Not allowed to donate embryos

[WatchThisGladys]

I have one child through IVF with donor sperm (I would have liked to have had two, but couldn't afford it and now, I'm well over 40). However, I have a few frozen embryos and if I couldn't use them myself, I really hoped to give them a chance of life by donating them to another woman.

Unfortunately, my clinic phoned me last week and told me that I'm not allowed to donate them due to rules relating to the sperm donor. I'm really disappointed.

Destroying them feels wrong to me personally. It isn't like, say, taking emergency contraception (which I would have no moral issue with) as the embryos are frozen and could in theory be given the chance of life at any time by any woman. Also, they are (kind of) my son's full siblings and one of the embryos is the same grade as he was. The embryologist could have easily chosen to transfer that one instead.

My family don't understand how I feel. They think I should stop wasting money on storage fees, donate the embryos to research and forget about it. I expect that's what most people in my position would do, but I'm finding it hard. I certainly never expected to be in this position as my first attempt at IVF went very badly and produced no viable embryos.

What are the sperm donor rules which stop this out of interest?

He's met his UK quota and was never asked if he'd agree to donating overseas.

I completely understand how you feel, its not easy to go through all that hard work to create embryos just to destroy them when you know their potential. Would you ever consider being an older patient and transferring your embryos and try for another baby?

I completely understand. There is a cost element and not all places will do it but I think there is something called a compassionate transfer or something like that where they will transfer the embryo at the wrong time of the cycle so they won't implant but they will be with you at the end. I also find the thought of not giving everyone a chance at life so so difficult and I am sure once you have a child from one of the embryos it is even harder (I am still at the beginning of the journey with 11 on ice) but one thought that I have had about donating an embryo to another couple or person is that once you do so you can't keep them safe. You won't be there to make sure they are ok and happy and looked after. Of course chances are they'd be born to a loving parent who wanted them more than anything in the world particularly with IVF but you just don't know what life will throw at them so you might end up finding it harder than you thought having a biological child out there but not knowing if they are ok. And without a lot of embryos being donated to research before your time you might not have had a successful outcome so they are paving the way for less heartbreak and more life in this terrible world of infertility if that is the route you go down! But I fully expect to be grieving and devastated if I ever have to let mine go so I understand completely. These are just things I think about not the perfect scenario. There is nothing 'just donate to research' about it. It's a big decision. If age alone is stopping you I wouldn't worry. One of the things that reassure me is that the embryos are now frozen in time at my and my husband's current ages. So the years we lost trying unsuccessfully can be tacked on the other end so to speak and if we wanted to transfer one (or more) over 40 the usual risks don't really apply. It's the one good thing about needing IVF and being lucky enough to have embryos frozen. But if you say you have a few then that might not be there answer to all of it of course but if you wanted a second and it's possible for you financially etc then why not?

I'm 44,so I think any pregnancy would be very high risk.

I take the point about it being difficult to have a child somewhere who I couldn't keep safe. I would hope to donate to someone who wasn't a complete stranger, but I would still have no say in their upbringing and no right to any contact.

I’ll never be in the position to have spare embryos, but having gone through multiple IVFs I’ve obviously considered this kind of situation. I completely understand how you feel about it (to the extent that I can given I don’t yet have living children). It seems unfair given that the embryos have already been created, so the quota limitation you’d think would apply to the creation of new embryos, not to the fate of those already in existence? It seems unfair that subsequent embryos that contain also your genetic material cannot be further used, given it’s your genetics too, and a full sibling to your child.

I suppose these rules have been made extremely carefully, and aren’t the flippant whim of a clinic. Perhaps it could be worth pushing them a little further to truly check it’s impossible. If it is impossible, and you aren’t able or wanting to have another pregnancy, I do find something less difficult in the idea of the above poster of a compassionate transfer. Tbh, every time they use the word “discarded” for my embryos my heart breaks a little. I’d rather they had at least ended in my body. But obvs that’s a personal thing.

I think it's absolutely understandable you feel that way. I read a book recently by Julia Bueno, on pregnancy loss, and she talks about how common it is that people feel conflicted about discarding embryos. I remember I was upset when my clinic badgered me to destroy (they did not say 'discard') my aneuploid embryos almost as soon as they'd given me the news - and that's even though I knew, intellectually, they had absolutely no potential to work unless they'd been wrongly tested. I remember I wrote to the clinic to say I'd found it a bit upsetting and the woman replied that she'd not realised they weren't spare embryos and signed off with a cheery 'happy Christmas!' I must admit I could have cheerfully smacked her.

