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Laurence Dauphinais learned at the age of 11 that she was born through artificial insemination. She wondered what she had inherited from her donor, but could not confirm anything because the donation was entirely anonymous. Until something changes: DNA testing.
Credits :
Co-directed by Laurence Dauphinais and Julien Morissette / Narration : Laurence Dauphinais / Guests : Diane Dauphinais, Josh Stone, Isabel Côté, Rabbi Adam Scheier / Research : Sophie Gemme / Editing and mixing : François Larivière / Musical conception : Mathieu Bérubé / Executive Production : Stéphanie Laurin
A podcast of the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui and Centaur Theatre in collaboration with Transistor Media
Laurence Dauphinais apprend à l’âge de 11 ans qu’elle est née d’insémination artificielle. Elle se demande ce qu’elle a hérité de son donneur, mais ne peut rien confirmer parce que le don est entièrement anonyme. Jusqu’à que quelque chose vienne changer la donne : les tests d’ADN.
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Laurence Dauphinais learned at the age of 11 that she was born through artificial insemination. She wondered what she had inherited from her donor, but could not confirm anything because the donation was entirely anonymous. Until something changes : DNA testing.
Laurence : I read somewhere that when you’re younger, you mirror what surrounds you. But as you get older, your DNA comes up to the surface. But I’m not really sure about it.
- Laurence : Hello…
- Diane : Hello!
- Laurence : Hi Mom!
- Diane : Hi darling… laughs
- Laurence : So… You remember, many years ago, when we had filled out the form to get access to your medical file from the General Hospital archives... and they couldn’t found it?
- Diane : Yes...
- Laurence : Well, I thought about trying again...
- Diane : I really don’t know if you’ll have any luck with that, love...
- Laurence : Why?
- Diane : Well, they made it clear that it would be... anonymous... and confidential...
Laurence : Anonymous: something that someone did without wanting their name attached.
- Laurence : Do you remember the name of the doctor who inseminated you?
- Diane : Yes, I gave it to you...
- Laurence : I don’t remember...
- Diane : I told you: “Do you want the doctor’s name, do you want the time, do you...” You know?
- Laurence : Oh well Mom, I want all of this!
- Diane : I would have to get my day planner...
- Laurence : Ya, sorry... So, you’ll go get your day planner from 1982?
- Diane : Yes...
- Laurence : Ok...
(Pause)
- Diane : Right now? Do you need it now...?
- Laurence : Well actually, if you feel like getting it now, it would be great...
- Diane : Ok, I’ll go get it Laurence and I’ll call you back... I feel that it’s pressing.
(Pause)
- Diane : Dr. Ackman, A-c-k-m-a-n and Dr. Gardiner...
(Laughs)
- Laurence : What’s the sequence of events?
- Diane : I know that it’s Dr. Sutto who sent me there, I must have received a call, I imagine, from the hospital, to go see a doctor. I went there with François.
Laurence : François is my father. My one and only. He’s the one who raised me, loved me with all his heart. But we don’t have a biological connection. However, that will never diminish the role that he played in my life. He is and always will be my dad. But when I learned that another man had been involved in my creation, I realized that an important part of me was a complete mystery.
- Diane : With Dr. Sutto’s letter, let’s say that it accelerated things. And then, they asked us what color we wanted for the eyes or the hair, so...
- Laurence : Huh, they asked you that?
- Diane : Yes...
- Laurence : Ok, ok... cool!
- Diane : Ya, so I said: “Listen, you can see us. François’s hair is a little darker than mine, we both have blue eyes...” and they were taking notes...
- Laurence : Hum-hum. And then they gave you an appointment...
- Diane : Yes, they asked me to take my temperature every day... To watch if I had a lot of mucus at certain moments. And all of this, it’s written in my day planner, every morning... So, first try November 2nd at 9:30 and then November 5th at 9. It must have been the second one, I didn’t write it. Wait... Oh ok. So, I saw Dr. Ackman on October 7th and I stopped smoking.
- Laurence : Oh ya, ok!
- Diane : And October 8th, the first insemination. Friday the 8th at 9:30, I had a first insemination.
- Laurence : Ok...
