IVF Treatment --A look at Egg Donation

After a year of attempting to conceive, couples can consider infertility treatments. With no success of conceiving in sight, many couples consult a fertility specialist to assess the problem. After some tests, couples are devastated to learn that they are unable to conceive or have a very low chance of conception with infertility treatments that cost a substantial amount of money.

Many couples turn to egg donation because it has one of the higher rates of success—45% to 50% success rates. This controversial IVF treatment allows couples to choose from a directory of egg donors that best match their family or the characteristics they desire in a child. The couple pays the egg donor what some believe to be a large sum of money for her time spent in the donation process (which involves many hours of injections, blood samples, and ultrasound appointments). The monetary compensation may also cover the risks of the procedure, which can cause an over stimulation of the ovaries due to the injection hormones and even death in about 1% of cases.

Egg donation is desirable to couples because the future mother can still experience pregnancy, and even use her husband’s sperm to conceive.

However, egg donation has turned into a debate on ethics because of the monetary compensation that some infertile couples are willing to give an egg donor if she meets their genetic, physical, and personality requirements. Many people believe that infertility services have turned into a way of designing the perfect baby, or otherwise “buying a baby.” Whether this is true or whether infertile couples just want a “blond,
blue-eyed child” that fits in with their family and resembles them, it may be hard to tell. This may be why Asian parents seek Asian donors and so forth. However, some people believe that couples go too far, asking for high SAT scores and only accepting women that are enrolled in or have graduated from Ivy League universities.

Whatever ethical stance you take, egg donation continues to be a popular and successful way for couples to conceive. It is estimated that about 10,000 babies are conceived through egg donation each year. So whether you want to help infertile couples conceive by being an egg donor, or you have chosen egg donation as an infertility treatment.