Approximately 30,000 infants are born each year with the assistance of some form of reproductive medicine, according to the Learning Center at Conceiving Concepts, Inc. This number includes babies born from egg and sperm donations. With identity laws to protect the donors, one can't help but wonder who protects the children. Who keeps track of whose egg or sperm impregnates how many women? When there are approximately 14 fertility clinics in the Bay Area in such close proximity, there's bound to be couples in the same social circle visiting the same clinics who might even have used an sperm or egg from the same man or woman.

So what if these children in the same social circle, who might share the same parent and not know it, grow up and fall in love? This raises social questions surrounding privacy issues and incest.

It's left up to fertility clinics and sperm banks to keep track of how many times each donation is used. According to Rainbow Flag Health Services (RFHS), each sperm donor is limited to impregnating four to six women. Some sperm banks use the donor to produce children in 10 different women, while others have no limitations.

Generally, donors have no parental rights or parental responsibilities to children born from their semen, according to the Learning Center. The donor's identity is not usually revealed to the recipient or any children born from his sperm. However, some sperm banks ask that donors agree to be known to a child when he or she reaches adulthood. This means they agree to a one-time meeting with the child, if requested by the child at or after the age of 18. After this meeting, the donor's obligation has been fulfilled and no further contact is required unless the child and donor both agree to it.

RFHS, however, tells the mother who the donor is when the child is 3 months old. They ask that the mother contact the donor by the newborn's first birthday. California law states that a man who provides his semen to a licensed sperm bank for the purpose of inseminating a woman who is not his wife is not seen as a natural father to any subsequent offspring. Thereby the parental rights of the recipient of the sperm are protected, along with the donor, who is further protected from having parental responsibility.

Despite an absence of federal regulation, the United States could follow England's example, in order to keep tabs on these babies, so siblings aren't marrying one another. Medically reproduced children will have the opportunity to know the identity of who created them.

There are new British laws being implemented right now, according to the National Gamete Donation Trust, that state people who donate from April 1, 2005 and later may only do so on an identifiable basis. Clinics, however, will be able to use anonymous donations until March 31 of next year.

England's government will introduce these laws and other arrangements through the donor information regulations that will be introduced in Parliament in the spring and through liaison with the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which is also helping implement rules to keep track of the donations.