As a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist who has practiced in Colorado for over 25 years, I have had the privilege of helping countless prospective parents build unique, beautiful families. It is an honor to provide this care in Colorado — a state with a staunch and demonstrated commitment to protecting access to reproductive health and fertility care for all.
In 2022, however, the state legislature passed a bill that introduced a real threat to our state’s ability to continue providing safe, affordable and equitable fertility services for future parents. Senate Bill 224, largely driven by out-of-state individuals, was rushed through at the end of the legislative session.
The resulting legislation created real barriers and risks for sperm and egg donors, ultimately making it harder for Coloradans to start families and essentially limiting access to care by putting burdensome, invasive and unnecessary regulations on potential donors.
While the law’s proponents claim to focus on the rights of donor-conceived individuals, it also puts in place burdensome and unnecessary regulations will decimate the donor pool in the state, jeopardize donor privacy and safety ignoring the fact that donors are patients as well, and have far-reaching consequences on the fertility community.
That’s why countless physicians, as well as national professional medical societies, and other groups that support access to reproductive health care are supporting House Bill 1259. This bill makes measured reforms to Senate Bill 224 that will balance the needs of donor-conceived people and donors and protect access to in vitro fertilization in our state.
Unsurprisingly, access to high-quality diverse male and female gamete (sperm and egg) donation is essential to helping prospective parents build a family when appropriate. However, 66% of men aged 18-29 surveyed said they would refuse to donate under the onerous regulations imposed under Senate Bill 224. This law, as written, requires donors to provide a full medical update every three years for the rest of their lives, forcing donors to reveal potentially irrelevant and highly personal information from injuries to the birth of their own children.
Putting aside the egregious privacy and HIPAA concerns this creates, who would willingly subject themselves to such an invasion of privacy? Who is to enforce, track and store all of this highly sensitive patient information across the country?
These types of regulations are not only burdensome, but unnecessary. The donor process today is far more rigorous than it was decades ago. In fact, only 1% of applicants are accepted as donors. The screening process includes lengthy physical exams, medical history and family background reviews, psychological exams, genetic testing for over 500 conditions, semen and egg quality testing, infectious disease screening, and criminal and educational background checks. How many of us are lucky enough to know this information about our partner or the parents who raised us?
Senate Bill 224 also rolled back any privacy protections for donors. Under Senate Bill 224, donor-conceived individuals can share the donor’s identity with anyone, including with the donor’s employer, friends and family or even on social media.
It’s important to remember that donors are helping give life to so many grateful parents. It is also important to remember that, in particular, oocyte (egg) donors are our patients as well, who must not only undergo rigorous screening processes, but hormonal injections and surgery to retrieve their eggs. These altruistic individuals should not be treated as commodities, but rather, should be afforded all the rights and respect of any other patient.
House Bill 1259 strikes the right balance between donors and donor-conceived persons by correcting issues created by Senate Bill 224 that could make a family impossible for Coloradans who require the assistance of an egg or sperm donor — including those with infertility, LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, and single parents.
This legislation also retains important provisions for the donor-conceived community like maintaining the recognized 25-family limit per sperm donor and six donations for egg donors, providing families with all pertinent education, and ensuring donor-conceived people can still learn the identity of their donor at 18.
It also makes critically important changes like removing the onerous requirement that donors divulge private medical information every three years for the rest of their lives and protects donors from being publicly outed. This legislation also protects access to IVF for Colorado residents, which is vital in these incredibly uncertain political times.
The reality is that as the donor pool shrinks drastically, costs will skyrocket, diverse options for families of color will disappear, and fertility treatment will become an option only for the wealthy few — increasing inequities in care. We have already seen this outcome in other countries that have passed similar laws, where some families have been forced to engage in completely unregulated shadow markets.
I and my colleagues urge lawmakers to understand that the balance created by House Bill 1259 is critical to protecting safe, affordable access to family-building fertility treatment for all Coloradans and support this bill.
Dr. Eric Surrey of Lone Tree is senior physician at CCRM-Colorado having practiced in Colorado since 1999 and is a board certified specialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility.
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