Today there are men in Victoria who may be dreading a very uncomfortable knock on the door.
Because when they come into effect early next year, new laws passed recently by state parliament will see all donor-conceived children given access to identifying information about their donor – even if the man donated his sperm on the assurance of anonymity.
The new laws reflect the growing consensus of experts that everyone has the right to know where they came from, for medical reasons and to assist with the development of a sense of self.
It’s also clear that in the minds of our lawmakers, a child’s right to know its biological heritage trumps any right to donor privacy.
The changes to the law could mean reneging on the promise of anonymity, and that, according to some commentators, is opening the door to some very bad scenarios.
But will the disaster scenarios predicted by commentators be realised?
Will men who donated sperm back in the 1980s on the promise of anonymity, suddenly have a swarm of donor-conceived kids turning up on their doorstep, demanding a cut of his inheritance and calling him “Dad”?
The AMA has claimed it is unethical to go back on assurances of anonymity and that donors may have not told their families and may have no desire to meet their offspring, having donated for a bit of cash or altruistic reasons.
On the other hand, donor conceived people say they have broken no promises because they were never consulted about the circumstances or conditions of their conception. They say they did not agree to the deal in the first place.
Lawmakers in other states are watching what happens in Victoria carefully, as pressure grows for donor offspring to have access to information about their genetic background.
In New South Wales, proposed retrospective legislation has been met with fierce opposition, with the emergence of anecdotal evidence of some clinics even destroying records of donors who were promised anonymity.
As the mother of two donor-conceived daughters, I know how the altruistic act of someone I have never met has brought me happiness beyond any I could have imagined.
Yet, as a journalist who has written extensively on IVF and donor conception, I have seen first hand how sperm donation laws in Australia have for a long time been woefully inadequate, leading to untold heartache for both donors and donor recipients.
The story begins in the 1970s and 1980s, when Victorian men were able to donate sperm in the belief that they would never have to think about their sneaky five minutes in a room with a girly magazine again. Many clinics held sperm donor drives, offering cash, at universities and other places there might be strapping - and cash-strapped - lads.
Things changed a little in 1998, with donor-conceived offspring being given access to their donors’ identifying information – but only with the donor’s consent.
Laws were changed yet again in 1995, making it mandatory for donors to consent to their identifying information being made available to their offspring when the kids turn 18.
That meant that in Victoria, until last month, donor-conceived people fell into three different groups, all with very different rights, depending on the year of the donation.
And Victoria is not alone. Currently, only Victoria, NSW and Western Australia have central registers for donors and donor-conceived people – but registers in NSW and WA only hold records from recent years.
In other states, records are held by clinics – often kept as a condition of accreditation. Yet, for all anyone knows, these records may contain incorrect or scant information, and there’s always the threat of a clinic closing down and records being lost.
No other state of territory has retrospective laws such as those just passed in Victoria. Yet there is mounting pressure for the laws to be universally changed.
In the decades since sperm donation became more common in Australia, there has been a mountain of credible research into human development, and the universal conclusion is that knowledge of one’s genetic history is important for self-esteem and social development.
One donor-conceived woman I know, who has had no rights to information about the sperm donor who helped create her, describes the absence of knowledge about her parentage as being like a “big, dark hole” in her soul.
My own daughters, Greta (age five) and Rori (age three), thankfully will never feel that emptiness. The details of their donor are being held in a central registry and the information will become available to them when they turn 18. It’s up to them what they decide to do with the information, but no part of their identity will ever be missing.
And that’s what donor-conceived people are searching for.
It’s not a case of people wanting a Dad or wanting that Dad’s money. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that donor-conceived people who contact their donors are highly respectful.
Under the new changes, they continue to have no legal rights to property and there is no obligation for sperm donors to have a relationship with them or indeed have anything to do with them at all.
Of course there will be some men who donated anonymously decades ago who may not have told their families or who may be feeling uncomfortable about meeting their offspring.
But happily, that may not even be a problem – because the idea of the angry and frightened anonymous sperm donor may in fact be a myth. Donor-conceived people, it seems, are not interested in disturbing the lives of their donors, they are more interested in knowing who they are themselves.
And it appears that many donors not only understand this but are also sympathetic to this need to know where you come from.
The Victorian Government years ago set up a voluntary registry to connect donors and donor-conceived offspring. There are more donors on it than donor-conceived people.
That’s right – there are more donors searching for their offspring, than donor-conceived people searching for their donors.
These donors from the 1970s and 1980s are getting a little older now. Maybe their kids have grown up; maybe they are thinking more about their own mortality and the legacy they are leaving behind.
Or maybe age and experience has given them the wisdom to understand that they have given the most remarkable gift of love and life to a family they have never even met.