from another country. Which sentence on your page would you have to defend in front of that daughter eighteen years from now?

If you want to review what your website promises a patient from abroad today and how to say it rigorously in her language, start with the Strategic Diagnostic. What your clinic may state about anonymity is for your legal advisers and your ethics committee to decide, not a designer.