Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill 2007
Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes:
OBJECTIVES:
The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill provides a broad framework for the regulation of the social and ethical aspects of assisted reproductive technology. It provides a broad framework for the practice and conduct of assisted reproductive technology services. The development of this legislation has been guided by three important principles: Firstly, to recognise obligations already imposed on assisted reproductive technology providers by the existing laws, such as the Medical Practice Act 1992; secondly, to recognise the rights of individuals to have control over the use of their genetic material; and thirdly, to recognise the best interests of the child and acknowledge the paramount importance of this final principle.
The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill enhances the current system to clarify and protect the rights and obligations of people involved in assisted reproductive technology. This is a complex and longstanding issue. I remember being a member of the ethical group established by the University of Sydney and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital to examine the ethical implications of such technology.
This complex issue includes the rights of children born as a result of that treatment. Under the new legislation, for which, generally speaking, I congratulate the Government and the Minister on introducing, a central donor register will be established to allow donor-conceived children to access important information about their donor parent once they turn 18 years of age. This will include information such as the donor’s name, date of birth and education, as well as important medical information. Therefore, the bill strengthens the position of the primacy of the interests of children conceived using assisted reproductive technology. It will also allow donor-conceived children to access information about the donor parent, usually the biological father, once the child turns 18 years of age. This is currently not the case, and some IVF clinics do not record donor details for the purpose of passing onto the child.
COMMENTS:
It is a fundamental human desire to want to know more about where we have come from and who are our forebears. Yet many adoptees and the offspring of donor insemination are being systematically denied knowledge of their origins. This not only impinges on the inherent need for identity; in a world of genetic medicine, if one does not have knowledge of one’s biological heritage, one is placed at a severe disadvantage, particularly if one suffers the onset of disease later in life. As the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease moves towards the routine use of genetic research, knowledge of one’s biological identity is crucial to health outcomes. If that is so, continuing to deny individuals access to information about their biological heritage would appear to be a serious potential harm.
For years, the donation of sperm and eggs has been shrouded in secrecy. Like sex in the 1950s, the subject has been taboo. Donors remained anonymous, parents never talked about it and donor children knew nothing. Yet, 1.5 per cent of all births in Australia have been achieved through some form of assisted conception. In other words, about 3,600 children are born each year because one or both parents had problems conceiving a child naturally. Since Australia’s first in-vitro fertilisation birth in 1980, more than 37,000 IVF babies have been born in the country. The Commonwealth Government has not universally legislated for the practice of assisted reproductive technology. However, Australian Health Ethics has issued guidelines. This means each State and Territory is responsible for the implementation of separate legislation.
However, some rules are applicable in all States. First, donors cannot be paid; second, they have no legal rights and cannot be held responsible for the financial upkeep of the donor children; and, third, birth parents are lawfully deemed to be the legal parents. It is amazing that after more than 20 years of IVF births, most donor-conceived children are still ignorant of their biological parents—they have been kept deliberately in the dark. In the first stage of a landmark case in Britain in 2003, Brisbane resident Joanna Rose, the offspring of an anonymous sperm donor, found support in her fight to find her true identity. Britain’s High Court ruled in July 2002 that European and British laws must ensure that the children of sperm donors have a right “to establish a picture of identity as much as anyone else”. Access to medical information was a key claim of Rose, and the co-plaintiff, a six-year old girl. According to Trevor Jordan, senior lecturer in Queensland’s University of Technology:
Knowledge on one’s biological identity is becoming a key factor in assessing and meeting an individual’s health needs. To not have access to that information is to be seriously disadvantaged.
If honourable members consider one aspect of my speech today, they should reflect on this one point: according to David Blankenhorn, author of the best selling book Fatherless America, artificial insemination by anonymous donors now accounts for 30,000 of the four million births each year in the United States. He argues that these births represent “Our society’s extreme embodiment of the idea that children do not need fathers”. As a former Australian Father of the Year, to me this cultural trend undermines the recent push towards greater involvement of men in family life, where men are berated for not taking their family responsibilities more seriously. This is something I have argued over the years. I ask: How is this greater involvement possible if we accept sperm dads who render fathering irrelevant. Blakenhorn states:
The rise of the Sperm Father constitutes nothing less than father killing, the writing enactment of cultural patricide. For the individual man, being a Sperm Father is the collaboration of the male in the eradication of their fatherhood.
Daniel Callahan, Director of the Hastings Centre, a New York bioethics research institute, expressed bewilderment that the moral and social implications of the use of anonymous sperm donors have passed unnoticed. Callahan’s main argument is that insemination using anonymous donors socially sanctions male irresponsibility and contributes to the systemic downgrading of fatherhood. He said:
Women have been hurt throughout history by males who abandon their parental duties, leaving to women the task of raising the children. A sperm donor is doing the same thing. The fact that he does it with social sanction does not change the outcome: one more male has been allowed to be a father without taking up the duties of fatherhood.
However, the love of a good family, blood related or otherwise, obviously plays a vital role in determining who we become as adults. Our teachers also shape us, as do any number of other key figures that make their presence felt over the course of a lifetime. But genetics is where it all begins. Children are who they are from the start and for good reason, and it is the abuse of the first order to deny them the chance to eventually understand why. It is not a matter of whether or not the child pursues his or her genetic origin. What matters is that it should be possible for the child to do so. This is the protection offered by legislation in Victoria. In 1998 in Victoria, all donor children had the right to access identifying information about their biological parents upon reaching 18 years of age. Interestingly, since legislation changed to favour a more acceptable policy, the number of sperm donors has more than halved. In general, men do not want to be identified.
The 1980s saw a well-publicised debate about adoption, with adoptees complaining bitterly about being raised with no opportunity to discover their true origins. Their stories led to general acceptance that many people suffer a state of confusion known as “genealogical bewilderment” when deprived of this information. In a speech in a parliamentary debate over stem cell research, former Aboriginal Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway made the connection between the stolen generation of Aboriginal children and children conceived using anonymous sperm, arguing “There is an innate belief, a requirement and a compulsion in every human being to know what they are the sum of.” Ridgeway, with his colleague Senator Andrew Murray succeeded in having an amendment passed by the Senate urging the Federal Government to ensure that every child “can, no later than on achieving adulthood, access information about their biological parents”.
CONCLUSION:
The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill enshrines children’s right to know their biological identity—a right included in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child. Therefore, I welcome the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, and I commend it to the House.