From Policy Neglect to Research Agenda: Administrative Burdens and Donor‐Conceived Mobilization

ABSTRACT

Donor‐conceived adults are a growing population, mobilizing against the very regulatory arrangements that determined the terms into which they were conceived. In Canada and the United States, where donor conception remains persistently under‐regulated, gamete donation policy has historically prioritized the presumed needs of donors, recipient parents, and fertility clinics, structuring regulation around treatment access and donor supply rather than the long‐term interests of those conceived. The result is a population that bears disproportionate administrative burdens and is now mobilizing through advocacy organizations, legal claims, and the pathways consumer DNA testing has made possible. Yet donor‐conceived adults remain largely outside the scope of policy scholarship. This paper argues that donor conception offers a theoretically distinctive site for the study of administrative burden, policy feedback, and the social construction of target populations. The paper proposes a research agenda organized around the politics of administratively produced populations and the deliberate distribution of administrative burden through policy design.