Professor Sonia Allan, who died on 9 March, contributed massively to the world of donor conception and surrogacy, always keeping the interests of those born as a result at the heart of her work.
Just one of her many achievements was assembling an international panel of donor-conceived adults to present at the 30th Anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Geneva in 2019, where they received a standing ovation. On hearing of her death, one of the panel members wrote to me and said: 'She was an amazing, far-sighted and determined lady who helped us all immensely. I respected her hugely.'
Sonia had multi-disciplinary training and experience in psychology, public health, and the law. She held a PhD from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Laws in global health from Georgetown University in Washington DC, and a Master's in public health from the University of Sydney, Australia, as well as undergraduate honours degrees in law and psychology. Her teaching qualifications included graduate certificates in teaching in higher education from Harvard University, Massachusetts, and Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, leadership from the University of Cambridge, and regulation from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Sonia worked in academia, law reform, and as a consultant for more than 20 years. Her research focused on the regulation of contentious areas of health research and practice, and public and global health law.
Her specialist expertise in the law as it relates to assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and health technologies led to her conducting major legislative reviews for the South Australian and Western Australian governments on their laws governing assisted reproduction and surrogacy in 2016-2017 and 2018-2019, respectively; and being involved in all government enquiries in the states and territories of Australia as an expert, since 2003.
Sonia also worked recently on the design of the South Australian donor conception register, and with paediatricians and researchers in Melbourne regarding fertility preservation for children facing gonadotoxic therapies.
As well as publishing widely, Sonia presented in international and domestic forums as an expert for the United Nations, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Hague Conference on Private International Law. She was the assistant editor and member of the Editorial Board for the International Federation of Fertility Societies Surveillance project (Triennial report), which surveys the regulation and practice of assisted reproduction and surrogacy globally.
Sonia taught thousands of students in torts and health-law-related subjects at Melbourne University, Deakin University, the University of Adelaide, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University – all in Australia – and the University of New England, Maine, as well as the Sydney University/Legal Profession Admission Board Law Extension Program. She worked her way up from casual lecturer to full-time professor of law.
Sonia was a Churchill fellow, a fellow of the UK's Higher Education Academy and a global health law fellow at Georgetown University, Washington DC, where she received the CALI Award for Health and Human Rights Law. In 2019, she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to the law – particularly in the area of regulating assisted reproduction and donor conception – and to tertiary education.
What a woman, and someone I was delighted to know and who could be counted on for stimulating discussions. When her two children, Mahalia and Gabriel, were still young, they all stayed with us in York for a few days, en route from her Churchill Fellowship in Washington DC back to Australia. We had some great conversations. I met up with them all again a few years later when Sonia was in London for part of her LSE work.
We remained in email contact over many years as I saw her standing grow and grow, always with the rights of donor-conceived and surrogate-born people at the core.
Sonia had a keen sense of the importance of keeping abreast of international developments, and her well-respected 2016 book 'Donor Conception and the Search for Information: From secrecy and anonymity to openness' remains a testament to that, as does her more recent 2022 article with Rafał Łukasiewicz on 'Donor-matching' in Third-party Reproduction: a Comparative Analysis of Law and Practice in Europe. Sonia also contributed to BioNews for many years (see all of her articles here).
Sonia achieved much in her all-too-short life, and her legacy remains.