The Act seeks to ensure that the health and wellbeing of persons undergoing treatment procedures is protected; that treatment procedures are not used to exploit the reproductive capabilities of men and women or children born from assisted reproductive treatment; that children born as a result of the use of donated gametes have a right to information about their genetic parents; and that persons seeking to undergo treatment procedures are not discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation, marital status, race, or religion.
Under this Act, donor-conceived people have the same rights to access information about their donor as under the 1995 Act. However, a mechanism was introduced to allow a donor-conceived person to obtain identifying information about their donor before the age of 18 with parental consent or on recommendation from a counsellor if they assess the child to be sufficiently mature. The Act states what information must be kept about donors, recipients, and their offspring, and places strict control on how this information may be used.
The Act also introduced a requirement that where a child is born as a result of donor treatment, the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages must mark the child’s birth entry to note that he or she is donor-conceived. When issuing a birth certificate to a donor-conceived person, the certificate must include an addendum stating that further information is available about the birth entry.
This Act also specified a limit on the use of donated gametes from a donor, which will result in no more than 10 women (including the donor's current or former partner having children). This limit was previously in place as part of the regulation of the ART industry but had not previously been legislated.
Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act, 2008 (Vic)