American woman seeking identity of sperm donor father may get her day in court..

Are the US set to follow in the footsteps of the UK regarding anonymity for sperm donors?

As a young girl, Olivia Pratten would stand in front of the mirror studying her nose, cheeks and mouth, trying to imagine what her biological father — an anonymous sperm donor — might look like.

Now in her late twenties, Ms. Pratten still looks in the mirror and wonders why she is shorter than all of her mother’s family and where she gets some of her interests.

She could be about to find out.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed to consider whether Ms. Pratten’s legal battle against the province’s Attorney-General and College of Physicians and Surgeons that seeks to make the identities of anonymous sperm, egg or embryo donors available should proceed to trial.

“This is not about replacing a parent,” Ms. Pratten said in an interview in Toronto where she works as a journalist for The Canadian Press. “I have a Dad who loves me and cares about me. But I also have a biological father who’s a mystery to me, who created half of who I am.”

Ms. Pratten’s lawsuit — believed to be the first of its kind in North America — has shone a light on the deeply personal and morally charged realm in which donor offspring, their parents, physicians and bioethicists wrestle daily.

The only information Ms. Pratten has about her biological father is scribbled on a piece of hotel stationary: he was a 5-foot-10 Caucasian medical student with blue eyes and blood type A positive.

The information came from retired Vancouver fertility specialist Dr. Gerald Korn, who artificially inseminated Ms. Pratten’s mother, Shirley, in 1981. Dr. Korn, now in his eighties, has refused to provide any more details, citing the doctor-patient confidentiality bond that has been the backbone of the Canadian gamete donor business for decades.

Lawyers for Ms. Pratten are demanding that all physicians who perform artificial insemination keep permanent records about donors that can be accessed by offspring for medical reasons or simply out of curiosity when they turn 19. Current B.C. rules dictate that doctors only have to keep such records for six years after the last contact with the recipient patient, after which time the information can be destroyed.

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