There are many reasons that people may choose to grow their family through egg donation and/or surrogacy, including family structures where no one involved has a uterus or ovaries; when it’s recommended due to age or health reasons; and those who choose this path for other personal reasons.
The CDC estimates that 12% of all in vitro fertilization cycles in the U.S. happen with donor eggs, and that number is increasing. Surrogate births are less commonplace (less than 1,000 births per year) but growing rapidly around the globe.
This post is meant to introduce you to these options, how common they are, their success rates, and some things to think about in conversations with your doctors.
Egg donors
Egg donors are people who donate their eggs to support others in growing their families. Egg donors may be nonidentified, where they donate their eggs to a fertility clinic or egg bank in exchange for some financial compensation, or they may be directed (identified), such as a friend, family member, or community member who donates their eggs to somebody they know personally.
Gay male couples, single men, people with fertility issues, or people with genetic conditions may choose to or need to grow their families with egg donation.
The average success rates for donor egg IVF cycles in the U.S. are 40% to 50%, which is a significant increase over success rates of IVF cycles without donor eggs, depending on the age of the person undergoing the treatment.
The egg donation process always begins with IVF to retrieve the eggs, but the process looks slightly different with directed and nonidentified egg donors. Let’s dive into detail about each.
Nonidentified (anonymous) egg donors
When people donate eggs to a bank, they go through the first half of an IVF cycle — taking medications to stimulate ovulation, then going through a simple surgical procedure where the doctor removes the eggs from their ovaries. These eggs are then frozen and banked.
If using an egg bank, you can look at profiles of different egg donors that offer information about them, their health history, personality traits, and photos of them as babies and sometimes as adults.
People can purchase these eggs in batches through their bank or fertility clinic and defrost them at a future date to create embryos with their own or donor sperm. Eggs can remain frozen for decades — the U.K. allows up to 55 years — although in the U.S. they are generally stored for up to 10 years.
Legally, the person donating eggs rescinds their right to parenthood using those eggs during the donation process. A batch of donor eggs, which includes about five to seven, costs about $17,000 to $25,000.
Directed (known) egg donors
When someone in the family or community donates eggs to another person, the process can look slightly different. First, there are more legal hoops to jump through, and I always recommend consulting with a lawyer in your state with experience in creative family formation. The LGBTQ+ Bar Association provides a useful guide to finding qualified family law attorneys by state.
The process begins the same way as with nonidentified egg donors, but often eggs are fertilized immediately after the egg retrieval with sperm cells in order to create embryos. It takes about three to five days for embryos to develop enough to be implanted into someone’s uterus to continue growing, or they can be frozen for implantation at a future date.
When going through the defrosting process, embryos are slightly more robust than eggs, so many fertility doctors recommend freezing embryos when possible when using a known egg donor. The cost of the retrieval process generally ranges between $8,000 and $10,000, and storing eggs or embryos costs about $500 annually.
Surrogacy
Surrogacy is when a person who has a uterus gestates a pregnancy for another family, who are known as the intended parent(s). There are two types of surrogacy: traditional surrogacy, where the person who is gestating the baby is also using their own eggs, and gestational surrogacy, where the person who is gestating the baby doesn’t share a genetic relationship with the baby.
Gestational surrogacy is much more common, because there’s more legal separation when the surrogate doesn’t share a genetic relationship with the future child. There are many agencies that facilitate gestational surrogacy relationships and take care of most, if not all, of the legal concerns. Traditional surrogacy requires deep trust and intimacy (and legal agreements) and usually happens outside of surrogacy agencies.
People who might consider surrogacy include gay male couples, single men, trans people, and people with fertility or general health issues where pregnancy isn’t possible or advised.
Surrogacy has very high rates of pregnancy success, depending on various factors, including the age of eggs being used. Estimates range from 50% to 75% success rates.
Gestational surrogacy
Many people who are considering growing their family through surrogacy work with agencies because they pre-screen potential surrogates and take care of much of the logistics and legal risks involved with the process. I recommend getting very clear on everything the agency covers when exploring working with a surrogacy agency, because it is an enormous financial and emotional investment.
Most people who work with a surrogacy agency can expect to pay from $90,000 to $150,000, which covers all legal fees, payment to the gestational carrier, agency fees, and IVF and donor egg expenses. There is no guarantee of success with surrogate pregnancies, although they generally have high success rates, and most insurance companies do not cover surrogacy fees.
Traditional surrogacy
When exploring traditional surrogacy, people may find a family member or a person in their community to support them to grow their family. Sometimes in the queer community, lesbian or queer people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB) agree to become surrogates for gay male friends or acquaintances to make it possible for them to grow their families.
After finding a potential surrogate, the next step is to hire a family lawyer in your state to support you to draft contracts and legal documents that cover many things, including the agreed exchanges (which can include money, groceries, health-care costs, housekeeping, feeding the baby after birth, etc.), parental rights, place of delivery, future contact, and more. Depending on the state you live in, this process may be more or less streamlined, as some places have friendlier laws toward surrogacy than others.
Legal fees for traditional surrogacy can cost between $8,000 and $13,000, the IVF process costs about $30,000 depending on the location, and other fees include whatever else is agreed upon for compensation between the surrogate and the intended parents.
Closing thoughts
I know this process involves dizzyingly high amounts of money, and you may feel overwhelmed. There are so many things to consider when growing your family through egg donation and/or surrogacy, and the financial investment is just part of it — it is a process that requires profound trust in another human being in making your family dreams come true.
Family Equality and Connecting Rainbows provide lists of organizations that offer grants and other support for anyone needing assistance to grow their families. Gays with Kids also offers valuable resources and support specifically for gay dads-to-be.
The bottom line
- It’s been well documented that the number of people growing their families through egg donation and/or gestational surrogacy is on the rise.
- There are two types of egg donors — directed (identified) and nonidentified — and each path has different costs, legal considerations, and fertility treatments involved.
- There are two types of surrogacy — gestational surrogacy and traditional surrogacy — which carry with them different legal considerations, relational structures, and costs.
We recognize that readers of ParentData identify in different ways — read more about our approach to gender-inclusive language here.
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