- Diane : Then I wrote: “Beside the marvelous hope that’s taken me over, there’s this other aspect that is a little sad but kind of amusing: It’s like waiting in line to buy something, just like at Woolworth’s.” I wrote that.
- Laurence : Like buying your... Your future child...?
- Diane : Yes, well ya... ya...
(Laughs)
- Laurence : There’s wasn’t an exchange of money?
- Diane : No, not at all, no...
- Laurence : Right... So it’s not really buying, it’s more like acquiring...
- Diane : And after the insemination, I also wrote how I felt and I found a page earlier where I wrote: “Today, something happened in my belly, something is organizing.”
(Pause)
- Diane : And they called me a few days later to tell me that I wasn’t pregnant and I replied : « It’s impossible… I feel it... I know it”. And then, they called me two days after that to tell me that they’d made a mistake… that I was pregnant.
- Laurence : Mmh…
Laurence : I learned that my mother had undergone artificial insemination when I was 11 years old. The effect it had was to make me feel like a part of my world was falling apart. When the facts surrounding your conception change drastically overnight, two things can happen: You can believe what you are being told and doubt your own perceptions or believe in your own perceptions and doubt what you are being told. You can feel betrayed… But for me aside from the shock, what was even more challenging was that I didn’t have the information to reconstruct another reality for myself. Nothing could be done… The donation was anonymous. But no secret is forever sealed. And what changed everything was the accessibility to DNA tests.
- Josh : Hello.
- Laurence : Hello...
- Josh : What's up?
- Laurence : I'm good yourself?...
- Josh : I’m good, very good…
- Laurence : Ya?
- Josh : Ya, I'm just chilling at home.
Laurence : That’s Josh. There is no specific terminology yet to link children born from donated gametes like us. So for lack of a better word, he’s my half-brother. He was conceived with the help of the same donor, and was born a few months apart from me.
- Josh : Yeah, but I don't even know... So, like, I never was even on 23 and me, I was on Ancestry.com.
Laurence : Those are two different commercial DNA tests. It’s through one of those platforms that Leilani contacted me. She was also conceived with the same donor and she was the one who told me about Josh.
- Josh : Like you know so for me, like, I had no family growing up.
- Laurence: But no family like, what about your mom?
- Josh : Well Mom’s there but obviously no Dad, Mom’s there but she couldn’t handle me growing up so I was in foster homes and group homes and all this stuff but.. Yeah.. So obviously, you know, I just did this DNA test, it's cool to really kind of important and special to, you know, to actually have some kind of family out there.
- Laurence : Yeah, absolutely. Pause. That's your daughter behind in the back?
- Josh : Yeah, I guess you're an aunty, I guess. She just turned six.
- Laurence : Wow. Big girl.
- Josh : And, how old are you?
- Laurence : I'm thirty seven.
- Josh : I'm… what, I guess I'm thirty seven as well, yeah. And then ya, I believe Chantal is the same age too, different month. I think she's in August or something. September. Fuck…it’s pretty…
- Laurence : It’s insane ya...
Laurence : She prefers the name of Leilani, but she also goes by Chantal. Which is why Josh calls her that.
- Josh : So did you, did you have much family growing up?
- Laurence : I'm an only child, I grew up though with two parents, because my dad wasn't able to have children, which is why my mom got inseminated, but they both raised me. So that's a little different. And yeah, my dad passed away actually almost three years ago now and he was - yeah - he was quite shocked with all of this 23 and me affair. Like, when I first met the daughter of the donor... I won't name her because it's been a little complicated for her. Like she, she didn't know that her father had donated, it was kind of a secret in their family...
Laurence : I had suggested that the daughter of the donor and I would meet at a tea lounge next to my place, which was surprisingly also next to her place. She grew up in Westmount but she now lived two blocks away from me.
- Laurence : She had done 23 and me just out of the blue, just out of curiosity. When I connected with her, she was completely shocked and at first actually, she thought that my mom and her dad had had an affair.
- Josh : Oh my God.
- Laurence : Because I also have the same name as him. The same first name. So she thought that my mom had named me that way in his honor.
- Josh : Crazy, but it was just a crazy coincidence.
- Laurence : Ya, exactly.
(Music)
- Josh : Chantal like went like investigating and like she was in these like donor groups and got information from her mom and like actually tracked down his like yearbook.
