On May 19, 2011, a door opened that has long been closed in North America. The Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in favour of Olivia Pratten, a 29-year-old Canadian woman, conceived from the sperm of an anonymous man, who had argued that BC’s laws discriminate against the offspring of sperm and egg providers.
Adoptees in that province born after 1996 can know the identity of their birth parents, but the progeny of anonymous gamete providers do not have that right in BC or anywhere else in Canada or the USA. BC Justice Elaine Adair gave the Province 15 months to amend the adoption law to include offspring of gamete donors, and ordered that records not be destroyed.
The ruling could lead the way for an open system of gamete donation, putting BC on par with a growing number of countries, such as the UK, seven European nations, New Zealand and most of Australia. It will not lead to retroactive identification of sperm providers who were promised anonymity, so Pratten herself will perhaps never know the identity of her own...
