Twins Separated at Birth Marry Each Other

Some difficult vocabulary here but it's a very interesting story. (you can double click on words that you don't know to check their meaning)






It's like a story from Tales of the Unexpected, a pair of twins, separated a birth married one another without realizing they were brother and sister. The case has come to light after the high court's annulment of the marriage after the twins found out about their relationship. The peer Lord Olson who highlighted the case in the House of Lords said the twins felt an "inevitable attraction" when they met. Here's our home affairs correspondent Andy Davis.

Although reported for the first time today, this desperately poignant story was first revealed in the House of Lords on December the 10th, by Lord Olson. They were debating the human fertilization and embryology bill, "I was recently in conversation with a high court judge who was telling me the story of the case he recently dealt with and this didn't involve in-vitro fertilization, it involved a normal birth of twins.

According to Lord Alton, the two twins, understood to have been born in Britian, were separated at birth--how long ago is not known. Each was adopted by a different family and grew up oblivious to the fact that they had a twin sibling. Then as adults, by pure coincidence, their paths crossed and they fell in love. It was only after they married that they discovered that they were in fact twins. It's not known how they found out. The marriage was subsequently annulled in the high court. No other details have ever been released.

Cases of what is known as accidental incest are incredibly rare according to workers in the adoption field. Given the stringent guidelines governing modern adoption practice in the UK. It is almost inconceivable they say that such a case could be repeated. It is now exceptional for an adopted child to grow up separate from a sibling. But it is in the field of human fertilization with growing numbers of children conceived through donor sperm and eggs that the risk of accidental incest occurring is far more of a reality. Lord Olson and their supporters want the law changed so that children born from donor eggs and sperm have that information recorded with symbols on their birth certificates. But that, say some fertility specialists, would simply backfire.

The suggestion of putting big "D"s on people's birth certificates is to coerce parents, to force people, to brand the offspring with a big D (for donated). And do we really want as a state that sort of control over our lives and the information about us?

This evening Lord Alton declined to discuss in further detail the case of the twins.