Petition: Rights for all donor-conceived people

There are thousands of people in Australia who were conceived using donated gametes (sperm, eggs or embryos). This practice has been going on in Australia for over 6 decades. Some states of Australia (Victoria & Western Australia) have legislated so that those conceived in recent years have a legal right to know who their donors are and an opportunity to know if they have siblings created from the same donor. Those born in states that do not have legislation or those born before legislation was enacted have no rights to any information.

This knowledge is essential to the creation of a proper identity and knowing who the donor is may also allow donor conceived people access to a full medical history.

Adopted people in Australia have the right to know who their birth parents are even though in some states birth parents were legally promised anonymity many years ago. Governments decided that this needed to be changed “in the best interests of the child” and so enacted legislation which gave all adoptees the right to know the identity of their birth parents if this information still existed. The situation is very different for donor conceived people even though donors in Australia have never been guaranteed anonymity by law.

The Donor Conception Support Group (DCSG) has been requesting that state governments around Australia legislate to give rights of access to donor information to all donor conceived people but it is not happening; that is why a petition is needed.

This petition asks that discrimination based on when or where a person was conceived be stopped and that all donor conceived people be given the same rights as adopted people in accessing information about their biological heritage.

To add your name to the petition, go to the DCSG website and click on the link in the box labelled “RIGHTS FOR ALL DONOR CONCEIVED PEOPLE”  at the top of the page.