Thursday, December 14, 2006

NEGOTIATING EMBRYO DONATION CONTRACTS

We decided to give our excess embryos to the first Jewish lesbian couple who contacted us. There were some red flags but they sounded like competent parents. We wanted to get the embryos off our minds, so we started to discuss contract terms with them to see if this could be a match.

The most important thing for us was not to help create an avoidable disability. To this end, and also because we weren't completely thrilled with these recipients, we told them we would donate the embryos to them one at a time. That way the clinic could not pressure them to implant too many and needlessly create twins or triplets. We also suggested that these recipients use our clinic since it has the best pregnancy results with frozen embryos of any clinic in the country, and to avoid shipping the embryos. If the recipients really wanted this to work, we thought they would agree to one short airplane trip just for the embryo transfer. We waited for their response to these terms.

I won't print the recipients email because I do not have permission from them to do so. To paraphrase, the recipients wrote back and said the idea of using our clinic "sounds good in theory" but they thought an out-of-town transfer would be too stressful for them. They agreed to take one embryo at a time and to use our clinic if the first single-embryo transfer failed.

My wife and I were not delighted with this, but we figured giving them one embryo would still leave two to be implanted in our clinic. We could give them one shot under their terms and see what happened. We wrote back that their refusal to use our clinic would not be a deal-breaker. But it was their response to this flexibility that really took us aback.

NEXT TIME: we reconsider