@SarahAndQuack I’d happily give her one for you too. I’ve had so many embryologist chats, and the ones that made me feel less gut punched were the ones that gave a modicum of kindness in their reporting, good news or bad. That was NHS. Now with a private clinic, the phone line is always cutting out for a second here and there so I keep having to get them to repeat and they always sound like they want you off the phone as quickly as possibly. They didn’t even remember to give me a day 5 update this cycle and I couldn’t get through to them to ask. Anyway, sorry, besides the point.

That is so frustrating! We are private and can't fault the clinic at all thankfully. A little kindness goes a long way, for them it's their job, for us it's everything! I hate the word discard as well. There was a delay in getting the prescription across for the meds and it meant the world to me when The Fertility Pharmacy called me to pre-check everything before the prescription arrived so that they could ship it without delay (we were down to the wire) and they even gave me a weekend update to reassure me it had been shipped on time. I felt that they understood how important this is and how much pressure we are under. Makes such a difference!

Not beside the point at all, @Nosejug. It's awful when they can't be bothered. I know it is money making for them, but they should remember it's someone's emotions, too.

@Waitingforday6 - oh, that's so lovely of them to have done that! That reminds me of my local pharmacist, who couldn't help with meds, but who tried really hard to help. It makes such a difference, doesn't it?

Anyway, @WatchThisGladys, I hope you see you're not alone in feeling emotional about these things. It is so normal.

Hi, I just wanted to jump on to give a slightly different viewpoint that might hopefully provide balance and help you feel happier with the idea that they cannot be donated.

I am currently trying to freeze embryos with a sperm donor. (I have not yet decided if I am ready to go ahead with having a child on my own but I decided I'd rather go through the process now and buy time to make a final decision, rather than think for a year or so and be even older when trying).

The ethics of using a sperm donor were something I struggled with. I eventually decided to make all decisions with my future child in mind, not myself. What would they want growing up/when they became an adult if they decided to seek out the sperm donor?

So that (for me) meant I needed to disregard using the European or USA sperm donors (where you get a ton of info about the donor, sometimes you can hear their voice, see baby pics etc. With some US sites, you even get adult pics of what the donor looks like now! But, along with that information comes much larger family limits. (Again, with USA I think some sperm banks have no limits!). I figured that the trade of for me getting all that information about the donor was unfortunately the idea of the child growing up having no idea how many half siblings may be out there, or even if they would speak the same language etc.

It also meant choosing a UK donor who had not consented to use overseas so there was a 10 family limit and any half siblings would all (hopefully) speak English and be more likely to be in the UK. If my child ever wanted to seek them out.

It sounds like you are not allowed to donate because then you would breach the 10 family limit? So there are 9 other families and you that have the sperm donor's sperm. If you donate your embryo then that means there is an 11th family with his sperm being used.

Essentially that is beyond what the sperm donor himself consented to and I think that is something that should be upheld. He made a decision when donating sperm what he was comfortable with and who knows, maybe he wants any child to be able to contact him, communicate with him etc, like I considered?

I also think you should think about what it might be like to be the child born from an embryo you donated, for that child to find out one day that they have a full sibling out there and the complexities that may come from that if they did get in touch with either you or your child?

I think these are all good reasons to think about and try to make peace with the idea that you cannot donate the embryos. If I do end up in your position, I think donating to research would be the way forward for me - anything to help people in my position become parents seems the best use for them x

I'm actually quite shocked by this post.

I get that everyone has to make their own ethical decisions (and my DD was conceived with a sperm donor; I have done my own thinking here too).

But I think it is very rude to imply that the OP hasn't already thought about these issues, just because she reached a conclusion that you don't share. And saying 'I think you should think about what it might be like' implies you imagine she couldn't possibly have considered things if she disagrees with you.

The OP posted saying how sad she was - unless I missed something, she didn't say she wanted to override the sperm donor's consent (!). She's just upset because it is an upsetting situation.

