Keeping it in the family : an analysis of doctors' decision-making about access in the provision of donor insemination

• Main Author: Donovan, Catherine Mary
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1993
• Subjects: 610.7343
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.649647

This qualitative study tests the hypothesis that doctors who provide Dl in Britain make non-medical decisions about the suitability of both who should receive Dl and those who should donate sperm and that these decisions show an allegiance to an ideal family model. Some supplementary questions are also asked: how and why doctors have sought to attain professional authority in the provision of Dl. This is a case study of Dl practitioners. The collection of data was informed by grounded theory techniques and the fieldwork was conducted using semi structured interviews. Of the sampling universe (58) a non-random sample of 31 Dl practitioners were approached and 21 were interviewed (67.7&37 response rate). A strength of the study lies in the size of the sample which is over half of the sampling universe. The first chapter identifies some of the categories which emerged from the literature and were used to inform the interview schedule and data analysis: non-medical criteria applied to potential recipients and donors; non-medical professionals' arguments for inclusion in the Dl process; some factors implicated in a medicalisation process. The second chapter outlines the methodology. The third and fourth chapters examine aspects of how Dl practitioners have established professional authority in the provision of Dl: in the third the medicalisation process is discussed; and in the fourth the exclusion of non-medical professionals. In the fifth and sixth chapters the different elements of how the family is constructed by Dl practitioners are examined, first by analysing the selection criteria applied to potential recipients and then discussing what constitutes an acceptable genetic father. In conclusion the results are discussed in the light of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990). The routine allegiance of Dl practitioners to an idealised family - an idealised heterosexual nuclear one - is reflected in the broader public debates which have put 'the family' on the Party Political agenda.