- Laurence : Oh really?
- Josh : And his yearbook picture looks exactly like me.
- Laurence : Really?!
- Josh : Yeah. And she tracked him down.
- Laurence : Wow. That's crazy. I would love to see that picture because, it's hard to find something when he's not old, online. And actually when, when his daughter met me for the first time, cause from the first marriage there are three children and from the second marriage there is one. And she said, out of everyone, you've got the most resemblance to him.
- Josh : Oh, my God. Yeah, I do, too probably. You know what? We, me and you actually look a fair bit alike actually...
- Laurence : A little bit hey? That's what I thought too.
- Josh : The eyes too and nose and ya... The Jewish, the Jewish nose.
Laurence : As a teenager, I had developed a great curiosity about Jewish culture. I had the strange impression that my donor may have been Jewish. Maybe because I was fascinated by the prolific nature of this community… Maybe because I had the impression that all the greatest artists were Jewish… Maybe because something subconscious was at play, I don’t know... But in any case, it sounded right to me. When I was 23, I even arranged to take part in a trip to Israel organized for Jewish youth. Total fraud… But when I got my DNA test results, when I was about 32, I was strangely validated. According to the test, I was genetically 50% Ashkenazi Jewish.
- Laurence : When did you learn that you were... donor created?
- Josh : Well, from the beginning, really?
- Laurence : Oh, right, because your mom had to explain to you how came about...
- Josh : The weird kid that, you know, wasn't normal, and that's kind of how I felt my whole life and I definitely do not agree being a product of it. I do not agree with the world doing that... I'm just basing it off of how I felt growing up, and being a product of that, like with no male figure, you know, but in the end, hey, you know what? It shaped me and molded and molded me and turned me into the person I am today.
- Laurence : Right.
- Josh : You know which is amazing... So it, but it was just very tough growing up like that… It was only like a few years ago, my mom was like : I flew to Montreal, we grew up in Winnipeg, but she's like, oh yeah, I flew to Montreal to go get this procedure done.
- Laurence : And what so it was only happening in Montreal back then?
- Josh : I don't know. Or she wanted a Jewish doctor and that's where she found it and that was the clinic and all this stuff.
- Laurence : But I would be really curious to know why Montreal. And is your mom Jewish?
- Josh : Oh yeah...
- Laurence : OK, OK, so, yeah, maybe there was this connection there, I get it, because the doctor who inseminated my mom was Jewish. Dr. Ackman. Oh, man, I don't know if you if you feel comfortable asking your mom that, but I wonder, do you think she specifically asked for a Jewish donor?
- Josh : For sure.
- Laurence : Oh, wow! Oh my God, that's so fascinating!
- Josh : No for sure! You know, that was I think the only requirement, I think.
(Laughs)
- Laurence : I was born from assisted reproduction. My mom was inseminated in 1982, I was born in 1983. She got a sperm donation from a donor, obviously anonymous, and I learned that at 11. My father couldn’t even say a word. He was looking down at his hands, at the kitchen table, and.... when my mom told me, I think that right away I felt: “Oh, my dad is scared, he’s afraid that I’ll reject him.” So I tried to reassure him. I took him in my arms and I said : “I love you daddy”. And I went back to watching TV. It happened pretty much like that. And years later, I started asking myself questions about what all of this meant. I even saw a psychologist at like 12 or 13 and we talked about it, but it’s funny, because it’s always others who made me realize that it wasn’t banal. I was normalizing it all, probably to protect my father. And I’m realizing now that it’s a common reaction.
- Isabel : Actually, when children are born in a hetero parental family, usually the gametes donation, whether it’s an egg donation for the mother or a sperm donation in place of the father’s, it does indeed often generate this kind of dynamic. Also for people of your generation, in the 80s, your parents were being told: “Don’t say anything. And if you don’t say anything, your child will grow up and will get attached to their father for example, and it won’t have any negative effect. The child will never know.” The thing is that a secret is never sealed. Research has shown that the mothers don’t live very well with that secret, actually.
Laurence : I’m talking to Isabel Côté, who’s a professor in the department of social work at the Université du Québec in Outaouais. Her research focuses mainly on families that are created with the contribution of a third person. When speaking to people born through the use of a donor, I realized that many of them, when they were younger, felt that they were different. I wonder if this is a fabrication of the mind or if it was based on something real.
