ANONYMOUS BIRTH, MEDICALLY ASSISTED PROCREATION TECHNIQUES AND RIGHT TO KNOW ONE’S ORIGINS IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The present paper deals with the content and the autonomy of the right to know one’s origins, with regards to the adopted children and to those born after assisted reproduction, from a comparative point of view. It concerns, firstly, the conflict with the biological mother’s right to anonymity, in those countries where anonymous birth is permitted - such as France and Italy - and the new solutions due to the recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and of the national courts. Secondly, the author gives a brief overview on the donor’s anonymity rule in the European legal systems, wondering about the possible consequences of the child’s access to the identifying information on the child’s filiation. In this respect, she discusses the necessity to go beyond the traditional opposition biological/ legal truth, considering the existence of a pluralism of truths, such as the one grounded in the affective relationship; the social truth (the tractatus) and the temporal truth.