The Complex Legacy of 1970s Donor Sperm Conception

back in the 70s it was seen as a noble community service giving real hope to infertile couples

sperm donors mostly young men mostly students who did their bit to help

create happy families and in australia alone an estimated 10 000 babies were born

thanks to this artificial insemination program a happy ending you'd think but no those babies have grown up and

many are disenchanted some are desperate to trace their biological fathers

and some feel so cheated they want the whole program stopped to prevent any more children

being born this way so they just syringe it into there do they yeah

basically this is an extraordinary moment for a father and daughter for the first time they've come back to

where my fanny walker's life began a laboratory at the royal women's hospital in melbourne

23 years ago michael linden's frozen sperm helped create this young woman today

she's confronting her conception and she doesn't like it yeah i have one ejaculate per container

i just think that the whole very idea of this canister devalues my creation even though my parents loved me and

wanted me so very much the reality the fact is that i'm alive and i came from one of these

this is a product it's a consumer yeah and without it you wouldn't be here it doesn't matter i am here

and then there's joanna rose conceived 32 years ago in britain with donor sperm despite a decade-long

search she hasn't been able to find her donor father she says seeing herself is like looking

at a stranger i do i literally just think who's she you know who's she again she's following

me around i see my own reflection and i don't look like my mum

you know i don't i think i probably have the face of well a female version of my genetic

father and that's weird [Music]

telling the truth joanna and mcfanwey are the first generation of children born of donor insemination

and the very first offspring to speak out against it they want it banned to stop the very

process that created them in the first place it had lab coats and syringes and

an aseptic technique you know um you are the genetic combination of people who wouldn't touch each other with barge

pole you know didn't even want to look at each other that gets

to you how many donations did you make um i made 10. that was the limit at that

time michael lyndon was a young university student when he first signed up

for 10 a donation did you ever consider that you were creating 10 buck babies

no i didn't no i never felt that way about it what did you think you were doing um

i was being paid for giving them nice sperm that's that's all i thought i was doing

you definitely resemble my mother facially i thought there's some similarities promised anonymity

and no responsibility the young hippie didn't think twice about it but then two decades later he

discovered a daughter he never knew existed a daughter that had been desperately looking for him

do you remember that having that photo taken it was just by chance two years ago michael spotted mcfanwee's

play in a newspaper and recognized himself in her the door opens

and as he welcomed me into the door i knew that i was related to him even you know that without it even being

a conscious thought i knew that he was my relation and that he was my biological father

i saw my daughter i saw an instant recognition did that blow you away it did i i

i described it i've um paralleled it will with having a baby coming a new baby

come into your life [Music] there's been no such comfort for joanna

act like i disappear her search has so far brought nothing but frustration

what do you know about your biological father i think he was a medical student

apparently and i know he donated during 1971 at harley street there was a handful of

guys who donated for seven years up to three times a week and they called it the wank bank

and apparently i have probably between two and three hundred half siblings how does that notion make

you feel dizzy just dizzy with more just dizzy in so many ways like

just dizzy that they could do that to me that they that they could be that lack of thought

that they that it's so reckless do you think that the whole donor insemination process is a social

experiment no donor insemination isn't a social experiment it's a

is a valid and appropriate medical treatment to overcome a deficiency a loss the absence of sperm

dr john mcbain is one of the pioneers of donor insemination in australia here there have always been

limits on the number of donations but he does admit there were mistakes when it began in the seventies

i think we got it wrong in what way oh because we didn't consider that children would

at some time in the future want to have that information which we can now have

[Music] until recently only minor details like the donor's height

and eye color were kept so if it wasn't for mifanwi's public plea she would never have found michael i'm

one of the lucky ones i've got i've got michael in my life and i've got contact with my biological family

there's thousands and thousands of people out there who will never have what i've got

we're talking to these adults they say they feel incomplete some of them say they look in the mirror

and they don't know who they are i i i i'm so sorry to hear that but i'm not sure that

the whole donor insemination program with the the vast good that it has done for so

many people should be dismantled because of the sad things which have happened to these

children these are basic things that matter to people your medical history your

ethnicity who your parents your direct genetic parents are your siblings

you know we're not living in la la land these are things that ground people it gives them a sense of identity and

belonging and who they are and you know i have that need just as much as everybody else

but for infertile couples being able to create a family is what it's all about to fulfill an

