Why donor-conceived children fear Victoria is taking a ‘retrograde step’
When she wrote a letter to her biological father in July, Steph urged him to reveal his medical background so she had a full picture of her genetic history.
In the previous weeks, Steph (whose surname has been withheld upon request) and her brother were confronted with a family secret – they had been conceived with an anonymous sperm donor.
When her brother bought an ancestry kit, their parents decided to tell their children the full story of their conception.
Steph, who is in her late 20s, recalls the revelation delivered in June this year as like “watching a scene on a TV show”.
“I kept thinking this can’t be real life,” she tells Guardian Australia.
Steph soon became reliant on Victoria’s fertility regulator. After receiving mandatory counselling, the regulator disclosed information it held about her donor, including his birth year and place and height. Contained at the bottom of the single-page document were the hobbies of her father: singing and running.
After requesting to be connected to her donor, the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (Varta) began tracking down Steph’s biological father. Their investigation led them to conclude he had died.
Varta is due to be abolished later this year, under legislation currently before the state parliament.
Under the proposed legislation, the agency’s donor-linking service which arranges mediated face-to-face meetings, between donor-conceived people and their donors with their consent, will be abolished.
Instead, parties will be able to connect via an online voluntary register. The register, now run by Varta, will be operated by the department of health, and allow donor-conceived people to “match” and communicate with their donor, if they consent to contact.
Guardian Australia understands staff at the department will also be able to assist with the exchange of contact details, with the consent of parties.
But data from Varta’s annual report showed that in 2019-2020 just 19 donors out of a total of 128 added to the compulsory central register applied to join the voluntary database.
Varta’s regulatory function and the two registers it runs – including the central register which contains information about more than 30,000 people across the state involved in donor-conception– will be absorbed by the state department of health into a new regulator.
The government has previously said the legislation will help to modernise the regulation of assisted reproductive treatment (ART). While some of the reform is in line with recommendations from a 2019 independent review into reproductive regulation, some of the proposed changes have concerned the donor-conceived community.
It will also scrap the requirement for mandatory counselling to be provided to donor-conceived people before they are provided with identifying information about their biological parents.
Steph believes no longer offering the donor-linking service will leave conceived children without support.
“It will feel more like the wild west,” she says.
“You just don’t know who the guy is on the other end. To feel like the neutral territory that we were going to have access to, to be able to meet at a safe location that is private – this is no longer on offer.”
Steph says that while she will never meet her biological father, the prospect of a supported pathway from Varta to meet her donor was “what stopped this from being so overwhelming and so scary”.
“The donor-linking was the thing I held on to as a safety island in this complete chaos. To know there was a safe way to meet the donor that was a mutually agreed location and to have a counsellor there,” she said.
“I was anxious that without a counsellor, the whole situation would blow up.”
After connecting with her biological father’s family, Steph discovered her donor had died young and that she is at risk from a potentially hereditary cancer.
Related: Victoria to lift IVF counselling restrictions and loosen donor conception rules
Dr Damian Adams, an adjunct professor at Flinders University – who is donor-conceived – said the proposed changes equated to a “retrograde step”.
“It’s quite sad to see Victoria has made this change,” he said.
Adams, whose research has focused on physical and mental health outcomes of conceived people, told Guardian Australia that Victoria had been a world-leader in assisted reproductive treatment regulation.
In 2016, Victoria passed world-first legislation that granted donor-conceived children the right to request the identity of their biological father after they turn 18.
From next year, donor-conceived children in South Australia will have the ability to access information about their donor and genetic siblings.
In Queensland, the state government has proposed legislation which will give donor-conceived children in the state similar rights, thereby regulating the sector for the first time.
A state government spokesperson said it was strengthening health regulation, including for those who are accessing or born through assisted reproductive treatment (ART).
“These reforms will not only better regulate the ART sector – they will also ensure appropriate support and guidance continues to be provided to the many Victorians that use these services to create their families,” the spokesperson said.
