Last night, I saw the play Hatched at the Toronto Free Gallery.  I had been waiting eagerly for the play to open, ever since first being contacted by the playwright, Claire Burns, reading a draft of the script, and then attending at and speaking at a fundraiser. 

Hatched is a play about egg donation.  It asks important questions: what makes a family? How important is biology? How much of a person is nature vs. nurture? Should parents tell a child born through the use of donor gametes about their conception, and if so, when? What role should a donor play in the life of the child conceived through the use of the donated gametes? Hatched goes a step further, though.  It asks questions about the emotional experience of the egg donor.  What does the experience mean to an egg donor? Is the donor curious about children born through the use of the donated ova? It explores the emotions of a woman who had donated her eggs in her youth and later ends up suffering from infertility; the only child with a biological link to her that will exist is the child who was conceived with the use of her donated eggs.

Because Hatched is a play and is therefore not required to be true to life, there are parts that are a little bit fanciful.  An intended parent being able to steal the medical records of an anonymous egg donor seems unlikely.  Even more unlikely is the egg donor being the guidance counsellor of the child conceived with the use of the donor eggs.  Regardless, I think it's important to explore the issues surrounding egg donation (and other third party reproductive technologies) from all perspectives, and theatre and art are excellent forums for this.  My one caveat, though, is that the audience must remember that this is a play, and not the actual experience of the donor. If we look back to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaids Tale, for example, when it comes to reproductive technologies, sometimes fiction has taken the place of reality in making policy which is a dangerous thing.

Hatched is playing through the 17th of November.  Tickets can be purchased here.

The Supreme Court of British Columbia released a landmark fertility law decision where, for the first time, sperm was held to constitute property at law.  You can find the J.C.M. v. A.N.A. decision here.

Briefly, here are the facts of the case:

A lesbian couple purchased sperm from a US sperm bank.  Using this sperm, they conceived two children at Genesis Fertility Centre.  The couple later broke up and divided up the assets of their relationship, but inadvertently failed to come to an agreement about the remaining sperm.  The applicant, J.C.M., later met a new partner and wanted to use the remaining frozen sperm to conceive a child who was biologically related to her previous children.  A.N.A. refused to allow the use and instead asked that the cryopreserved sperm be destroyed.  J.C.M. brought the application seeking a declaration that the sperm was her sole property.

The Honourable Madame Justice Russell ordered that the 13 remaining sperm straws be divided between the parties.

Here is what I had to say about the decision: watch the brief video here

Take home point: while an important decision, I doubt that the issue of whether gametes are property at law is resolved by this decision.  How would the judge have decided had the remaining donor gamete been a single cryopreserved egg that could not be divided? Would the decision have differed had the donor sperm not been purchased by the parties, thereby taking away any meaningful argument from the respondent that treating human gametes as property devalues and commercializes human tissue?