Embryo Donation and Queer Intended Parents
I love hearing about queer people creating rainbow families in any ethical way.
This week I read an article where a gay couple in Pennsylvania are pursuing their dream of fatherhood through ‘non-genetic surrogacy’ (1).
This was a new term for me, but the concept is one I am familiar with from my husband and my own journey. Essentially, this is when a queer male couple receives donated embryos, and then they work with a gestational carrier (GC) to have their child. Because neither of the intended fathers’ sperm is used to create the embryos, the term ‘non-genetic surrogacy’ is used.
I think this is an incredible idea for queer intended parents (IPs).
Using donated embryos is a huge cost savings. As I have written about previously, not all incomes allow for a U.S. surrogacy journey (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/ivf-and-surrogacy-abroad). However, using embryo donation more than halves the total cost from over $200,000 to closer to $80,000, depending on the use of an agency and the GC. For queer intended mothers, this would reduce the majority of fertility costs as IVF would no longer be required.
In my pursuit of helping all queer IPs find and navigate their own ethical journey to parenthood through ART, this makes that so much attainable for people who want to have their journey in the U.S. Despite all its challenges, the U.S. is still the most regulated, ethical, and safe place to pursue compensated surrogacy and all forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART).
Given how much more accessible path this could be for queer IPs, I wanted to learn more about embryo donation.
How Common is Embryo Donation?
I first wanted to get an understanding as to how often embryo donation is pursued through ART.
I found a study published in 2022 that analyzed embryo donation in the U.S. from 2004 to 2019 (2). The study stated that during this time frame, there were 21,060 frozen donated embryo transfers that resulted in 8,457 live births.
Most interesting to me is this figure from the paper showing the 15 year trend in frozen donated embryo transfers.
(2)
Comparing the blue line (frozen donated embryo transfers) to the yellow line (total embryo transfers), it is clear that there has been a consistent increase in frozen donated embryos that has dramatically outpaced all embryo transfers.
This demonstrates that this form of ART has become much more popular in the U.S., especially in the last decade.
Another source I wanted to investigate to better understand embryo donation trends is the CDC’s national ART database. I have previously used and written about this database to try and identify ‘queer friendly’ fertility clinics in the U.S. (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/fertility-clinic-database).
The CDC’s database has a 3 year delay in reporting in order to gather, clean, and process the data from over 500 fertility clinics in the U.S. Therefore, the data I am sharing is from 2021, but it is a nice continuation from the previous publication, which ended its data collection in 2019.
The CDC’s database shows that 61% of U.S. fertility clinics have embryo donation programs (3). In terms of how often donated embryos were used in 2021, the data is only in terms of patients who used donor eggs or embryos and is shown in the following table.
(3)
These data demonstrate that the practice of using donated embryos is much more likely in older patients. This makes sense, given that women over 40 years of age are much less likely to have viable eggs or be able to generate viable embryos. However, even in the youngest demographic of those less than 35 years of age, 2.3% of 413,776 national ART cycles equates to approximately 9,516 cycles with donated embryos (and eggs).
The CDC database does not include demographic information such as sexual orientation or gender identity, so it’s not possible to further delineate these numbers for queer IPs. However, I have written to the CDC to improve the database and collect this information, and you can too at ARTinfo@cdc.gov. Data is power, and the more the CDC hears that these demographics for sexual minorities and ART are needed, the more likely that they will eventually be included.
How Accessible is Embryo Donation for Queer IPs?
As with all aspects of ART, there are additional barriers for queer IPs using embryo donation.
On February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are ‘unborn children’ (4). While this has had disastrous consequences for IVF and ART in Alabama, it has also emboldened religious groups who have treated embryo donation as a way of ‘saving lives.’
As stated above, 61% of U.S. fertility clinics offer embryo donation. This is a non-religious way for couples who have finished their family building to donate their unused embryos to the clinic, who can use them for scientific experiments or facilitate donation to other IPs.
However, there are agencies in the U.S. that specialize in embryo donation. What I discovered researching this article is that these agencies are almost exclusively operated as religious organizations that mandate IPs who want to receive donated embryos must be a heterosexual married couple.
These agencies have also coined the term ‘snowflake adoptions’ for embryo donations. I assume they use the term ‘snowflake’ because these are more ‘sensitive’ procedures than traditional adoptions. Also, it's interesting that they leverage the term adoption instead of donation, which fits nicely into the religious belief that these embryos are ‘children’ and so it is akin to a true adoption process.
Examples of these religious embryo donation agencies in the U.S. include Nightlight (5) and the National Embryo Donation Center (6), which sounds suspiciously non-religious. The American Surrogacy website actually has a warning for LGBTQ+ IPs to avoid these organizations given their discriminatory practices (7).
So, if a queer IP isn’t already affiliated with a fertility clinic to leverage their embryo donation program, where can they pursue this avenue?
Options through formal agencies for queer IPs are almost non-existent. I found one Reddit thread that recommended the Parents Via Egg Donation (PVED) embryo donation program (8) as a LGBTQ+ friendly option.
Other than that, I didn’t find anything for queer IPs and embryo donation.
Is this something that queer people need and would benefit from? A queer specific embryo donation agency? Given the increasing trend of embryo donation and increasing cost of ART in the U.S., I would say this is definitely something that is needed and would be very welcomed by the LGBTQ+ community.
Would My Husband and I Donate Our Unused Embryos?
If such an agency were to thrive, queer and queer-friendly parents who have unused embryos would have to donate them.
This begs the question: Would my husband and I donate our unused embryos?
Honestly, we have not discussed this yet, so I’m not sure.
It turns out that being indecisive is a shared trait among many parents through ART. As of 2024, there are an estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos across the U.S. (9). While a percentage of these embryos are actively awaiting transfers, many are being held for years after parents have completed their families.
I completely understand this. After going through what we have been through to make our embryos, I am going to have a hard time letting them go as well. However, at about $1,000 a year for cryostorage, I don’t believe we will want to indefinitely hold on to them.
If we did want to donate our embryos, I believe it would have to be to a person or couple that we are very close to. I would want our children to know each other, because they will be siblings in a sense of the word. I don’t know that we would have to live close to them,, but it would be essential that we have a lifelong relationship with the parents and that the children have the ability to know each other and choose to develop the relationship that they want.
Perhaps a queer-specific embryo donation agency could help facility these matches and connections? This way, the IPs who we donate our embryos to don’t have to be people we already know, but they could be people we get to know.
What a lovely way for rainbow families to be built and expanded. My husband and I want as many people as possible to love our child, and this seems to be another way to make that possible by expanding our own chosen family through embryo donation.
We shall see what the future brings, but in terms of a cost-effective means of having a child as a queer person in the U.S., embryo donation seems like a viable path. While the agencies may currently be fraught with religious prejudice, networking through friends and family and connecting with fertility clinics does pose a route for queer IPs to navigate this method until a queer-specific embryo donation agency could exist.
Perhaps BabyMoon Family will create this agency…
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