- Laurence : I’m asking the question because as a child, I was very quickly attracted to the non-familiar. I was always wanting to go elsewhere, to leave, to travel, to learn other languages, to get out. It’s as if I was suffocating a little bit in my language, in my culture, in my province. As time passed by, I kept wondering if it was caused by this unknown part of me that made me want to dive into the mystery even more.
- Isabel : It’s really immaterial, the question of origins, how we reflect on it, the impact that it can have on our lives, the research we can do. Because certain people are born from gamete donations and they integrate that without it having any impact on their life trajectory and even without it sparking any curiosity. For many people it’s how it is. While others will search for something and will ask themselves : “Am I good with languages because the person that is genetically linked to me is a polyglot?”, for example. But even then, we don’t really know. We don’t know what part of you is linked to your parents instilling you with a sense of discovery, or the desire to move towards others, or even what made you want to surpass yourself, for example, what of all of that belongs to you? And what would belong or have belonged to DNA fragments for example? We can’t answer those questions. We don’t know.
(Music)
Laurence :
What I’m sure of…
I was born on July 18th, 1983 at Notre-Dame Hospital.
I grew up at 9135 Foucher street in Ahuntsic, in Montreal.
I was raised by two amazing parents: Diane and François.
I grew up in French.
When I was little, my father would walk me to the Cegep Ahuntsic daycare, and often he would point the Quebec flag and say Vive le Québec libre!
I was in first year of highschool during the referendum in 95.
When I was little, I was terrible in English.
No one spoke English at home.
Often in the summer we would go to Old Orchard on holidays with parents.
We would leave at 4 am and I’d sleep in the car, but at customs, I would always wake up just to laugh at my parent’s English.
What I’m not really sure about…
In 82, there were no sperm banks being used yet here…
Most donors were young doctors…
Mine was probably a young doctor…
But I couldn’t know for sure…
Dr. Ackman was probably a good friend of my donor…
But I couldn’t know for sure...
Who could he be?
What language did he speak?
What was he good at?
Where was he from?
Was he an artist?
Did he like music?
Did he believe in God?
Was he sensitive?
Was he intelligent?
Where did he live?
What was he good at?
Was he an artist?
Did I get that from him?
Was he anxious?
Did we look alike?
Was he really intelligent?
What was his name?
- Laurence : OK, so I grew up in Montreal, I grew up in Ahuntsic, and I found out at 11 that I was born from, well I was conceived through artificial insemination, through basically a donor. Because my father couldn't have children.
Laurence : I’m speaking to Rabbi Scheier from the congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmount.
- Laurence : And, you know, I think that as most people who are conceived this way, there's a great mystery, a great curiosity on who might be the donor. And for some reason, throughout these years, I had a form of intuition that my donor was Jewish. And actually when I did a DNA test a few years ago, I found out that I was 50 percent Ashkenazi. And so there was a great sense of validation that came from that and before then and since then, I've been just having such a curiosity for the Jewish culture and the Jewish faith. And I I felt like I would like to speak to you about about certain things. I mean, I know that Judaism traditionally is transmitted by the mother. I'd like to hear you on that.
- Rabbi Scheier : Yeah, absolutely. In Judaism, there are two... aspects of a of , identity which are transmitted by one, by each parent. The core religious identity is transmitted by the mother and the tribal identity : that's transmitted and that's determined by the father. But the prerequisite of tribal identity is Jewish identity, which is transmitted by the mother. So and also, I want to I want to say that there are many different types of Judaism.
- Laurence : So basically, if Judaism is transmitted by the mother, in your view, and well the core religious Judaism and the tribal aspect by the father, what does that make me?
- Rabbi Scheier : That makes you...And uh and also say that Judaism does not... Jewish identity is not made or broken by DNA. So if a Jewish person, for example, would get DNA results that has zero percent Jewish, that doesn't mean they're not Jewish. And if somebody who is not Jewish would come to us with one hundred percent Jewish, if that's even possible, we would say, no, that's not that doesn't determine status, DNA. It would really have to be through documentation. It would have to be through either a birth record that you were born to a Jewish mother or a conversion document that you converted to, to Judaism. Those are really the two ways to establish a Jewish identity.
