At a young age, most children start to wonder where they come from. To a growing number of parents who choose to conceive using donor insemination (DI), the delicate explanation of the ‘birds and the bees’ has become even more difficult. Where exactly do children conceived from donated sperm come from? For most of these children, their missing fathers remain anonymous and unreachable.

In 2004, a 15-year old boy solved the mystery of his parentage on his own. Collecting a tissue sample from his cheek, he gave it to a private firm offering to trace his parental lineage. The firm compared his DNA to that of other men in an online database containing genetic material submitted by a male relative of the donor. Equipped with amall pieces of personal information provided by his mother, the teenager then used an identity-tracking website to provide him with a personal match and contact information. Within a week, he called his biological father. The entire process took ten days and cost less than $400.

Setting aside the personal and emotional implications of hunting down one’s biological father, the boy’s case underlines a wealth of thorny issues raised by advances in biological technologies since the advent of anonymous donor fertilization. Innovations in DNA testing and fingerprinting have cast off the veil surrounding anonymous donation, sparking new controversy in the sphere of reproductive technology.

Artificial insemination is two-centuries old. A Scottish physician reported the first artificial insemination of a woman with her husband’s sperm in 1790. The first controversy surrounding the practice, however, began in 1909 when an American medical journal reported that a Dr. Pancoast of Jefferson Medical College had successfully impregnated the wife of a Quaker merchant with the semen of “the best-looking member of his class.” The woman never discovered the true origins of her son.

As one might expect, the procedure inspired a storm of criticism from lawyers, ethicists, and clergymen. The British Parliament declared donor insemination a criminal offense, and the Pope condemned the act as a sin. In 1954, the Supreme Court of Illinois ruled that DI, even with a husband’s consent, was “considered adultery on the mother’s part,” and that a child conceived by the process was legally illegitimate.

In time, however, the plight of the childless couple began to draw more and more popular sympathy. The human benefits of DI overcame the initial discomfort and opposition the practiced inspired.

Within two decades, the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and the American Bar Association approved the Uniform Parentage Act, which legitimized a DI child conceived under a physician’s supervision with a husband’s consent as the husband’s natural child. By deliberately ignoring the method of conception, the legislation obviated most of the questions surrounding custody and liability for DI children. The law turned a blind eye to biology.