About The Secret Society
The Secret Society shines light on a hidden and unacknowledged women's health crisis. Complicating the already stressful and stigmatized world of infertility, women who are unable to conceive because their eggs are no longer viable are forced to take their medical needs into their own hands only to discover that Canadian law criminalizes payment to anyone who wants to use an egg donor. These laws perpetuate the secrecy surrounding egg donation and create a bizarrely complex world of assisted reproduction in this country.
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We meet Katie, an egg donor who, after donating six times, opens Canada’s first agency that requires future babies to know who their donors are and introduces us to the commercialized world of ‘fertility fairs’; Shannon and Sean who experimented with the idea of pursuing a donor illegally for money, but found a legal loophole in Canadian law that comes with a hefty price tag; Brittany and Tanner who avoid Canadian laws and expensive treatments by going to another country to pay for an egg donor, but the donor must remain anonymous by law; and finally Holly and Paul who find a donor in Canada through a secret
Facebook group.
Experts give context to the complex medical, legal and ethical fields of egg donation, while politicians discuss efforts to change the criminalization of paying egg donors through reform to the Assisted Reproduction laws.