“Humans are storytellers. It is through these stories that we draw meaning in constructing our genetic identities.” – Kevin Martin
From having accurate medical histories to knowing our ancestral identities, understanding our genetic identity is important to understanding who we are and where we came from.
Every year, on May 30, we aim to bring awareness to the importance of genetic identity by launching a new international day for the right to genetic identity. We believe that everyone should have the freedom to know their complete genetic identity, including medical history and ancestral identity.
We believe that it is wrong to purposely create people who are denied knowledge about their medical, cultural, and genetic identity. Important personal information about our identities should not be deliberately withheld from us by government, doctors, or the fertility industry.
#GeneticIdentityDay is an occasion to join together with the global community of donor conceived people, adoptees, and anyone else who has had this information withheld. May 30 was chosen to build on the important advocacy work of two Dutch donor conceived groups: Donor Detectives which had a media launch on May 30, 2017 and Stichting Donorkind who started “Day of the Donor Child” on May 30, 2018.
Donor Conceived Alliance of Canada is honoured to have the support of, and to join forces with, donor conceived groups in France (Procréation Médicalement Anonyme), Netherlands (Stichting Donorkind), Netherlands / Belgium (Donor Detectives), Germany / Switzerland / Austria (Spenderkinder), the United States (US Donor Conceived Council), Australia (Donor Conceived Australia), and across Europe (Donor Offspring Europe).
We all agree that #geneticidentity matters to us.
In 2019, the Donor Conceived Alliance of Canada went to Ottawa on May 30 to tell the federal government that genetic identity matters! We spoke to government officials and told them that donor conceived Canadians are tired of being left out of the conversations regarding our lives and our rights.
This was especially important for us considering that in spring 2018, Member of Parliament Anthony Housefather introduced a bill that seeks to make it legal for people to be paid for their gametes and for women to be paid for surrogacy, while completely ignoring the best interests of donor-conceived people. Six months later, Health Canada released draft regulations to bring sections of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act into force but it also left out critical regulations that are needed to protect donor conceived Canadians. Neither Housefather’s bill nor Health Canada’s regulations do anything to address the concerns that donor-conceived individuals have about access to accurate medical information, banning anonymity, and capping the number of individuals created using one person’s gametes.
See more about what we stand for here.
On #GeneticIdentityDay, we ask you to help us spread our message!
On May 30, share the graphic above on Twitter and Facebook and tag your elected officials to let them know that you support the need for donor conceived people and adoptees to know their full genetic identities.
