In Canada, there are about 16,000 citizens who were conceived from donated sperm. In many areas of the country, the personality of sperm donors remained anonymous as provided by law. In British Columbia, sperm donor records are destroyed after six years by either shredding or incinerating. Evidently, their children can no longer have access to these records when they attain legal age.
For many years, children of these unknown fathers did not ask about their fathers’ whole story. Some children do not know that they are products of sperm donation. There are those who know this fact but do not want to know more. The remaining others know this fact but do not know what to do to discover more.
Olivia Pratten wants to be one of the few who want to search for more. She is willing to get what it takes to know more about her father. Pratten has very limited details about her biological father. She was born in 1981 after her mother visited a fertility expert in Vancouver. Her mother only told her that he is Caucasian, with a solid build, brown hair, blue eyes and type “A” blood.
Pratten is now 28 years old working as journalist in Toronto. She is determined to continue the fight in order to know her father. She is now hoping that the British Columbia Supreme Court will give in to what she pleaded. Never before has this court settled to disclose the identity of sperm donors. If this is granted favorably, this will be the first of its sort in North America.
North America has upheld its ruling of maintaining secrecy rights of donors. Sweden, the U.K. and some other European countries, however, have laws that force donors not to remain unknown.
With Pratten’s case now in the B.C. Supreme Court, she is in anticipation of the court’s decision. She asked for the court to include children conceived via egg and sperm donation in a new Adoption law. She also wanted a new law that would oblige physicians to maintain donor records for an indefinite period. If this is approved, children of donors could ask for these records once they become adults.
The matter at hand is not much about Pratten wanting to know about the donor’s identity. Rather, it is whether the secret identity of past sperm donors should be exposed.
According to a critic, granting an affirmative judgment by the court would mean two things to future donors. First, donors would need enhanced monetary incentives. Second, they would think of themselves as serving other individuals build families by donating sperm. Either way, the current concern about sperm donors' identity remains the same: should their anonymity be kept intact?
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