Implementation of Ovum Donation Technology: Start-up Decisions, Challenges, and Problems

Abstract

The technology that makes pregnancy possible for women with little or no ovarian function is a recent and highly successful addition to the infertility specialists’ therapeutic armamentarium. Ovum donation, perhaps more than any other advance in reproduction, creates unknown ethical, social, psychological, and legal circumstances for modern day family builders. In the narrowest sense, women who would previously have had to adopt in order to parent may now bear children who are genetically their husband’s and gestationally their own.^1–5 In the largest sense, the female life cycle has been dramatically altered. Age boundaries for reproduction have been expanded beyond menopause, potentially allowing women of any age to become pregnant,⁶ theoretically extending reproductive potential indefinitely. Daughters and mothers may donate eggs to each other, violating natural generational barriers.⁷ Aunts may in fact be genetic mothers, and children raised in the same social circle may be biologically siblings with no knowledge of that relationship.⁸ The effects of these new connections on egg donor offspring and their families are generally unknown.^9–14 This chapter will discuss the startup decisions, challenges, and problems involved in implementing an ovum donation program.