I have thought about it, and I have to admit I like the idea of donating embryos non-anonymously to a woman/family who would be comfortable with us being in their lives as distant relatives. That might have been possible if I had been allowed to donate my embryos to a certain embryo adoption charity in the US which offers "open adoptions". But it's true that there are many ways this arrangement could have turned out differently from the way I'd hoped.

The sperm donor did donate in the UK (although he's not British and may or may not still be living here) and I agree it's good that DS probably doesn't have countless half-siblings in multiple countries. As for the sperm donor's consent, apparently he didn't say no (or yes) to overseas donation, because he was never asked. Very frustrating. Surely, the sperm bank could try to get in touch with him?

I found out from the HFEA that my DS has several half-siblings who share the same donor. I only know the sex and year of birth for each one. I'm pretty sure he'd like to meet them and I'm not sure why we're not allowed to get in touch through a third party.

I was once told that if I were in a relationship with another woman, she'd be allowed to have treatment using my embryos and we'd count as one family for the purpose of the 10 family limit. That thought is niggling at me now. My treatment initially went badly and I remember thinking that if I couldn't conceive with my own eggs, I'd like to "adopt" someone else's leftover embryos. Maybe there is someone out there, possibly another single woman, who would want to adopt mine? After all, double donation plus IVF is very expensive.

I’m surprised embryo adoption was even on the cards - I didn’t think clinics would accept donations from women over a certain age?

I was 35 when the embyros were created.

From a protection of your child’s emotional and psychological wellbeing which is already going to be affected by being the child of donor i personally would let the embryos go

i have embryos still frozen but will be sadly destroying them following the breakdown of my marriage

I don’t trust who the embryos would go to - clinics - and often the receiving patient themselves have little moral or ethical standards and put having a baby at all costs above the social/emotional/psychological welbeing of any resulting child when it comes to the types of families these embryo babies may be born into - eg. Being given to women in their 50s or older or I’ve read some horror stories on other forums where someone has transferred multiple embryos (more than allowed in the U.K.) and then decided on selective reduction of healthy babies when they unsurprisingly fall pregnant with multiples

wtf @redemptionwoes ”and often the receiving patient themselves have little moral or ethical standards”

Ive had premature DOR. I have still got eggs, but have been trying to use them for the last 5 years without anything but miscarriages. I have used that time to think (always in tandem with my treatment) about the ethics of bringing a child into the world that wasn’t biologically mine, and within that, have considered an embryo that has already been created, and weighed the ethics, and how I imagine a child would feel. I have read extensively on the donor conceived network and Reddit boards the views of donor conceived people to try and get a realistic gauge on this. I have taken implications councelling too, and all this without having fully made up my mind. Yet I have no morals or ethics?

what the OP is suggesting (and it’s probably not possibly as she’s already stated) sound like an open donation where any resultant child would have access to their history, and to their extended family. The OP is also expressing feeling torn about the ethics of destroying an embryo that would have a chance at life. Yet by comparison, you think all embryos should be destroyed if not used by their makers. I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but pointing out the ethical inconsistency in what you’re saying. Have you weighed the ethics of destroying your embryos? Would you feel it was fair for me to decide you have no morals or ethics making a sweeping decision about you to suit my own personal views or agendas? Becuase I don’t.

@redemptionwoes there is some unpleasant wording running through your post.

The first being the implication that OP's child will definitely be psychologically and emotionally affected by their donor conception. These things have to be very carefully handled and anticipated but it isn't a certainty at all. Not exactly the same situation but I've known plenty of adopted people with zero issues or interest in their origins.

I think this is an insensitive post.

I also think you are bending logic so it supports your decision, while allowing you to have a go at the OP. And that's really nasty. You say you will destroy embryos, but you say that other women who do the same are 'horror stories'?
It is exceptionally rare that someone in their 50s will fall pregnant with multiple babies; that is why some non-UK clinics still allow multiple transfers. I agree this is ethically worrying. But, it's not 'unsurprising' that women in these situations end up with twin/triplet pregnancies. It is very rare. And you could argue, couldn't you, that women like you who have excess embryos, should never have done IVF, because now you are doing the exact same thing in discarding those embryos?

My point is: everyone has a different set of emotional/ethical ideas about when a fertilised egg becomes a 'baby'.