Egg Donation and Surrogacy

NAFG has launched a specialized International Program offering comprehensive egg donation and surrogacy programs for citizens of the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and beyond.

The International Program offers one-stop customized assistance, including:

• access to our exclusive database of highly desirable egg donors
• matching service with our pool of carefully selected gestational carriers (surrogate mothers)
• help with finding and registering at the appropriate IVF clinic
• legal referrals
• travel assistance
• complete support in all other aspects of the complicated egg donation process

These services are often restricted or nonexistent in other countries; furthermore, the United States offers state of the art medical care.

Read about NAFG’s International Program in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German; our press release announcement of this new branch of our egg donation and surrogacy program is also available in these languages.

Sanford M. Benardo, Esq., president of Northeast Assisted Fertility Group, appeared on ABC’s The View this week, in an exciting episode co-hosted by special guest Giuliana Rancic focusing on surrogacy.

Update – A summary of what was discussed:

Where is Surrogacy legal?

• Commercial surrogacy – paying someone to carry for you – is illegal in most of the world. In the United States, however, surrogacy is state-law controlled. States in which surrogacy is legal include California, Illinois, and Massachusetts.
• In New York, for example, it is illegal for a state resident to be compensated as a surrogate. A resident of New York who is looking for a carrier, on the other hand, can always engage residents of a state in which surrogacy is legal.

What is the difference between ‘Traditional’ and ‘Gestational’ surrogacy?

• Traditional surrogacy is used to describe a situation in which the carrier or surrogate is using her own egg.
• Gestational surrogacy is the term used when the carrier or surrogate has no genetic relationship to the child.

What makes a good surrogate?

• Ideal carrier candidates are generally middle-class women who have had problem-free pregnancies and have the full support of a husband or partner.

If you would like to learn more about becoming a surrogate be sure to check out our surrogacy FAQ, or if you are seeking a carrier for yourself check out NAFG’s surrogacy page tolearn more about how surrogacy works.

We refer throughout our site (see Conceiving With Donor Eggs) and on our blog to the ASRM’s [American Society for Reproductive Medicine] guidelines for egg donor compensation, first established in the year 2000 and restated in 2007.  Among other recommendations, they claim that egg donor compensation over $10,000 is, in their estimation, “inappropriate.”  Any member of the ASRM, that is, any legitimate IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinic or egg donation agency in this country, must abide by these guidelines in order to maintain their ASRM membership status. Therefore these guidelines have actually served as mandates; reputable agencies and IVF clinics have followed them, unchanged, for the past eleven years.

In a class action lawsuit filed in April 2011 in California, an egg donor has claimed the ASRM’s compensation cap illegal under the Sherman Act, accusing IVF clinics and agencies of restraint of trade and price fixing. The ASRM sent notice to its members today announcing that it has selected counsel and is beginning work on its defense.

We are eager to see how it is resolved.

This week’s cover story (“Meet the Twiblings” by Melanie Thernstrom) does last year’s (or rather late 2009′s) “Her Body, My Baby” one better: Thernstrom has not just one child via a gestational surrogate, but two, via two surrogates, at the same time. Dare to judge!

Generally, this story is very positive on surrogacy and egg donation. Thernstrom was infertile and unhappy, and egg donation and surrogacy provided her with two healthy children. Furthermore, the medical procedures went smoothly: the first retrieval resulted in a good number of healthy embryos; enough for two separate transfers that both resulted in live births.  She is brave (and right) not to consider her egg donor and carriers as threats to her own maternity.

The piece is her own personal story, so one cannot quibble with her statements of feelings and opinions. But two egregious unsubstantiated points stood out:  ”The Internet was filled with stories of predatory egg-donation and surrogacy agencies” and “There were several cases of surrogacy in recent years in which the surrogate succeeded in keeping the baby despite an absence of any genetic connection.” On the former, the Internet is filled with a lot of stories, many untrue. The vast majority of egg donation agencies are reputable. On the latter, I am unsure of these “several” cases to which she refers. But if a surrogacy takes place in a state with established legal protections in place, and governed by a proper contract, the carrier would have no claims to the child.

Thernstrom quotes the opinions of uninformed others, which she wisely ignores.  Donors and surrogates are compared to both angels and prostitutes; one sensible friend claims that egg donors are ”ordinary young women looking for a way to make money.” (In my experience, this is the case.)  She receives some appalling advice from an egg donor agency director to keep the donation a secret. Thernstrom has a poor opinion of agencies, unfortunately, although her egg donor and one of her carriers started with an agency.

I never heard of Melanie Thernstrom before I read this article. I was surprised to find she is a Harvard-educated writer of some distinction, as the tone and style of the piece is dumbed down and sometimes juvenile (“gazillion” is not a word we’d expect in the New York Times). She opens with a quote from Dante then admits she did not read the book from which it came: surely not the best way to establish trust with your reader, especially when quoting a great work that most literate people have read. Her references to angels and “Fairygoddonor” further undermine our respect. She describes a fantasy of a suicidal ”grungy kid on the bridge” whose fatal impulse is sidetracked by the chitchat of a friendly stranger (an “angel”). Rejuvenated, the kid “goes home and makes an omelet.” I wonder if the egg reference was intended or not; either way, the image is clumsy. It’s the stuff of Oprah’s magazine.

