Queensland parliament to investigate establishing sperm, egg and embryo donor register

A state parliamentary inquiry will consider whether a government donor conception register should be established to give Queenslanders conceived through donated sperm, eggs or embryos access to information about their donors.

Key points:

Attorney-General says a register could help donor-conceived people better understand their origins and manage their health

Queensland advocate argues for a retrospective scheme

IVF doctor says the more complex and bureaucratic the system is, the more there could be growth in underground unregulated sperm donations

The Queensland government has referred the issue to parliament's Legal Affairs and Safety Committee for investigation.

Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman said conception using donated sperm, eggs or embryos had given countless Queenslanders the precious gift of starting or extending a family.

"For those people who are donor-conceived, it is important that they can access information about their genetic identity to better understand their origins and to manage their health appropriately," Ms Fentiman said.

"The committee will consider the extent to which identifying information about donors should be given to donor-conceived persons, while also taking donors' right to privacy into consideration."

Queensland academic Katharine Gelber, the mother of a donor-conceived child, has been agitating for a parliamentary inquiry into the issue for a decade.

Katharine Gelber, the mother of a donor-conceived child, has been agitating for a parliamentary inquiry

Katharine Gelber says Queenslanders conceived through donated sperm, eggs or embryos should get access to information about their donors.(Supplied)

Professor Gelber advocates for law reform that would require all fertility clinics to provide data on donor conceptions to a government-controlled central register.

She argues for a retrospective scheme, similar to what exists in Victoria, that would compel clinics to release any historical information they retain about donor conceptions.

"I want all donor-conceived people who turn 18 to have the right to identifying information about their donors with appropriate support facilities, either provided by the government or by an external organisation," Professor Gelber said.

But she supported protections for donors that would shield them from being contacted, if they chose to have no contact with their donor-conceived children.

"They don't have to have a relationship with the person if they don't want to," Professor Gelber said.

"That's how I would preserve their rights."

She suggested the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages would be an appropriate place to hold the information.

Concern bureaucracy could drive growth in unregulated donations

Fertility specialist David Molloy, a managing director with Australia's largest IVF company Virtus Health, said fertility services followed National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines relating to donor conception as a condition of their accreditation.

He said that since 2004, the guidelines had guaranteed disclosure, giving donor-conceived children access to donor information once they turned 18, on request.

"Anybody conceived in the last 18 years is going to be able to get the information anyway, which then makes you question whether a government register is actually all that valuable," Dr Molloy said.

While he said he was not opposed to a government register, he was "implacably against" making it retrospective so that it included past donors who had been promised anonymity.

Dr Molloy said a government register would also not capture "unregulated sperm donations" where people organised their own donor, often without rigorous disease testing.

"The more complex and bureaucratic you make it, the more you drive people underground to be unregulated sperm donors," he said.

Parliament's Legal Affairs and Safety Committee will report back by August 31.

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