Canada Lifts Sperm Donation Restrictions for Gay and Bisexual Men

Health Canada has announced the removal of the final restrictions that prevented gay and bisexual men from donating sperm. Starting this fall, screening questions about anal sex will be eliminated from the donor screening process.

Until 2024, Canada enforced a ban on donations from men who had sex with men within three months prior to donation. After activist Aziz M. challenged this rule in court in 2023, the agency changed the phrasing to a gender-neutral question about anal sex with new or multiple partners. However, the plaintiffs argued that this merely replaced direct discrimination with an implicit one, as such rules continued to disproportionately screen out gay and bisexual men.

Now, before the case proceeded to court hearings, the government has decided to completely drop these questions. In a statement, Health Canada emphasized its commitment to ensuring that donation policies are safe, non-discriminatory, and based on scientific evidence. Gregory Ko, a lawyer representing the plaintiff, called the move “an important and precedent-setting step in ending decades-long discrimination against gay and bisexual men.”

The abandonment of behavior-based screening has been made possible by modern testing methods. All donated sperm in Canada is mandatorily tested for infectious diseases (including HIV, Hepatitis B, and C), then quarantined for a minimum of 180 days, and re-tested before use. It is expected that lifting the restrictions will help alleviate the country’s shortage of donor sperm.