Provided below is an index with the 5 points we are going to expand on in this article.
Legal aspects
Egg donation in Spain is regulated by the Law regarding Human Assisted Reproduction Techniques (LAHRT), according to which it must remain an anonymous process, so that the privacy in the information about the donor is guaranteed.
For this reason, neither the donor nor the prospective parents will be allowed to get information about the person who is about to hand her eggs over, so that they can undergo an in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle. Donor-conceived children won't have access to the identity of their donor either.
The unique information about the donor that recipients and/or donor-conceived individuals can get is that relevant for the gestation period:
- Age
- Blood group
- Rh factor
How are donors chosen?
Taking into account that donor identity must be kept confidential, the egg donation contract will be solely between the egg donor and the fertility clinic or egg bank. Thus, this entity is responsible for matching egg donors to recipients.
Matching an egg donor to a recipient woman is in the hands of the professional team at the fertility center, who will pay special attention to the following features:
- Phenotypic characteristics
- Immunological characteristics
The medical team will always look for the greatest possible similarities with the receiving woman in relation to the above mentioned traits. By no means are the prospective parents allowed to indicate their preferences or choose the physical characteristics or personal traits of their donor.
Characteristics of the donor
Donors must necessarily comply with the following requirements in order to be accepted in the egg donation program:
- Being aged between 18 and 35 years old.
- Being physically and mentally healthy.
- Normal ovarian function.
- Absence in the donor and her close relatives of genetic alterations or any other hereditary condition.
- Being seronegative for hepatitis B and C, HIV, syphilis, herpes, cytomegalovirus, and other viral and infectious diseases.
When a woman applies as a prospective egg donor, in addition to meeting these requirements, she will have to undergo a thorough psychological and medical screening. Most remarkable tests included within this assessment are: physical examination, cervico-vaginal cytology, endocervix culture (a.k.a. vaginal culture, endocervical culture, or female genital tract culture), ultrasound scan, karyotype test, serology, biochemical analysis...
Only if these tests come out positive, donors will qualify to be part of the egg donor database, waiting to be matched with a compatible recipient woman and get started with the egg donation process.
Donor identity disclosure
Despite preserving both the confidentiality and anonymity of the donor is mandatory, the LAHRT allows for donor identity disclosure only in justified cases where the health of the unborn child is put in danger or at serious risk, as long as it follows common rules on criminal procedure.
Such information will only be disclosed provided that there is no other choice as to remove the danger, and always proceeding in a restricted manner.
Even though donor identity disclosure is allowed only in exceptional circumstances, donors cannot be required to have any type of right or obligation among the paternity or custody of donor-conceived children.
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What happens if the donor egg quality is poor?
Hi Claire
The requirements set in place by the laws governing egg donation mean that the quality of donated eggs is generally very high. Indeed the success rates acheived from IVF treatments using donor eggs reflects this. Also, it is important to consider than when a woman turns to egg donation it is because it is not possible to use her own egss, usually because they are of low quality.
In our article Success rates of in vitro fertilization (IVF), we have some statistics provided by the SEF (Spanish Fertility Society) that show the rate of birth by transfer goes from 25.8% using a woman’s own eggs to 41.4% when egg donation is used.
I hope this answer is useful.
Kind regards
Hello… you may think I’m crazy, but this is my story. I did several IVF cycles in my fertility clinic (it is located in Spain) using my own eggs. After 4 failed attempts, I decided to move to donor eggs, but something happened…
During my IVF attempts, I saw many women coming and going at the clinic… I am a very observant person, it’s easy for me to remember faces. The thing is, my daughter is now 2 years old and her nose and eye color is exactly the same as that of a girl I usually saw. I think she is her egg donor.
How possible is this theory?