British Columbia (Canada) judge says anonymity for sperm, egg donors is unconstitutional

Olivia Pratten poses for a photo outside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010. Pratten, a woman born as a result of donor insemination, has won her lawsuit seeking to end the anonymity of sperm and egg donors in British Columbia. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Original Story: By Dene Moore, The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — A woman born as a result of donor insemination has won her legal battle seeking to end anonymity for sperm and egg donors in British Columbia.

Olivia Pratten was born in 1982 as a result of donor insemination.

After fruitless efforts to obtain records about the sperm donor, Pratten launched the lawsuit against the provincial government, arguing that the province's adoption laws discriminated against donor offspring like herself because they don't allow them the same ability to learn their genetic roots as adopted children.
In a ruling released Thursday, B.C. Supreme Court Judge Elaine Adair agreed.

Anonymous donation, she wrote, "is harmful to the child, and it is not in the best interests of donor offspring," Adair wrote in her ruling, which found sections of the B.C. Adoption Act and Adoption Regulations unconstitutional.

The law was revised in 1996 to allow adopted children the right to information about their biological parents, but it does not include children born of reproductive donations.

Adoptive children and donor offspring are similar in their need to know and have a connection to their biological roots, the judge said.

The ruling gives the B.C. government 15 months to amend the law to address donor offspring and grants a permanent injunction against the destruction of donor records in the province.
"I'm thrilled," Pratten said from Toronto. "It's finally validation of what people like myself have been saying for years."

The decision won't help Pratten to find out the identity of the donor whose sperm allowed her parents to conceive.

But the 29-year-old journalist, who works for The Canadian Press, said that's not why she pursued the long legal battle.

"I've always known that my records were probably destroyed. It was more about changing the policies going forward," she said.

"It was never just about me. It was about helping other people and using my situation, that was a negative, and turning it into a positive so no one else would have to experience having their records destroyed.
"I felt a responsibility to be public with this."
Pratten had the support of her mom and dad, who accompanied her to court every day for the hearings last fall.

"I'm not related to my dad but he's my dad," she said. "This is a victory for them as well because finally what they were saying 20 years ago has been heard and recognized as being accurate."
Pratten's lawyer, Joseph Arvay, said the end result of the decision is that anonymous egg and sperm donation will no longer be permitted in B.C.

"This case represents a monumental victory for our client, Olivia Pratten, and all the donor offspring she represents who have for too long been disadvantaged by their exclusion from the legislative landscape which has promoted and perpetuated prejudice and stereotyping and caused them grave harm," he said in a statement.

The ruling has no weight outside the province, but Pratten said she has been contacted by other donor offspring who have declared their intention to pursue similar legal action to force change elsewhere.
The Attorney General of B.C., the defendant in the case, had no immediate comment on the ruling.
"The court just delivered the decision today on this very complex matter. We will need time to carefully study the decision, decide what its implications are and what the next steps should be, including whether we will appeal," said a statement from the ministry.

Lawyers for the government argued that practices have changed significantly since Pratten was born. Today, a woman seeking donor insemination in B.C. can get detailed social and medical information on the donor even if the donation is anonymous.

There is simply no constitutional right, the government argued, for a person to know their origins or genetic heritage while there is a constitutionally protected right to privacy.

The judge noted that anonymous donation remains the choice of many would-be parents who want control over what their child knows, when they know and who might be involved in their child's life.
"But, based on the evidence in this case, I have concluded that anonymity is not in the child’s best interests," Adair wrote.

"Strong and positive relationships with social parents do not satisfy or eliminate the desire and need of donor offspring to know where they came from, and their need to know their origins is just as powerful and real as those of adoptees."

Study: Egg donors happy they helped out

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Most women who serve as egg donors retain a positive take on their experience a year later, new research indicates.

Researchers polled 75 egg donors at the time of egg retrieval and one year later, and found that the women remained happy, proud and carefree about their experience. "Up until now we've known that donors are by and large very satisfied by their experience when it takes place," said study lead author Andrea M. Braverman, director of complementary and alternative medicine at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey in Morristown. "And now we see that for the vast majority the positive experience persists."Braverman and colleagues from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J., were scheduled to present their survey findings Wednesday in Denver at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

A year after donation, the women said they seldom worried about either the health or emotional well-being of the children they helped to spawn. They said they only think about the donation occasionally and rarely discuss it. The donors also reported that financial compensation was not the number-one motive for facilitating another woman's pregnancy. Rather, a desire to help others achieve their dreams was pegged as the driving force, followed by money and feeling good.

Women who said the donation process made them feel worthwhile tended to be open to the notion of meeting their offspring when they reach adulthood. And most donors were receptive to the idea of meeting the egg recipients and participating in a donor registry. "These findings are only one year out, and this is part of a five-year ongoing study," cautioned Braverman. "And life changes a lot in five years, so it'll be interesting to see if this lasts that far out. We can't say yet. But so far we're seeing that the feelings persisted during the beginning of the journey. A year out, we're not seeing a change in donors' experience. And that's kind of a good thing."

Linda Applegarth, director of psychological services at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at the New York Presbyterian Hospital--Weill Medical College of Cornell University, described the study as "very useful," but expressed little surprise with the findings. "I actually routinely meet with donors a year post donation, particularly with donors who want to donate again," she said, noting that about 65 percent of her center's donors choose to repeat the process. "And I would say anecdotally that my experience matches the study findings," she added. "Many do choose to donate again because they have had a very positive experience," Applegarth explained. "And in addition to whatever had motivated them to donate in the first place, after they've donated, the experience often takes on new meaning for them, in a positive way. So their motivation becomes more multi-faceted, because they really do know that they've made a difference." Donors don't obsess about the experience, Applegarth said. "They move on with their lives. And this, I think, speaks well to the fact that there are any number of us who work with donors and try to be very sensitive to them and what they're doing, and want to make sure that they have a good experience with the donation," she said."We consider the donors as patients, and in that respect they're as important as anyone involved in the experience," Applegarth added.

Touching on the issue of egg donation from a different perspective, a second study to be presented at the conference found that women who serve as donors have a significantly different psychological profile than women who actually provide the service of carrying a baby to term. Compared with egg donors, the so-called "gestational carriers," or surrogate mothers, were found to have a higher degree of "belief in human goodness" and "contentment with life," researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago found. Carriers were also observed as having a stronger sense of "social responsibility."