FREE ANALYSIS with EVERY DONATION

The lesbian couple to whom we agreed to donate one of our left-over embryos was giving us a hard time. I wrote to them saying we were still committed to giving them one embryo if they wanted to take a chance that they could have a child with just one shot. We explained that we continued to have concerns about their clinic, about shipping the embryos and about contributing to birth defects by allowing them to put in all three embryos at once. We were getting a weird vibe from them about their reliability. There were many inconsistencies in their communications.

The contradictions continued in their rude reply. They wrote back denying what they had already said in their emails: the fact that their doctor was not affiliated with their clinic and allowed to use the facilities only when the regular clinic physicians did not need them was not homophobia on the clinic's part. We had their email telling us it was because their clinic refused to treat lesbians or single heterosexuals.

Though they only wanted one additional child they still asked to implant multiple embryos. If pregnant with twins or triplets they would simply reduce to one embryo through selective abortion. Their final email detailed this and claimed that twins are "normal" in IVF. Twins are always at a disadvantage over a single pregnancy, even after selective reduction. These women didn't even want twins, they just wanted as many embryos as we would give them since they already had so many failed IVF attempts under their belts.

To bolster their case they made the bizarre claim that all embryo donation contracts specify that "the embryos should be shipped to 'the recipients clinic of choice' and 'let them do with them how
they choose.'" I doubt a legal contract has such a poor level of grammar and composition. Besides that, their claim was utter nonsense. Open embryo donation contracts can specify any condition that the donor and recipient couples both like.

Based on her embryo contract "research" the recipient candidate told me: "I just want you to know that you are totally out of the norm in how you think/feel this situation should be handled." She claimed I was "still attached to the embryos" and "totally in denial about it".

Though I appreciated the free psychoanalysis I wasn't sure it had much validity coming from a repair technician. I mostly felt great relief that she was out of my hair. Not because of my "attachment" to frozen fertilized eggs, but rather because she showed us she was as mean and deceitful as we had guessed.

In closing, she sarcastically wished us "Good luck in finding someone who will agree to all of your stipulations or in keeping them for your 'what if' scenario". Here she referred to our concerns about multiple pregnancy. It is not just a "what if" (I guess she did not know the word "hypothetical") scenario. It is a fact of IVF that putting in multiple embryos causes multiple births. Multiple births cause medical professionals like me to get new patients who have cognitive disability, visions problems, learning delays, cerebral palsy and so on.

We had learned a lot from these first negitiations, primarily about what to avoid when selecting recipients. In the mean time, we had already received half a dozen more requests for the embryos from other couples. It was time to seriously review them.

From Yes to No

Many fertility clinics allow those using IVF to donate spare embryos anonymously. It is as easy as ticking a box on one of the dozens of forms most clinics have patients sign. When handed those forms my wife and I liked the idea of helping another family. But the thought that our kids could have several full siblings running around whom we would never know was abhorrant. I would always be curious to know if there were such a child and, if so, did s/he look or act like my own kids do.

Giving away embryos as a knowable donor raises different set of issues. It is not the same as co-parenting. It does not mean we would even necessarily meet the recipients' children from our embryos. But we might. Or a genetic issue might come up with their kids or ours that required more contact over time.

We had agreed to give one of our excess embryos to the first lesbian couple to contact us. But as we got to know them our unease grew. They balked at using our lawyer, even though she is a pioneer in the new field of fertility law. They sent us the name of a random lawyer they found on the internet whose only qualification seemed to be that she charges less than our attorney.

A family member who is a lawyer once told me "the most expensive legal advice is the cheapest". She meant that lawyers who know what they are doing are worth the extra expense.

We had not yet signed the embryos over to the prospective parents and we already felt uncomfortable with them. This was not an auspicious beginning.

It didn't feel right to just turn around and say no after agreeing to give them this gift. Instead we decided to simply stick to our original plan.

We had agreed to certain contract terms and so had the recipients. Now they were trying to change that but we were finished with compromises. They could take the single embryo, on our terms, using our lawyer to prepare the contract or they would get nothing at all.

Our clinic always says "all it takes for us to get you pregnant is one good embryo.". But this recipient, in her mid-40's with multiple failed embryo transfers under her belt, was not an ideal candidate for single-embryo transfer. Hopefully she would realize that and we would be shut of her.

We wrote to the prospective recipients about our decision to go back to plan "A" and waited to see what they would reply.

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