Why are women expected to bring their sophistication down a few notches when writing and reading about motherhood?

Here is a positive and accurate article on egg donation, demonstrating that egg donors find the experience rewarding: Egg donors happy they helped, small study finds.  An excerpt from the article:

“Up until now we’ve known that donors are by and large very satisfied by their experience when it takes place, and now we see that for the vast majority the positive experience persists.”

- Andrea M. Braverman, director of complementary and alternative medicine at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey in Morristown

Today on Boston.com:
“Yes, top students reap rich rewards, even as egg donors”

Here is one response to the Hastings Center Report that studied advertisements for egg donors.

People with access to expensive IVF treatments tend to be more educated, and are typically looking for donors similar to them. The SAT is the handiest objective barometer of intellectual abilities, so scores can be an important search criterion for some prospective parents.

However,  there is no concrete evidence that egg donors with high SAT scores produce smarter children. Furthermore, there is no evidence that egg donors with high SAT scores have better cycles (resulting in live births) than women with average scores.

Offering more than the ASRM-established limit of $10,000 is not only unethical but a waste of money. As IVF patients come to realize the hard way, paying more does not always mean getting more. These outrageous offers can only provoke unwanted government regulation. They are bad for individual patients as well as for the industry as a whole, and should be discouraged by all ASRM members (doctors, lawyers, agencies).

The following is a response to “The Human Egg Trade (How Canada’s Fertility Laws are failing donors, doctors, and parents)”.

The situation in Canada demonstrates how a lack of clear regulations for egg donation has a ripple effect of deviance from standard protocols in other parts of the process. The egg donation arrangement where a young woman was coerced to donate for an unofficial compensation even after having a failed cycle which produced no viable embryos and caused her painful hyperstimulation, was handled badly at every step, starting with egg donor/recipient relations to the medical procedure. What doctor would agree to cycle an egg donor after her last retrieval was so poor?

Doctors in the US scrupulously pore over egg donors’ records, and if there are any concerns she would not be allowed to donate again. Perhaps it is the ready availability of so many good candidates in the US that allows American doctors to be so picky. Doctors also have their own success rates at stake, which they need to maintain to attract patients.

The egg donation business in the US shows how a sensibly regulated free market works to the advantage of all, especially compared with Canada’s grey market or the UK, where they are so skittish that compensated donation is completely banned.

Last week we announced the launch of four new locations for NAFG, in Atlanta, Dallas, Miami and Washington, DC.

We believe that by expanding our pool of egg donors, gestational carriers, and clients, it will be even easier for donors, recipients, gestational carriers and intended parents to take advantage of our services.  Press releases are linked below:

• Washington, DC
• Atlanta
• Miami
• Dallas

“Our new locations will offer the opportunity for our egg donors, gestational carriers, and intended parents to work locally, or take advantage of our recruitment efforts in other cities across the country. This makes NAFG unique among surrogacy and egg donation programs.”  – Sanford Benardo, Founder and President, Northeast Assisted Fertility Group

A story ran on Tuesday about a panel at Barnard College which sought to raise questions about the cost and benefit in ongoing debates over egg donation.

Unless these quotations are wrong (and they may indeed be, if Barnard’s student journalism is as poorly researched as this panel discussion), these Barnard gals don’t really understand egg donation.

According to the panel’s organizer, who is apparently a student in her junior year: “Donors typically receive anywhere from $4,000 to $25,000 per egg.” This shows complete ignorance of the process, in which eggs are retrieved in numbers ranging from 5 to 20 or more at a time (no doctor would retrieve just one egg!). The donor gets paid per retrieval, not per egg. Her compensation does not depend on the number of eggs retrieved, but is a fixed amount agreed upon before the donation process starts. The compensation limit is $10,000 per retrieval, but these panel participants quote higher compensation fees throughout to make egg donation seem exploitive.

They also mention that egg donor advertisements do not include the risks. This is generally true, but although anyone can apply, only a small percentage of applicants actually go through with it (most do not qualify). Women who do donate are given extensive information about the risks. Most women who donate choose to do it again, and find it a very positive experience.

The panel discussion did not include any actual egg donors or anyone who conceived a child through egg donation: perhaps their participation would have injected some reality.

Northeast Assisted Fertility Group has been featured in a front page story in the Boston Globe, dated April 7, 2009.  This is just the latest in what has been an ongoing public dialogue about the “surge” in egg donation.

Boston Globe: “Recession spurs egg and sperm donations”

“What we’ve seen is that the economy seems to have inspired more people to look at alternative ways to earning money,” said Sanford M. Benardo, president of Northeast Assisted Fertility Group, a company that recruits, screens, and matches women who want to become egg donors or surrogate mothers. “We’re seeing people who might not otherwise do this but for their economic condition.”