Gay fertility rule ‘out of date’

First came the cancer diagnosis, then the discovery stored sperm had to go to a woman. Cate Broughton reports.

A gay cancer patient suffering severe pain from chemotherapy was mortified to discover he could donate sperm only to a female partner.

Logan Morton, 22, received the shock diagnosis he had acute myeloid leukemia in April last year, and after being warned the treatment could make him infertile, arranged to store healthy sperm through Fertility Associates.

Severely debilitated from the drugs he was taking, Morton asked a nurse to fill out the paperwork, and noticed afterwards that he was only given the option of donating his sperm to a female partner.

He later discovered his sperm would have been destroyed despite having a loving and supportive partner, Jeremy Young, who attended the clinic visit with him.

Fertility Associates chair Dr Mary Birdsall said they would be changing their policy to accommodate gay men after being alerted to Morton’s experience.

‘‘We really feel terrible that Logan was offended because we see ourselves as being an organisation that works really hard to meet all of our clients’ needs, it’s just that society is becoming more complicated in terms of reproductive options that are available and we just need to move with the times.’’

Birdsall said the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act 2000, which covers sperm donation, was clearly not written with gay couples in mind.

The legislation provided for sperm to be ‘‘available for use only by a specified person within a specified timeframe’’.

Fertility Associates interpreted this to mean that only a woman could be nominated to use the sperm as ‘‘only a woman can use sperm to make a baby’’.

Birdsall said the form would be changed, after they sought legal advice, to offer a potential alternative if the ‘‘female partner’’ option does not apply.

That would allow a gay man in Morton’s situation to be able