By Emily Gessner
Lauren Martin is a mother of five children who have come into her and her husband’s lives through a variety of paths. After adopting their eldest, the Martins turned to IVF therapy for their next two girls. They planned to create and use a certain number of embryos so they would not have to think about what to do with any unused embryos.
However, after conceiving their two girls, Martin experienced a health issue and realized she would no longer be able to use the remainder of her embryos. That’s when she and her husband started looking into embryo donation.
Embryo donation is when people with remaining embryos after IVF donate those embryos for another person or couple to use for their own fertility and pregnancy journey. This process is also often called embryo adoption, although it is not legally considered adoption.
There are currently an estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos in the United States.
“It’s become more common now to adopt an embryo, as opposed to making your own,” said attorney E. Parker Herring, a board-certified specialist in family law and founder and director of A Child’s Hope, an adoption agency in Raleigh. “So there are lots of services to provide embryos and you just need a release in order to get that.”
The National Embryo Donation Center, based in Knoxville, Tennessee, currently has about 500 sets of embryos. An embryo set consists of three embryos.
The NEDC is a nonprofit that has a mission to “protect the lives and dignity of human embryos,” according to its website. The NEDC provides for all the medical, legal and social aspects of embryo donation and adoption and acts as the interim caregiver for storing embryos with no charge to donors.
Dr. Jeffrey Keenan specializes in infertility and reproductive medicine and is the president and medical director of the National Embryo Donation Center.
“Our donors donate to us, we’ve been getting embryos donated to us for over two decades, and we’ve received embryos from all 50 states,” Keenan said. “Similarly, we’ve had patients from all 50 states, the U.S. territories, about a dozen foreign countries – as far as China.”
Over the past few decades, advances in fertility science have provided more and more opportunities for women to take control of their fertility journey. And as fertility sciences and options became popular, embryo donation arose as another option.
Keenan said that the first published history of embryo donation was done in the early 1980s by Dr. Alan Trounson in Australia.
Trounson, along with other researchers John Leeton, Carl Wood, Mandy Besanko and Angelo Conti, published their article in 1983 in “The British Medical Journal.” The article, “Pregnancy Established in an Infertile Patient After Transfer of a Donated Embryo Fertilized In Vitro,” discussed the first successful experiment with IVF and a human donor embryo.
Although the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage after 10 weeks, it proved that IVF was possible for individuals using someone else’s donated egg cells.
Embryo donation progressed and was considered a viable option into the late 1990s.
In 1998, biologists at the University of Wisconsin established the first human embryonic stem cell line from a donated leftover embryo, according to a study by Risa Cromer, assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University. That same year, for the first time, a child was born through the world’s first embryo adoption program.
Cromer said that researchers found that “these coinciding events became embroiled in ongoing ethical debate in the U.S. about using human embryos and fetuses to advance scientific research.”
Many embryo banks across the United States, like NEDC, are pro-life and Christian-based organizations that take in the unused embryos to use them in later implantation for couples looking to adopt the embryos as their own.
There are many different reasons that people choose embryo donation as a way to have children. Keenan said that some people decide to go through NEDC because they “have a real heart for the plight of these frozen embryos,” others have tried to go through adoption agencies and have been unsuccessful so they turn to embryo donation, and others turn to embryo donation after going through IVF and being unsuccessful.
Carolina Conceptions is a medical clinic based out of the Triangle. Its focus is to help families make their dreams a reality, whether that be through basic infertility therapies or more in-depth treatment. The clinic focuses on infertility care in a variety of ways, such as IVF therapy, chromosome testing on embryos, egg and sperm donation and more.
Martin used Carolina Conceptions for her fertility journey.
“We did one round of IVF, and through that we have our two little girls, but we also had more embryos than we needed,” Martin said. “And so with that we were able to, through friends of friends, find two other families that were also having trouble conceiving and didn’t have an option to do IVF of their own. And so they adopted the rest of our embryos and grew their families that way.”
Choosing to donate unused embryos can be a very difficult decision for many people. A lot of people feel this to be a heavy moral dilemma of whether or not to donate their unused embryos.
“Even though we feel that embryo adoption is the most moral and life affirming option, it’s still not an easy decision to make,” Keenan said. “To know that you have genetic offspring out there that are being raised by someone else, and that your children have siblings out there that are being raised by someone else.”
Support groups for families and individuals have started to pop up across the United States. Dr. Carol Wheeler specializes in reproductive endocrinology and infertility, and she leads a support group at RESOLVE.
RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association hosts support groups, provides advice and resources and acts as an online community for people experiencing IVF and embryo choices.
“Most infertility patients who have surplus embryos, particularly those who have conceived, do not feel that they should donate their embryos,” Wheeler said.
She said that the decision of what to do with an embryo often comes down to the feeling of a connection.
“They may have concerns that there is another child out there somewhere who they don’t know about who is genetically their child,” Wheeler said. “Just as in adoption, they may have concerns about a donated embryo child contacting them in the future. Others may fear that they might need their frozen embryos in the future.”
Sarah Ekis also hosts the support group at RESOLVE. Ekis is a recipient of embryo donation and has two children from the option. She said that while this option deeply changed her life in a positive way, not everyone feels that way and should have the autonomy to decide what is right for them.
Organizations like RESOLVE provide a place where individuals can find comfort in each other and talk about the challenges regarding embryo donation that they are confronted with. Many individuals approach the option of embryo adoption with skepticism, and RESOLVE acts as a space where people can discuss their questions.
“I also believe there is a significant need for greater awareness around embryo donation,” Ekis said. “Many people simply do not know this is an option – whether they are navigating infertility or making decisions about remaining embryos. Increasing education and open conversation can empower more individuals and families to make informed choices, whatever those choices may be.”
Taneak Williams is a mother to a 5-year-old boy whom she conceived through embryo donation. She went through three rounds of IVF therapy for a few years before turning to embryo donation.
“I just didn’t know what it was going to look like or how I was going to become a mother,” Williams said. “Embryo adoption was a great option because it gave me an opportunity to experience pregnancy and all those things.”
Williams said that the route to motherhood has been difficult but worth it.
“I’ll tell anybody,” she said. “It’s challenging, but I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t know my role. I wouldn’t change it.”
Keenan said that he would encourage individuals going through IVF to consider how many embryos they make so that they have more control over excess embryos. Making less embryos during IVF may put less strain on couples who later have to decide what to do with unused embryos.
Martin said that she has been very intentional in making sure her daughters know that they have genetic siblings out in the world. She said she never wants them to feel blindsided by an ancestry test and that she feels a responsibility to be honest with them.
Martin and her husband and kids had an opportunity to meet the children born from their embryos last Thanksgiving. She said that meeting them felt like meeting someone else’s daughters.
Embryo adoption provides an avenue for people to become parents, birth and raise children who they would never have known without the developing science. Martin said that she did not know the children from the embryos she donated because she did not raise them, change their diapers, comfort them when they were upset or rock them to sleep as babies.
“And, in my experience, those are the things that make you a mom to someone is how much you invest in them and care for them,” Martin said. “And not your genetics.”