- Laurence : So it's really something that is being experienced in a community, as part of a community, which was one of my very great surprises when I did my DNA test is to see that I was 50 percent Ashkenazi and I was 13 percent French. So, which showed that there were no... People didn't mix at all. I'd like to hear you on that a little bit.
- Rabbi Scheier : Absolutely. Look, community and because we're talking about conversion, one of the requirements that I have for conversion candidates is that they live within a Jewish community. Part of the Jewish experience is coming at least once a week to synagogue and on Saturday mornings and experiencing community in the most vast way and interacting with people and networking with people and getting support from people. And it's people who, you know, if you live a different way than the way of society, you need support for that -- and that can be challenging because you want to be a part of society. So having a community of like minded people, people who are sharing the same values and the same ethics to support each other is an extraordinarily important part of the human experience.
- Laurence : I have some friends in the community and I've been to your synagogue actually to attend a bar mitzvah. Every time I've attended those at your synagogue, I was really impressed. I grew up Catholic and I went to church a great deal. And when I was younger I read at church and did all of that. And when I went to a Jewish service, I felt like people were actually speaking to my intelligence. I felt like you were speaking to my intelligence and I had never seen that before in a religious venue.
- Rabbi Scheier : That's very gratifying to hear. Thank you.
- Laurence : I was able to connect to a man who actually was conceived through the same donor as me.
- Rabbi Scheier : Oh wow.
- Laurence : Yeah, he he lives in Vancouver now, grew up in Winnipeg. And actually his mom flew all the way to Montreal at the time because she really wanted a Jewish donor. And so to me, that raises a lot of questions because of what you said earlier about the DNA, that it's not a matter of DNA. So, I'm like, why did she want that? Why was that so important to her? And I don't know if you if you have any idea, I know you said you can't speak for others, but...
- Rabbi Scheier : Yeah, look I cannot…. We we don't... Jews are not genetically superior in any relevant way. It's not like... It's not in the sense... We don't have that understanding of ourselves that genetically it would be more desirable or less desirable to be one or the other. I, I, I don't know…. I don’t know...
- Laurence : And what about the thing that we hear often, it might be a very, very ignorant question to ask, but it's maybe it's just a myth. But we hear that sometimes the Jews are the chosen people. What, what does that mean?
- Rabbi Scheier : Look, it's a biblical concept that the Hebrew word is, is Sigula, it means the chosen nation. And we do believe that we were chosen to receive the law from God, to receive the Torah. That's not a superiority concept. That's a concept of having these responsibilities, so chosen in that sense, is something we take very seriously, but it should never be misinterpreted as as a superiority. It's not that... it's not that we're closer to God. It's not that we're better. It's not that we're smarter. It's not that, you know, our food is healthier. It's none of that. It's just that we have responsibilities and we're grateful for those responsibilities.
- Laurence : And how do you explain that you're such a thriving community and such a successful community all over North America? And we could say all over the world...
- Rabbi Scheier : Yeah, I, hmm… I, I don't know. I think we try to be... I can say that within our community, things that we're very proud of, are hmm... literacy, like 100 percent literacy, and that's going back, you know, centuries. If you go back to the 19th century Eastern Europe, when the literacy rate is 40 percent in the general population, within the Jewish community is 100 percent, because education is what we are. To use a boxing analogy, when you're against the ropes, you, you swing hardest. It's, you know... it's a challenging existence that now it's much easier than it's ever been, but going back not so many years, being a Jew in Quebec was to be a second class citizen and to not be allowed in certain places and certain hotels and certain restaurants, and, and that's extraordinarily motivating, hmm... and, and we're very proud that a community came here and built itself up and, and, and it's doing extraordinary things.
(Music)
Laurence : When you know you won’t get answers to your deepest questions, you can either embrace the mystery or fight it. By looking relentlessly for my mom’s file at the General Hospital’s archives, I was fighting. By going to Israel, I was fighting. I was reaching for answers. And I knew that answers wouldn't be where I stood. So I found ways to go wherever things weren’t familiar.
Maybe because in the unfamiliar, I’d find what I was looking for.
