Colorado’s newly passed House Bill 25-1259, “In Vitro Fertilization Protection & Gamete Donation Requirements,” would modify portions of a 2022 law that advocates say imposes excessive burdens on fertility clinics and providers. Supporters of the bill argue that 2022’s Senate Bill 224, the Donor-conceived Persons and Families of Donor-conceived Persons Protection Act (DCPPA], imposed onerous burdens on clinics by requiring them to maintain medical information about sperm, egg, and embryo, and to update that information every three years. As a result, LGBTQ couples and single women may face increased costs and difficulty accessing fertility procedures.
“Colorado typically ranks among all states for its progressive laws and legal protections of children born of assisted reproductive technologies,” said Sen. Lisa Cutter (D-Jefferson County) during a hearing last week in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. “This has made Colorado a medical destination for those seeking sophisticated and cutting-edge medical care for infertility. Currently, that ecosystem is under threat and has been compromised by an unintended imbalance created by the passage and implementation of Donor-conceived Persons and Families of Donor-conceived Persons Protection Act.”
Dr. Cassie Hobbs, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellow at the University of Florida, noted that the additional burdens imposed by the 2022 law could impact potential donors. “Senate Bill 224, which passed in Colorado in 2022, requires donors to disclose health updates to sperm banks every three years,” she said. “SB 224 has and will continue to discourage donors, particularly donors from minority ethnic groups. A year ago, I published a study in the journal ‘Fertility and Sterility’ where I examined the racial disparities that exist in sperm donation, particularly amongst Black males. Black males make up about 14% of males in the U.S., but less than 3% of sperm donors. Many potential donors shy away from the opportunity to donate due to lack of trust in the health care systems due to a history of racism, including history of policing and experimenting on black bodies. Again, SB 224, which requires donors to be under surveillance every three years and reveal information related to their health that is potentially not relevant, is taxing, it’s invasive and it further fuels this distrust.”
Following the passage of SB 224, similar bills were introduced in Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland with the involvement of the U.S. Donor Conceived Council, a non-profit that advocates for donor conceived people. Colorado’s SB224 was sponsored by former Colorado Sen. Stephen Fenberg.
“I have a personal interest in this,” said Fenberg during last week’s committee hearing. “I also was the author of SB 224. I ran that bill with [former] Representative Kerry Tipper, Representative [Matt] Soper, and [former] Sen. Bob Gardner. It passed overwhelmingly bipartisan, and it was meticulously stakeholded. A lot of different folks helped shape that bill. I always believe that there’s opportunity to fix legislation — I’m not someone who thinks once you pass it it can never be touched. This bill has not gone into effect yet, but my main issue at this point is that the bill — as written, and to an extent the bill as it came over here to the Senate — my main concern is that I don’t think it can be implemented as the sponsors wish it to be implemented. I think it could do the opposite of what the sponsors originally intended, which was to increase access. I think because of the problems in the bill, it will inadvertently, and I don’t think this was anyone’s intention, decrease access.”
Opponents of the new bill noted that SB 224 provided important protections for donors and donor-conceived children. “I’m a software engineer and former sperm donor who discovered to my profound shock that I am the biological father to over 97 children, all under the age of 13, via one of several large cryobanks that serve the state of Colorado,” said Dylan Stone-Miller. “My experience illustrates precisely why the protections afforded by previous legislation are vital and should not be repealed or weakened as they would be with this bill [HB 1259].”
Michael Soto, an LGBTQ activist with the Equality Campaign, noted that the protections and restrictions imposed by bills like SB 224 are often promoted by conservative activist groups with ideological positions against procedures like in-vitro fertilization, especially for LGBTQ families. “These excessive demands have severely reduced the donor pool,” he said. “We’ve seen this in other countries around the globe, limiting critical fertility care for LGBTQ families, single parents and diverse communities. We’ve witnessed tactics like this before, extreme groups, notably the Heritage Foundation, quietly push restrictive legislation disguised as protective measures as routine practice. They target well-meaning legislators and communities manipulating people unknowingly to advance a discriminatory agenda against reproductive freedoms. We have seen this on abortion, LGBTQ marriage, IVF, and now we’re seeing it here on donor gametes.”
The Heritage Foundation’s model legislation bears a striking resemblance to SB 224, but Jamie Spiers, the U.S. Donor Conceived Council’s vice president of stakeholder engagement, denies any collusion with the conservative think tank. Spiers instead called out one national company for shifting policy positions.
“CooperSurgical is trying to dismantle the law that they helped shape, over the objections of the majority of industry,” Spiers said. “They have wrongly tried to tie the DCPPA to the Heritage Foundation, but the Heritage Foundation had absolutely nothing to do with it or any involvement. DCPPA was created with industry, LGBTQ advocates, attorneys, academics, donors and donor-conceived people and was passed with bipartisan support. We overwhelming unequivocally oppose any effort to use donor-conceived people as a wedge to restrict reproductive rights or LGBTQ rights, and we are deeply concerned by the threatening messages of CooperSurgical has sent to their industry counterparts trying to force them to reconsider their opposition to this bill.”
Brittany Vessely, the executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference and a long-time anti-abortion activist, also spoke in opposition to HB 1259. “Even though IVF can help create life, there are multiple factors that make it contrary to the natural law and purpose of marriage, rendering it morally wrong,” she said. “IVF often includes the death or freezing of embryonic children, creating embryos to be frozen, and participating in their deaths are profound violations of dignity. IVF also separates conception from the spouse’s sexual union, instead creating children through a technological manipulation. Marriage is meant to be an exclusive, monogamous, lifelong union between a man and a woman whose conjugal union creates life. This is consistent with the natural law and purpose of marriage for both the union and natural procreation. Every child, as a human being, has a right to be conceived through a natural act of mutual self-giving love in marital intercourse. This does not mean that life created from IVF loses value, therefore the Catholic Church supports policy that adult donor-created persons should have access to donor-identifying information of the person whose genetic material created the children.”
The bill passed out of committee with a 6-3 vote along party lines, after adopting four amendments proposed by Fenberg to address some concerns regarding conflicting statutes, medical updates from donors, sperm and eggs donated prior to the implementation of the new law, and treatment of embryos. The bill passed its third reading in the Senate yesterday, with a 28-7 vote, also along party lines.
Editor’s Note: This story initially reported that bills similar to Colorado’s SB 224 passed in Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland with the involvement of the U.S. Donor Conceived Council. While those bills were introduced, they were not passed. We apologize for the error.
