Canada is finally lifting the almost 30-year lifetime ban on blood donation by gay men.  However, only men who have not had sex with another man within the past five years will be allowed to donate blood.  Canadian Blood Services hopes to have this new policy in place by mid-summer.  Although this is a marked improvement over the current ban which prohibits men who have had sex with another man even once since 1977 to ever donate blood, the change does not go far enough.  I hope that this is only a first step and that the ban will be further reduced to better balance the protection of those receiving the donated blood with respect for and inclusiveness of all people.  Canada can look to other jurisdictions that balance these
competing interests in a less extreme manner, and through the use of empirical evidence.  For example, Australia has a policy where blood donations are deferred for only twelve months.  A study shows that Australia did not see an increase in contaminated blood donations when it moved to this model.  However, as highlighted below, ideally the health of the donor should be determined based on a donor's behaviour and not on his sexual orientation.

This change may also reverberate to affect those who can be a sperm donor in Canada. Currently, the Semen Regulations under Canada's Food and Drug Act only allow specific men to donate sperm.  Restricted men include any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 (following from the ban on blood donation by gay males).  If a man who has had sex with another man even once since 1977 wants to donate sperm, special permission needs to be obtained unless the sperm is being used by the donor's sexual partner. The regulation points to an increased likelihood of such a donor being infected with HIV.

This policy is unnecessarily discriminatory.  It affects who can be a parent or a donor, and puts gay men at a disadvantage, regardless of the man's HIV status, whether he is in a monogamous relationship, and whether he even lives as a gay male or only engaged in sex with a man once back in 1980.  If the government's concern is the health of recipients of donor sperm, it should be looking for indications of the donor's health and behaviour, as opposed to his sexual orientation or gender.  For example, the current Semen Regulations (which I expect will fall by the wayside as soon as the federal government proclaims the new section 10 of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act and the regulations thereto to be in force), require that any donor sperm provided for the use of someone who is not the sexual partner of the donor be quarantined for six months in order to protect against HIV and other transmittable diseases.  If all donor sperm needs to be quarantined and tested anyways, why is that insufficient for gay males but sufficient for heterosexual males? Regardless, I'm hopeful that the change made to the restrictions on gay males donating blood will signify at least a similar change to the restrictions on gay males donating sperm (and that both policies will continue moving in the appropriate direction). 

NB: I admit that I do not have scientific training so if I am missing something here, feel free to school me.   As the policy stands, it seems to me like discrimination without the science or logic to back it up.

On April 22, CBC’s The National aired a segment (Frozen Human Egg Trade) in which Kelly Crowe discussed how new technologies have progressed to enable human eggs to be retrieved, cryopreserved and banked in the US, and shipped to recipients in Canada.  Dr. Matt Gysler, a fertility specialist at ISIS Regional Fertility Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, openly stated that his patients frequently purchase and use these eggs for their reproductive purposes in Canada.  Dr. Gysler opined that just as it is legal to pay for frozen sperm imported from the US, so too, then, must it be legal to pay for eggs cryopreserved in the US and import those into Canada.  CBC interviewed Ms. Levitan, a fertility lawyer, who disagreed with Dr. Gysler’s analysis.  She stated that “it’s not a defence to say ‘but you said it was ok for sperm’…” and that she believed that people importing these eggs could face criminal prosecution.  Unsurprisingly, this program was followed in quick succession by a number of further stories on CBC and other media.  Suffice it to say that any Canadian suffering from infertility or looking to build a non-traditional family through the use of donor eggs likely absorbed the message that purchasing these banked eggs is illegal.

I respectfully disagree.

It is incomplete to state that the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (known as the “AHRA”) prohibits the purchase of ova or sperm; the AHRA only prohibits the purchase of ova or sperm from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor.  The World Egg Bank, depicted in The National segment, has a program whereby it purchases eggs from US donors and stores them until such time as they are purchased by an intended parent.  With recent technological advances, the eggs could conceivably be bought by an intended parent years after their retrieval.  The egg donor is paid, though, at the time of retrieval, regardless of when or whether an intended parent purchases the eggs from the Bank, much in the same way that sperm banks function.  Accordingly, the intended parent is purchasing eggs, but is not purchasing eggs from a donor, nor is the parent purchasing eggs from a person acting on behalf of a donor. 

As Dr. Gysler mentions, Assisted Human Reproduction Canada has condoned the practice of purchasing frozen sperm from the US and importing it into Canada.  To my mind, the reason that the purchase of sperm from a sperm bank is legal is not because of the Semen Regulations (yes, there is such a thing) with which all imported semen must comply, but because the sperm is not purchased from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor; the sperm bank (and now the egg bank) is not acting on behalf of the donor, but on its own behalf.  The issue, then, has little to do with whether a payment over the internet is found to be a payment made in Canada, as stated by Ms. Levitan.  In my opinion, even if the payment for a cryopreserved banked egg is made in Canada, such a payment is not prohibited by the AHRA and is therefore legal.

Two lawyers disagreeing over a legal analysis isn’t particularly interesting to anyone other than the lawyers themselves.  What is interesting, though, and the reason you ought to care about our differing legal analyses, rests precisely on the point where Ms. Levitan and I do, in fact, agree – despite the fact that I am confident in my legal analysis, I, too, continue to be concerned that potential clients who engage in such a transaction could open themselves up to an investigation or to criminal charges.  A strong argument that one has acted within the confines of the law is of limited comfort when faced with the risk of criminal charges, especially where the penalty for contravening the law is up to 10 years in jail and/or a fine of $500,000.   As fertility lawyers, neither I nor Ms. Levitan should be in a position where we must advise clients on a daily basis that the law regarding egg donation is so unclear that despite best efforts to work within the confines of the law, the potential for being investigated and even criminally charged remains.  Even more so, people struggling to build their families who must rely on third party reproductive technologies ought not be put in this untenable position.



Other offences and corresponding maximum imprisonment:

• ·         Advocating genocide – up to 5 years
• ·         Polygamy – up to 5 years
• ·         Public incitement of hatred – up to 2 years
• ·         Wilful promotion of hatred – up to 2 years
• ·         Assault (without a weapon) – up to 5 years
• ·         Assault (with a weapon) – up to 10 years
• ·         Forceable confinement – up to 10 years