Canadian legislation is being called into question, with suggestions that it forces those who are fertility challenged to go to extreme measures.
The 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act is the Canadian government's most comprehensive attempt to regulate reproductive technologies. Some onlookers fear that the legislation has created a secretive black market, where couples seek sperm and egg donors on Craigslist or in university libraries.
Where those couples quietly compensate donors for their gametes, despite the legislation that criminalizes doing so. Where lesbian couples lie to doctors about their sexual orientation to avoid paying to quarantine a friend's sperm for six months. And where doctors and counsellors sometimes adopt the credo of "Don't ask, Don't tell."
The act -- which is a result of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies in 1993 -- has triggered condemnation from the right and left, and was the focal point of an International Women's Day conference in Toronto last week. There, at the Law Society of Upper Canada, panellists argued that some of the legislation does more to imperil and confuse prospective parents and their offspring than it does to protect them.
To find out more about this debate on legislation follow this link: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2677573
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