122 S. Goedeke and K. Daniels
When ED is seen as donation, Brakman ( 2007 ) suggests that a
clinical, almost distant stance towards ED may be enabled, arguably
resulting in fewer emotional responses (Anderson 2006 ). Rather than
calling to mind the adoption of a child, donation ‘implies a more sci-
entific or technical process’ (Anderson 2006 : 620). It may more easily
be regarded as a ‘once-off’ event, limited to providing biological mate-
rial to assist others in having a child, and without longer-term conse-
quences or responsibilities. Indeed, some studies (e.g. de Lacey 2007a,
MacCallum et al. 2007 ; MacCallum and Keeley 2012 ) confirm that
donors who decide in favour of ED frame the process as akin to organ
or tissue donation. Further, they suggest that recipients see ED as a one-
off event, with few recipients thinking about the donors or planning on
disclosing the manner of conception to their children. Notwithstanding
this comparison, Shaw’s ( 2008 , 2010 , 2012 ) work on organ and tissue
donation suggests that a description of donation as ‘clinical’ or ‘distant’
radically underestimates the emotional investment that some gamete
donors, deceased organ donor families, and living organ donors make
in their donative acts. Indeed, Shaw ( 2012 ) describes how donors and
recipients are brought into a moral and social relationship through the
act of donation. This may evoke anxiety and ambivalence, as well as
concerns around shared corporeality and the effect of integrating anoth-
er’s body parts into one’s sense of identity.
Others have suggested that ED entails more complex issues and
stronger welfare concerns than are implied in other forms of reproduc-
tive donation, due to the fact that ED involves the donation of genetic
material by the donor couple, and results in offspring who have genetic
parents and full siblings in another family. The recipient couple, unlike
those involved in gamete donation, make no contribution to the genetic
background of the child (Eydoux et al. 2004 ; Helm 2008 ). Indeed,
Brakman ( 2007 : 202) argues that because a child of a couple is created
through ED, ‘no such prior interest in genetic material exists for any
other ART and certainly does not exist for those who donate gametes
under the intention to never parent the children that may come into
existence as a result of their actions’. Instead, such authors argue that
the successful outcome of an ED—the raising of a child by parents who
have no genetic relationship to the child, and who may have full genetic