Transcriber: Gia Hwang Reviewer: David DeRuwe
If this apple gave me food poisoning,
I would be able to track where it came from,
who transported it, and when.
If I got sick due to a genetic predisposition, however,
I would have no legal way to find out half of my medical history.
“Why?” you ask.
Why does an apple have more information about its history than I do?
Because I was made with anonymous donor sperm.
Under current Canadian legislation,
because my parents used an anonymous sperm donor,
I do not have the right to know half of my personal,
These are my parents.
They’re pretty normal.
Like one in six Canadian couples, they experienced infertility.
But my parents still wanted to have kids, so they decided to use a sperm donor.
In 1999, they were presented with these options:
all were anonymous sperm donors.
With such little information,
my mom asked the lab tech which donor was the nicest person.
They recommended number three.
Nine months later, I was born, and then my brother two years later.
At a young age, I had an affinity for biology.
I asked where babies came from,
and my mom told me, in terms a three-year-old could understand.
My deep thoughts led to questions I did not have answers to.
I was the only person in my family with blond hair.
What I saw did not match up.
I had a happy childhood and everything a kid could ask for,
yet I always felt something was missing.
I had two parents who loved me unconditionally,
but I could not shake this feeling.
My parents had always planned to tell my brother and I about our origins.
They felt the time was right when I was seven.
My dad sat me down and told me.
In my seven-year-old brain, that made sense.
I got my answer and went off to play.
However, as I got older, I became more curious about my origins.
Even though no one in my life had explicitly told me
that being donor-conceived was bad,
I still felt ashamed about it.
I never told anyone, not friends, teachers, or even my doctor
that I was donor-conceived.
I had internalized the societal shame and stigma about being donor-conceived.
When a teacher joked about test-tube babies in science class,
I stayed quiet
because I did not want to be associated with donor conception.
Instead, I saved my crying for later when I got home from school,
so no one could see.
Because I had a mom and dad who were married before I was born，
people saw and assumed what they wanted to.
Besides the occasional question about my hair
or why there was such a big gap between my siblings,
I kept the secret.
But by my high school years, I needed to know more.
I needed to know my medical history,
I needed to know my heritage,
and I was really scared I would unknowingly date a relative.
So I called the fertility clinic my parents used.
I was informed that they did not have any records of my conception.
On top of that, even if they did, I would not have any right to access them
because according to Canadian law, clinics are only required
to keep records on their donors for 10 years after they donate.
For comparison, adoption records are kept for 100 years in Alberta.
This meant that my donor records were destroyed when I was a kid.
I cried.
The only information I had
was that he was six foot one, brown hair, brown eyes,
and that he would now be 40-something years old.
There are God knows how many people like that in my town,
let alone the entire country.
At 18 years old, I decided to do something about it
and took a DNA test.
Luckily, I got a close match.
I was shocked.
With DNA testing growing,
it took only two days for me to find my biological father online.
Through some online detective work, I discovered that my biological father
lived just 30 minutes away from me most of my life.
He attended the same university at the same time as both of my parents,
and I was attending it as well.
My mom went to school with his cousin,
and worst of all, my fear of dating a relative was not too far-fetched
when I found out he had over 50 first cousins.
I wanted to contact him, but I was scared.
I spent many months processing this information and preparing for rejection.
Then, right before my 19th birthday,
I sent him a letter.
I included three pictures of me,
so even if he never wrote back,
I figured he would at least know what I looked like and that I existed.
Then on my 19th birthday,
I got a text message from an unknown number.
It was my biological father, and he wanted to meet me.
We met at a Tim Hortons a week later, and talked for hours.
We marveled in our similarities.
My brother had always loved orange,
so much that he painted his bedroom a bright shade of tangerine.
And lo and behold, my biological father rolled up in a bright orange car.
Both my brother and I got his big brown almond-shaped eyes.
My blond hair was no longer a mystery
when I saw his childhood photos.
The physical resemblance is uncanny.
My brother is a carbon copy of our biological father as a teen.
Just look at these pictures:
The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
I finally learned my complete medical history.
Our relationship continues to grow with him and his extended family.
This has reaffirmed my identity in a way no words can describe.
Through the growing industry of DNA testing websites,
I was able to find my biological father and my health history.
For many other donor-conceived people, this is often not the case.
For an industry that is about creating lives,
there is little consideration for the people who are being created.
Not knowing one’s medical history can have deadly consequences.
