by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Until this spring, Canadian men could help the infertile by having a pleasurable tug and making a crisp $50 for doing so. Women could donate eggs - a somewhat less lascivious process - for $1,000 to $3,000. But thanks to federal law C-6, since April 2004 payment for such services has been outlawed and the fertility clinic workers and patients are unanimously outraged.

"Payment for sperm donation has been criminalized," says Marinko Biljan, medical director of the Montreal Fertility Centre. "If I give so much as a bus ticket to somebody to come up and give a sperm donation I could be put into prison for five years."

Bill C-6 - widely known as the anti-cloning law, due to its enactment of rules against high-tech futuristic cloning techniques - has also led to a ban on all commercialization of reproduction, thus ending the longstanding tradition of paying people to help the infertile. "For practical purposes it's going to stop sperm donation in Canada, and egg donation has already stopped," Biljan says. "People who have the means are still going to have treatment done on the other side of the border and those with none are going to have no treatment whatsoever. It's also going to have a huge impact on people with alternative sexual requirements, such as lesbians." Female-female couples, he reports, form one-quarter of his clinic's clientele.

Conservative underpinnings

And any good sperm bank needs a lot of spunk. It takes about 100 juicy male ejaculations to get five good samples, due to the freezing problems. The industry could take a pounding of similar proportions.

"The problem is immense already and it's going to be even worse," says Biljan. "What has happened is that this law has created a proper two-tier system in Canada. Those who can afford it will go to the States. I get a letter a day from the USA saying, ‘Send us your patients because you can't treat them anymore.'"

So far the clientele that actually requires the services appears largely too bashful to express their opposition. "People don't like talking about their fertility problem, so the patient groups are not very strong," Biljan says. "But the conservative forces - the people who are against fertility clinics - are very strong. Canadian people are shocked that this law has passed because it was put into a cloning ban." He says none of his colleagues are involved in researching cloning techniques, and any research in Canada on that topic was negligible anyway. "Underneath this law are some very conservative forces," he says.

Over at the Ovo Clinic on Décarie, the dearth of testicular tapioca and human eggs has led the clinic to start turning away the same baby-loving clientele that they once happily served, according to administrative director Renée Cardinal. "We refer patients to sperm banks out of the country. Patients go to the States and we don't have control over what criteria they have," she says, noting the paradox that, "The Canadian government wants to control this so badly that they're losing all control over it."

Cardinal can't see anybody coming to donate sperm - an act that requires blood tests as well as the onanistically gleeful act - for free. "We don't even do a sperm bank anymore because we could only pay $50, and the same act gets paid $50 to $100 in Europe or the States," she says.

She says that the spectre of such science-fiction images as cloned babies and clone-happy Raëlians led to an unreasonable ban on a sensible practice. "It's like a witch hunt. They put everything in the same basket thinking nobody would pay attention, but fertility clinics have nothing to do with genetic manipulation and those sorts of things. This whole law is so incredible."

Market rules

Health Canada, which governs the new law, downplays the potential damage to the fertility market. "We imagine there'll be some transition period for folks," says press rep Paige Raymond Kovach. She notes that the legislation has been "proposed for 10 years. There've been many opportunities for people to make comments."

The law was given birth to by the Royal Commission on Reproductive Technologies. Named in 1989, by 1993, the commission had spent $28-million writing a 1,300-page report with 293 recommendations, including a strong rejection of payment for eggs and sperm. In 1994, its chair, Dr. Patricia Baird, the chair of the medical genetics department at the University of British Columbia, blasted the federal government for not implementing its recommendations immediately. She commented that, "In Canada, we don't have the same set of values (as Americans). We don't want billboards saying, ‘Womb for rent.'"

Françoise Baylis, a professor of medicine and philosophy in the departments of bioethics and philosophy at Dalhousie, participated in the creation of the law and likens its opponents' arguments as being "very similar to objections raised by those who would like to dismantle the health-care system. They think, ‘If I can pay for it, why should you stop me?'"

Says Baylis, "I'm happy to live in a world that respects all Canadians equally rather than saying, ‘If you need money to live, then go sell your body parts.' In the Canadian context you don't sell your body parts. It's outside of the marketplace."

The payment ban brings the policy into line with blood donations, which are also unremunerated here, according to Health Canada. "People aren't paid to donate blood nor are they paid to donate organs. This follows the same ethical guidelines for other human material," notes Kovach.

Parental problems

Among those who have spoken up on the issue are some who were apparently disappointed to learn that a parent was paid to conceive them. "The [Royal Commission] heard from offspring of assisted human reproduction techniques and they had a lot to say about being created through a commercial enterprise," says Kovach.