- Laurence : The guy that was conceived through the same donor, he’s from Winnipeg. And Josh, he’s experiencing a real revolt towards his conception. He said that he thinks it shouldn’t be allowed. But I feel that often when things don’t go well for you, you tend to find the source of your misery in your creation. Is that possible?
- Isabel : He’s… he’s not the only one who thinks that way. There’s a pretty strong movement in England that’s being lead by a researcher who was herself conceived via gamete donation, and who says: “It’s non ethical to make children that way, it shouldn’t be allowed.” So there’s a lot of opposition to the idea, particularly to the fact that donors can be anonymous, as is the case with Canadian donors. There are very few donors in Canada, but if we choose a Canadian donor, they will remain anonymous. And that is rather contested. But overall, most people who were conceived through a gamete donation have integrated it, and live pretty well with the situation. For some it’s a really interesting thing. Carrying that reality is a positive aspect of their identity. So actually, I think that it’s mostly related to how parents have transmitted the narrative and their ability in normalizing the child’s experience. The thing that is problematic is the absence of words in the formation of one’s narrative. It’s when you get access to words that you can start exploring. It opens doors.
- Laurence : In elementary school, I went to my neighborhood’s school for first grade and my teacher told my parents: “You got to get her out of here, she’s bored. She finishes her work before everybody, this place is far from ideal”. But I didn’t know, I thought that school was just that: waiting. My mom ended up… She didn’t want to because she was afraid that if she took me out of there and sent me to a specialized school, I would turn into a snob and would get a big head. But finally she took me out of there and sent me to a school for high potential children. And, you know, this didn’t come from my parents, so for sure all of this made me wonder about my donor. And so, after meeting one of his daughters through the DNA test, I was contacted by another woman who was also conceived through the same donor, and who found me on 23andme. And she told me two weeks ago that she’s got Asperger’s syndrome, that she had been diagnosed really late in her life. I was freaked out when she told me that and I could see why it was that much more important for her to try to understand, because there’s no history of that on her mom’s side. And I wrote her a few days ago to see if her Asperger’s syndrome came with a diagnosis of high potentiality. And she said that when she was young a doctor had told her that she was indeed high potential. She had thanked them at first, but the doctor had said: “No, don’t thank me so quickly, it can be extremely painful to be gifted. It’s actually more like a curse. » And she said that she thinks he was right. But she lives with Asperger’s so her level of stress, her sensitivity is much much much higher. And she wrote me that she felt like I had picked the right combination for my genes.
Laurence : In 1982, donors didn’t take health tests. Today, they do, but most of the information is collected through questionnaires filled by the donors themselves. It’s not really accurate, mostly when it comes to mental health issues, but anyway, there is nothing today that allows us to be sure that someone isn’t carrying a gene that could lead to a mental health problem.
- Laurence : What I find pretty particular with the fact that I’m genetically 50% Ashkenazi Jewish, is that it’s such a tight knit community, that over centuries, they’ve only made babies amongst themselves. For a question of survival, etc. I spoke with a rabbi to try to understand and he told me that for them, DNA had nothing to do with Judaism. In fact, what made you a Jew was if you were born in a Jewish family and if you were raised by Jewish parents. So it’s really the relationship to culture… The religious core is transmitted by the mother, and the tribal aspect by the father. But the tribe, for me, that has to be linked to DNA. I’m having a hard time separating those two notions. And when I asked him why Josh’s mother took a plane to Montreal to get inseminated by a Jewish donor, he couldn’t answer me.
- Isabel : Actually, I’m quite surprised to learn that he told you that because the Jewish women who are incapable of having children, who need an egg donation or a gamete donation, they will go through a Jewish female donor themselves. So Jewish female donors are in high demand because the Jewish identity gets transmitted by the mother. And Israel is the state that regulates surrogate motherhood the most. And it’s really to try to avoid parents going with American donors who wouldn’t have a Jewish identity. Israel is the place where these issues are the most regulated, so I’m surprised that he told you that.
Laurence : I rarely go to Westmount. When I go it’s because I’m going somewhere else and I’m passing through cause it’s really beautiful. Every time I end up asking myself which one of the houses is his. And I realize, looking at the big houses, how unlikely a Jewish anglophone doctor from Westmount would meet a francophone artist working class woman from Villeray and make a baby. And I think it’s cool.