Before I arrived home from uni several years ago, my dad messaged me that we were going to have a family meeting – a letter had arrived that day from the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority. In the lounge room, my little brother was next to his mother (my stepmother), and when I entered, our dad sat down beside them. My dad began to speak.
My little brother’s biological father had died. Louis Taffs was conceived by sperm donor, but is yet to meet his biological father. Credit: SMH This letter – both its contents and the fact we received it – was the result of a long campaign from and on behalf of donor-conceived children in Victoria for their right to know their biology and history.
At the time, I was 20 and my brother was 11. That nine-year gap places us in different epochs in Victorian donor anonymity legislation. He was conceived in an era when his donor was automatically on the registry.
I was not. As I sat across from them, my dad and stepmother slowly explained to my brother that his donor father – a man unknown to my brother other than by concept, and to our parents by little other than a brief information sheet at the IVF clinic at the time of his conception – had died of a heart attack. The letter contained an abridged medical record; the disease that killed him was not genetic, the letter assured us.
These facts are valuable, and we were glad to know them. But a situation like this also raises questions beyond the legal and the medical. A.