overwhelming need to have a baby but that baby grows up without its biological father

and for some that leaves a terrible void in their lives there was a kind of parental abandonment

yeah by by your genetic father yeah you were gifted

you know it's it's that he wasn't a parent you weren't you hadn't been no but he he gave up his rights and

responsibilities and relationships he created a child he would have no no acknowledgement of he helped no

responsibility for um yeah then that that that is a type of

look i wasn't raised by my genetic father that that's that's a sense of abandonment

i'm sorry to say it is so what do you know about your donor father i know that uh he went to dontre and

military college for two years at least 25 year old liam marcus

was conceived in canberra thanks to a donation from a young military student do you look into the faces of strangers

you see on the streets and say i wonder if you could be my dad yeah sometimes

yeah i mean of course it crosses your mind you know if someone sort of looks

similar or something but yeah not normally he knows very little about his biological father

and apart from learning his medical history has no driving urge to find him i think it's a brave decision yeah i

mean it can't kind of been easy to to go into a sort of fertility clinic knowing that you're donating sperm to

make people yeah i'm glad that he did i i thank him for his genes wherever he may

be and uh yeah i think it's i'm really glad that he did

and what do you think of your parents decision to conceive you in this way it tells me they they wanted me pretty

bad yeah and i i also feel feel very warm about that they've obviously gone through a lot of

pain and trouble to to bring me into this world and um and i do appreciate that fact

oh we had this guy coming in he's put a big hole in the you know the little kitchen at the back

and so what of mcfanwie's mum mary walker she was only able to have children

because of michael linden and not one but two her husband was infertile and so michael's sperm helped

produce murphanwe and her younger brother coincidentally also named michael

today your daughter went to the sperm bank for the first time and described the place

as emotionless loveless was her creation without love no that's actually completely wrong

because for about eight years i've been trying to have children so

she was really it's one thing my two children cannot say is actually that they're not wanted children they're

the two most wanted children in the world and the two most loved how do you feel

about michael yeah he's a nice bike that little bit where the bathroom used to be why'd you

do it anyway what do you think about his decision to donate sperm

a bit weird i wouldn't donate spoon why is that because i wouldn't want to have five six

kids not knowing who their father is that'd be a bit weird for them

and not me not knowing them so it's a bit complicated in fact it's so complicated that up to

80 percent of parents who use donor insemination never tell their children their father

is not their natural father mefanwy was 20 before she was told and then only

after the divorce of her parents do you really think that being told is the right thing yes absolutely not

for a minute even though with you know everything i've experienced since that point not

for a minute would i go back to not knowing this day i don't think it's right to

deceive someone about their conception and about who their family really is that's why i say to those

donors in the past that they should see that there may be children out there that have this missing

part of their lives and they should be open to being contacted by those children because it means something

to those children to know where they came from for adults like liam the only chance

they have of finding their biological fathers is if those men contact one of the

voluntary registries throughout australia even today donors are still anonymous

except in victoria where since 1998 they must be identifiable how do you feel about people who say

that they have a right to know their biological history at all costs uh i i mean i

respect their beliefs i believe that i can understand how it could really become an overriding factor in

in your life but as as for myself i'd have no desire to sort of go out there and make it the bl and end all of

my life and and i'm happy it has become an obsession for joanna rose in britain's

high court she's been fighting for the rights of donor offspring

and in australia is doing a phd on the ethics and social impact of donor conception this whole industry

is growing it's not like everybody's learnt from the mistake and they've all stopped and it's all fine now

i really feel a sense of compulsion to say look even at the foot at the beginning when you were doing donation

you stuffed up stop i believe that there is some real some real hurt

i think it's outrageous however to imagine it would have been better never having been conceived

smoking mirrors hide my name i couldn't have been here if i never came for joanna her creation was

all smoke and mirrors deception and [Music]

recklessness for my fanwy it gave her two fathers but took away her peace of mind

[Music] and for others like liam it was the greatest gift of all

it gave him his life it does dumbfound me sometimes to think that you'd rather be not

non-existent than to have come through this or program i was created from a doctor

intimidating my mother and i don't know why that bothers me i think it's something that

i haven't completely understood yet but it does bother me you cannot

make it all right i think the doctor should apologize i think the government should apologize

you can't just go oh whoops well you're here now you know you wouldn't be in here if it

weren't for it so don't make a fuss get on with life you know it's serious

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