OK to restrict gay men to from donating sperm: court

[zeronobus]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=b6632b16-67a3-459f-b9c8-b8dd651e8b1f&k=83535

It does not violate the Charter of Rights to restrict gay men from donating to sperm banks, says the Ontario Court of Appeal

Comments

[uncut_diamond]

There shouldn't be any issues vis a vie consent - the issue isn't the relationship between the parties. It's the relationship between the parties and the state. States cannot make one set of laws, generally speaking, for one type of person and not another. In this case, this translates into equal (yet different?!?) treatment of all gay men.

That being said, I hope they appeal.

[zeronobus]

States cannot make one set of laws, generally speaking, for one type of person and not another. In this case, this translates into equal (yet different?!?) treatment of all gay men.

Your wording already acknowledges that while they haven't added modified "men can donate sperm" to "men that the woman knows", they have modified it to "straight men," which does clearly define one set of laws for one type of person and not another.

Given that kind of discrimination, since it appears to be completely ignored by a freaking appeal court, I figured I'd try a slightly different type of argument.

[uncut_diamond]

Yeah, I'd agree.

Kids, get in the car

[gsyh]

Do we always have to go all the way up to the Supreme Court for common sense?

[jawnbc]

I suspect the SCC might well rule as you describe above: known donations cannot be denied access to such services, though the facility would bear no responsibility if a disease resulted from insemination.

And there's also sperm scrubbing: lots of serodiscordant (HIV+ and HIV-) couples use this to conceive. Semen can have HIV; sperm cannot.

[silverspar]

We're cloning animals now and they still can't tell when blood/sperm has HIV in it?

[hendrikboom]

In the case of blood donations, there's an anonymous donor and the recipient has no foreknowledge of any perceived risks associated with any given blood. But in this case, a woman is saying, "I know this man. I trust that he is not disease-ridden, and I want to have a baby using his sperm." With this kind of informed consent, how can there be any real grounds for refusal?

Whether this constitutes real grounds or not, the evidence is that directed donation is less safe than anonymous donation. The difference is that in directed donation there is social pressure that might persuade the donor to donate even though he/she knows that there are good reasons not to. Such social pressure tends to be absent in anonymous donation.