For example, according to commission transcripts, one Olivia Pratten of Vancouver complained last February 25 that, "I also know that my biological father was paid $50 for his sperm in 1981. What are the implications for me 22 years after the fact? I am left to forever wonder whether he understood the full consequences of what he did. Did he pocket the money, thinking to himself, ‘Isn't this great being paid for something I do every day?' Did he think that his sperm would not stay sperm, that it would become a person - me? Had he not been paid, I would at least know that he had the right intentions and that I am related to someone who wanted to help someone else first before helping himself. Allowing people to sell their gametes, to sell their biological ties, is degrading and cheapens the essence of what it means to be human."

No sex, no kids

Pro-life groups believe that their lobbying influenced the law, which they still attack because they feel it doesn't go far enough. They wanted a total ban on in-vitro fertilization, which John-Henry Westen, editor of the Christian-oriented www.Lifesitenews.com, likens to "standing on the roof of one building. Across is an open window. In the window is a childless couple with no children, you have five children. You think that poor couple needs children, so you toss them over, knowing that you might miss altogether."

Westen believes that Liberal pro-lifer MP Paul Szabo swayed much of Parliament in his repeated discussions on the issue. Westen and the pro-lifers oppose artificial insemination or egg donation partially because it lacks romance. "The whole process shouldn't be there because we need to have respect for the process of procreation," Westen says. "Every child deserves to be conceived in the loving union of a loving mother and father. The sexual act shows the loving commitment between husband and wife. It's an important aspect. Artificial procreation lacks this."

Medical misconceptions

This sort of talk irritates Dr. Seang Lin Tan, head of the McGill Reproductive Centre at the Royal Vic and chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology. "To me all that is rubbish. A lot of people father children because they meet a stranger and they have casual relationships. There's no relationship between that person and the child. I think those views are very unfortunate and selfish. At the end of the day it's okay in their minds for fertile people to pass such laws while the infertile suffer."

Tan also dismisses the government's notion that sperm donation should be unremunerated because blood is given freely. "There's a big difference between the two. Everybody recognizes that there is a selfish interest in all of us to give blood. When we donate blood and support a blood bank, it's because one day we, or a relative, might need it. That's not the case with fertility clinics. Secondly, a blood donor only needs to go do it once, whereas a sperm donor has to have a swab taken of their penis, which is very painful, and they then have to come back for repeated blood tests, and, six months after donation, another test to make sure they don't have AIDS."

Tan says that as a result of C-6, much-needed fertile sperm donors are just no longer showing up. He adds that attempts to meddle with the status quo have proven disastrous elsewhere. "In Australia for example, they passed a law saying the children of sperm donors should be given permission to meet [their biological parents] if they wish, and because of that there isn't a single person left in Australia willing to give sperm."

Worse for women

For female donors, the lack of pay for eggs is an even worse deal. "They have to have hormonal injections, come for ultrasounds, scans, blood tests - and honestly I can't see anybody doing it for free," says Tan. "And again, we used to have a scheme at McGill whereby patients who needed to have IVF [in-vitro fertilization] could go through a treatment cycle free of charge if they gave half to another couple. That's called egg sharing, and that's now illegal."

Tan says that not only should fertility treatment be free, it should be on the Medicare tab. "In Canada we pay for women to have abortions but we don't pay for women to have fertility or IVF treatments, whereas in France, England and Australia, they get it free of charge."

Beverly Hancks, who runs the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada from the basement of the Queen Elizabeth Health Complex in NDG, sees the hushed hopes and quiet dreams of infertile Canadians from up close.

"Infertility is seen to be in the same league as STDs, and wrongfully so," she says. "There's a lack of education. Some think, ‘I can't speak up on this because my husband is a senator, or in a good position at a law firm.' That's the sort of thinking we see. When I was in Ottawa fighting this, we had a rally which should have attracted thousands but instead there were only 10 of us."

Not only will those in need of fertility assistance have a harder time getting their needs met - Hancks estimates the number of annual potential Canadian babies lost will total "2,000 to 3,000" - she's also perplexed that C-6 orders the names of those seeking fertility assistance to be recorded on a government registry. Hancks says that the registry could lead to a court battle. "My understanding is there's going to be a class action against the government," she says.

For Hancks, the dashed dreams of those who lose access to fertility service is the saddest element. "I can't express how sad it is for some of these ladies who can't have children. It's just terrible. It's not like a death, where six months go by and you start to feel a teeny bit better. It's every month that they are reminded of their infertility."