Such was the case for Narelle Grech and Alison Davenport,
two donor-conceived people.
Both advocated for access to medical history.
Narelle inherited a deadly,
but if caught early, very treatable cancer from her donor.
Because she did not have access to her medical history,
she did not know this.
She passed away at the age of 30.
Her death was entirely preventable.
Had she known of predisposition to this disease,
it would have been caught early and treated.
Alison Davenport was also a donor-conceived.
When she was diagnosed with cancer and required a bone marrow transplant,
she asked to contact her paternal family
in hopes of finding a match.
Alison died with no match
because she was barred from contacting her paternal family.
These two deaths and probably many more were very preventable.
Knowing one’s medical history is a basic right for most Canadians,
but not for me and other donor-conceived people.
In Canada, there is no law that protects the right of donor-conceived people
to know their genetic and health histories.
I had no say in the decisions made by my parents, their fertility clinic
and my biological father.
And yet, their rights were deemed more important than mine.
Canada is a signatory of the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child.
This covers basic rights of kids and is signed by 194 countries.
Established in 1989, here are a few key points:
Article 3, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
Article 8, the right of the child to preserve their identity,
including nationality, name, and family relations.
I would argue that my genetic and medical history is part of my identity,
as is my heritage and family relations.
So by continuing to deny donor-conceived people
the right to their genetic and medical histories,
Canada is breaking their promise.
They are not acting in the best interests of the child.
Moving on to Article 7,
the child shall have the right to know their parents.
When my biological father donated his sperm,
he signed away his parental rights.
But how can one write off their parental rights
when they’re not even technically a parent yet?
They’re putting the cart before the horse,
or more appropriately, the baby before the pregnancy.
Fertility clinics are not required to notify sperm donors
if or how many children are created from their donation.
There are certain cases where parental rights are signed away,
such as adoption.
There is a framework in place for how to deal with this.
In Alberta, a child is granted two birth certificates
if they are adopted.
The first states their biological parents
and is sealed by the government until they’re 18 years old,
to which they can then access it.
The second birth certificate states the adoptive parents.
The same cannot be said for donor-conceived individuals like me.
My birth certificate is a lie.
There is no registry in Canada,
no list, or any record on how many donor-conceived people exist.
By contrast, adoption registries are provincially regulated.
So the best I can provide is an estimate.
The numbers I do know are as follows:
There are over 20,000 donor-conceived people
from 135 different countries on the donor sibling registry,
a website set up by a mother and her donor-conceived son.
On Facebook, there are over 300 donor-conceived people around my age
in a DCP meme group.
That is a dedicated space just for memes.
Why is there a legal process in place for unintentional births,
but not for planned, intentional donor-conceived babies?
I was very intentionally created with the involvement of numerous people,
including medical professionals,
and yet, no consideration was given
to my right to medical, personal, and genetic histories.
My lack of knowledge would’ve impacted my future,
and future generations.
While, in 1999, it was plausible for donors to stay anonymous,
with the invention of direct-to-consumer DNA tests,
staying anonymous is impossible
when you have given away half of your genetic information with every donation.
Anonymity is a way of keeping the status quo,
but the arguments don’t hold any water.
A common argument for anonymity is that without it,
there would be less donors.
This was disproven.
There was actually an increase in the number of sperm donors
when the United Kingdom removed anonimity in 2004.
The number of donors was related to the publicity of the practice.
Because the removal of donor anonymity was in the media,
more people found out about sperm donation,
so there were more sperm donors.
Openess is beneficial for all parties involved,
including the sperm donors.
Just as ideas have changed surrounding open adoption,
so can the conversation change around known sperm donors.
In fact, many other countries have found solutions to this problem -
Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, and many more.
As I continue my studies in family science at the University of Alberta,
my long-term goal is to advocate for laws
that treat donor-conceived individuals less like products, and more like people,
who have the right to know who they are and where they came from,
just like everyone else.
So, what can you, the viewer,
do to help remove the secrecy and stigma surrounding donor conception.
For starters, share this video with others.
When I started this journey, I wrote in my journal:
“I wish there was a TED talk about this.”
Little did I know I would be the one delivering that talk.
There are over 75,000 donor-conceived people in the world,
likely more.
You probably know someone who is donor-conveived.
Listen and help begin the conversation to bring about change.
And maybe one day,
donor-conceived people will have more information
about their history than this apple.
Thank you.