Rissa Griffith and April Harper had wanted to be parents their whole lives. Both refugees from Barbados, they met soon after Griffith arrived in Canada, in 2018, and fell in love. Moving to this country was like opening a door to a dream—a door that had always been closed to them. Back home, where LGBTQ+ relationships are criminalized, becoming parents together would have been impossible.
In Canada, they longed to have a child who shared their ethnicity. They struggled as visible minorities in this country, and bearing a child who shared their African ancestry and Black identity was important to them. At first, they believed it would be easy to find a Black sperm donor in a city as large and diverse as Toronto.
