Sperm donation in Australia has evolved radically in recent years. One of the biggest changes is that you can no longer donate anonymously.
And that’s making a huge difference to those born since those changes took effect – they’re able to find out the identity of their donor once they turn 18.
But there’s a large group of adults born from anonymous donations who are still looking for answers about their origins. And they may never be able to find out.
“I felt very disenfranchised, disempowered that everyone was telling me that I had no say in what I considered to be, you know, this very important piece of my genetic identity,” say Lauren Burns, 29.
Burns found out she was donor conceived when she was 21, and has since met her biological father and three half siblings. She is now advocating for all donor conceived people to have the legal right to know their biological father.
“I think it's really important that all donor conceived people have access to information,” she tells Insight. “The only fair thing, the only tenable position is just to allow information where it exists to all donor conceived people.”
Ross Hunter discovered he was donor conceived only four years ago. Now at 36, he wants to find out the identity of his anonymous biological father.
“It's this constant state of cognitive dissonance about no knowing just who this person is,” he says. “I mean I can live without it, I don't feel like I need another dad, I don't want that at all. But I just want to meet someone that I look like, get to know them.'
In Australia, the ability to find out about anonymous ‘donor dads’ depends on when and where you were conceived.
If you were conceived after 1988 in Victoria, you can find out information about your donor. As for the rest of Australia, changes to professional guidelines effectively ended anonymous donation around the year 2000. The NSW government made it law in 2010.
At the moment, anyone born prior to the legislation changes does not have the right to access information about their donors, as their donors were told they would be anonymous.
In 2012, the Victorian Law Reform Committee recommended reforms that would reveal the identity of even those donors who thought they were giving anonymously. But the government seems unlikely to go that far, stating the following:
“The Government considers that identifying information should only be released with the consent of donors.”
NSW is undergoing a similar process. Just last week the Law and Safety Committee published the final report for its inquiry examining whether all donor conceived people should have the right to access information about their donor. The government is expected to respond by April next year.
It remains to be seen whether all donor conceived people, regardless of what year they were born, will have the right to know their donors, or whether anonymous donors will have the right to privacy.
Do you think all donor conceived people have the right to know about their biological dads? What about the privacy of the anonymous donors? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
Join the Insight discussion tonight at 8.30PM on SBS ONE or live stream http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/live
