In the Spotlight

Tools
News & Features
The Fertility Race
The Decision to Donate


Seeking Ivy League Eggs

BECAUSE OF THAT RISK, SOME EGG DONATION PROGRAMS won't work with women unless they've already had all the children they want. "We are appalled by the recruitment of underage women on university campuses who have never had childbearing experience," says Hilary Hanafin, a clinical psychologist with the Center for Surrogate Parenting and Egg Donation in Beverly Hills, California. "Being an egg donor is a big decision," says Hanafin. "It's not like being a blood donor, and a 21- or 19-year-old undergraduate probably doesn't have the capacity to understand what she's getting into."

Hanafin's agency brokers eggs. An infertile couple pays the center about $2,000 to find them a donor - plus money counseling for themselves and the donor, the donor's fee of $2,500 to $3,000, and help drawing up a legal contract. The contract can't ensure a recipient couple's legal claim on the child; the law is still unsettled regarding who has more claim as a mother - the woman who gave birth, or the woman whose genes the child bears.

Hanafin says she hasn't had an egg donor try to claim a child made with her egg, but the center takes precautions to try to make sure that never happens. "We won't do a five-way," Hanafin says, in which a donated sperm and donated egg are gestated by a surrogate for an intended couple - resulting in a baby with five parents. Hanafin says her center rejects such arrangements partly because "the surrogate has more of a relationship with the child than anyone else." Further, "it looks like cherry picking, creating a child through the catalog."

The center does have a catalog, a computer database of egg donors. A couple can punch in desired hair color, eye color and ethnicity, and profiles of women who meet those criteria pop up. A profile includes a color photo, a description and information such as "last book read" and "favorite movie" and "life philosophy."

Karen Synesiou, who works with donors for the center, says some of the information is meant to give prospective parents a sense of the donor's intelligence. There's debate over whether intelligence is inherited, but all the same, many couples seek a donor who is smart. Some agencies even advertise that they have Ivy League women available, and one anonymous infertile couple recently placed an add in an Ivy League college newspaper offering to pay $50,000 for the eggs of an "intelligent, athletic" woman.

Some couples seek a donor who is beautiful, or tall. But many simply want a donor who looks something like the intended mother, in hopes that the child will resemble both parents.

To help ensure that the couple winds up with a child, the Beverly Hills center puts potential donors through a psychological screening. That's partly to try to make sure a donor won't back out after a couple has invested money in drugs and medical visits for her. But it's partly to screen out women who would want the children made with their genes. The center seeks donors who believe they're giving up eggs they wouldn't be using anyway, not giving up children - donors such as Quincy.

Next: Worth the Risk

The Decision to Donate home