Sperm donors' anonymity challenged in B.C.

The British Columbia government is asking a judge to throw out a landmark legal challenge seeking to end the anonymity of sperm donors.

Olivia Pratten, 28, wants the B.C. Supreme Court to order the province to create a system that ensures donor records are kept indefinitely and to prevent existing records from being destroyed.

Pratten also wants children conceived through donation to have the ability to obtain information about a donor's identity and medical history effectively making it impossible for them to remain anonymous.

Pratten, a Toronto-based journalist who works for The Canadian Press, launched the lawsuit after fighting for more than a decade to obtain records about her conception, arguing such information is vital to her own health and to ease the psychological stress of not knowing who her biological father is.

'There is just nothing this court or anyone can do to bring back those records. We'd need a time machine.' B.C. government lawyer Leah Greathead

Pratten's mother, Shirley Pratten, became pregnant in B.C. through sperm donation after she and her husband failed to conceive.

The doctor who performed the procedure insists he destroyed the documents in the 1990s because physicians aren't required to keep patient records for more than six years.

B.C. government lawyer Leah Greathead told court that because the records surrounding Pratten's case no longer exist, there would be no point in the judge consideringwhether to order them returned.

And because Pratten wouldn't be affected by any order setting up a database of sperm-donor records, Greathead argued, thewoman doesn't have the right to bring forward a case on behalf of other donor children.

"The facts are that Dr. [Gerald] Korn has told Olivia Pratten and her mother that the records have been destroyed, that he doesn't have them, that he doesn't know who the father is," Greathead told the court Wednesday.

"There is just nothing this court or anyone can do to bring back those records. We'd need a time machine."

Pratten and her mother filed affidavits saying they don't believe the documents were actually destroyed, pointing to what they believe are inconsistencies in what Korn, who is now in his late 80s andretired, has told them.

Thousands potentially affected

Pratten's lawyer, Joseph Arvay, said regardless of whether his client's documentsexist, the court should allow her to argue the case on behalf of other people conceived through donation

There are thousands of children who, like Pratten, still don't know where they came from, Arvay told the court.

He provided affidavits from others in Pratten's situation, whose stories, he said, demonstrate what itmeans tobean adult, unable to know about social, cultural, religious,ethnic, medical or genetic histories.

He added: "This case is not just about Olivia, even though when she started, she had great hopes that she could obtain her records."

There is currently an injunction preventing the destruction of any documents related to donor conception in B.C. If the case is thrown out, Arvay said that injunction would end and more children will see records that could trace their origins destroyed forever.

Judge Miriam Gropper reserved her decision.

The case is scheduled to be heard in October if the province isn't successful in having it dismissed.

If the court decides the case can proceed, the province wants the trial delayed until after the Supreme Court of Canada rules on the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, because that case will deal with some of the same issues.