By Albert Lin
A Canadian fertility clinic is under fire for its policy of not allowing patients to use sperm, eggs or embryos from a donor of a different ethnicity—except that the clinic says it abandoned that policy more than a year ago.
Last week, the Calgary Herald published a story in which a single white woman, Catherine, said she was told at the Regional Fertility Program in Calgary that she could not choose a nonwhite sperm donor. Dr. Calvin Greene, the clinic’s Administrative Director, said that the policy has been in place since the clinic opened in the 1980s.
The Herald found the policy on the clinic’s website: “It is the practice of the Regional Fertility Program not to permit the use of a sperm donor that would result in a future child appearing racially different than the recipient or the recipient’s partner.
Greene even told the Herald: “I’m not sure that we should be creating rainbow families just because some single woman decides that that’s what she wants. That’s her prerogative, but that’s not her prerogative in our clinic.”
In response to Catherine’s complaint that after applying her search criteria she was left with only 20 white donors, many of whom had already been used by multiple Calgary women, Greene scoffed: “She needs to look harder, because I can tell you reasonable people can easily find a suitable donor.”
On Monday, the Regional Fertility Program posted the following update on the homepage of its website:
The Calgary Regional Fertility Program wishes to correct erroneous media reports about a policy that restricts patients to using donors of the same ethnicity. No such policy exists. The clinic does not permit any form of discrimination on the basis of stereotypes, including race, gender or sexual orientation. For more than a year, patients of the Regional Fertility Program have had the choice of egg or sperm donors of any ethnicity. Unfortunately, this change in policy was not updated on our website, which is currently under construction. This was an oversight and that older policy has now been removed. Since changing our policy last year, the clinic has treated numerous patients who have requested donors of different ethnicity.
Ethics and ethical debates have always characterized the topic of fertility treatments and will likely continue to do so in the future but these difficult issues should not detract from the core work of the Regional Fertility Program in assisting individuals and couples create families. The change in policy reflects the multicultural society we live in today. The Regional Fertility Program respects ethnic diversity and the autonomy of the reproductive choices made by our patients.
The Globe and Mail reported that the clinic also said that Greene was voicing his own opinions when he told Catherine that she could only use sperm from a white donor. There is no mention as to whether Greene, whose title and whose position on the clinic’s staff page suggest that he runs it, has been suspended or disciplined.
A spokesperson for Canada Minister of Health Rona Ambrose told The Globe and Mail, “Our government believes that discrimination in any form is unacceptable. Race is not a part of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.”
Gloria Poirier, Executive Director of the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada, said, “Clinics are private, they have standards, they have best practices, they have a code of ethics, and, in my opinion, this is not something that’s ethical. We certainly don’t support that.”
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