B.C. court issues injunction in class-action over sperm, egg donor births
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | 8:48 PM ET
The Canadian Press
A B.C. judge hearing the case of a woman who wants to know the identity of her sperm donor father has issued an injunction against the destruction or transfer of any records concerning artificial insemination.
Olivia Pratten, 26, has launched a class-action lawsuit on behalf of children conceived via sperm, egg or embryo donation.
Pratten said Tuesday she feels that the rights of those born through artificial insemination have been neglected.
'There's a huge gap here in recognizing that there's a person involved with this, and that's what this case involves.'— Olivia Pratten
"My mom received donor sperm treatment," she said in a telephone interview from New York. "But I'm not treatment; I'm a person."
The B.C. Supreme Court order issued Tuesday applies to any records of the identity, medical history or social history of donors in such births, not just Pratten's.
The class-action lawsuit against B.C.'s attorney general and the province's College of Physicians and Surgeons claims the law discriminates against people who were conceived as a result of so-called gamete donation.
The lawsuit claims that unlike in the case of adopted children, records of the biological parents of those born through artificial insemination aren't kept.
The lawyers involved in the case believe it is the first lawsuit in Canada filed by a sperm donor offspring seeking the identity of a biological parent.
Pratten said she's known from an early age that she was born through sperm donation and that both her parents are supportive of the lawsuit. Her father was infertile.
She said that when she was about five, her parents wrote a letter to Dr. Gerald Korn, an infertility specialist who artificially inseminated her mother, and asked for information about the sperm donor.
Pratten said Korn refused to divulge anything, later saying only that the donor was a healthy Caucasian medical student with a stocky build, brown hair, blue eyes and type-A blood.
In 2001, Pratten met Korn and asked him for records on her biological father. She said he told her "don't worry, dear" and assured her the donor had been asked about his medical health.
Pratten learned in 2004 that Korn had retired and has no knowledge of what happened to the medical records.
"I went to his office, and it was gone," she said. "That's like having the Vital Statistics [office] disappear for somebody who's adopted.
"There's a huge gap here in recognizing that there's a person involved with this, and that's what this case involves."
Lawsuit a last recourse
Pratten said her parents formed a support group years ago for families of donor conception because they felt isolated after speaking out about the necessity of adult children having a donor's medical information.
"My mom said, 'It was all about us, but then when you came, it wasn't about us anymore,"' she said.
Pratten has spoken to politicians about changing the law, to no avail, she said, and the lawsuit is her last recourse.
"There's been this complete legislative void for me," she said. "Where are we supposed to go?"
The lack of regulation and accountability when it comes to medical information is unethical and unacceptable, Pratten said, because people like her want to know details about their biological fathers and any health problems they may have passed on.
When she contacted the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C., Pratten said she was told that doctors who artificially inseminate women have the right to shred or incinerate medical records after six years.
"If we find out they're destroyed, that's completely unacceptable," she said. "A medical doctor destroying medical files, under what [condition] is that OK?"
