In an egg donation, a woman contributes her reproductive cell to a different one that will host the pregnancy. It is a very frequent practice in Spain, normalized thanks to people like you who, with generosity and naturalness, consider sharing the eggs that you are not going to use that month, with women who need them to fulfill their desire to be mothers. Therefore, we have asked the Dra. Laura Fernández, gynecologist at IVI Murcia, that I tell you about anonymity in egg donation.
After many years of experience, we have learned that, when becoming a donor and while making the decision, you almost always ask the same questions: Is the donation absolutely anonymous? Will my data be available to the baby in the future? Here are our answers.
What does the couple receiving the donation know about me?
From you, personally, nothing. They don’t know any details about where they come from. Your eggs go up to a “cloud”, confidential, organized and legal, to give life to people who need it.
And I, how far can I know what happened to my eggs?
At no time do you know who your eggs are assigned to or the final result of the process, although we do inform you if we have been able to obtain good quality oocytes and, in due course and if you are curious, if they have generated live newborns. From the emotional point of view, it seems the simplest for both the donor woman and the recipient couple.
It is one of the differences of the Spanish donation program with respect to that of other countries and one of the characteristics that allows us to carry out more treatments and that the process of assigning a donor to its recipient is more agile.
But, is that an IVI norm or is it regulated in the legislation?
It is regulated by the Assisted Human Reproduction law 14/2006 of May 26, which establishes the anonymity and confidentiality of the identity data of the donors as well as, where appropriate, the records. BOE-A-2006-9292
And the baby? Could you in the future find the person who donated the egg from which you were born?
No. The born would only have the right to obtain general information about you, such as physical characteristics, but nothing about your identity, except in extremely exceptional circumstances. What are those circumstances? A child’s illness, for example. If you develop leukemia in your childhood and need a bone marrow transplant. But even then there would be no “contact.” It would be done in a restricted way and always through an intermediary. It could be revealed where that egg comes from to try to contact its donor and assess whether its marrow had the fortune of being compatible.
Who would have this data?
In Spain there is a National Registry of Donors from a platform known as SIRHA – Assisted Human Reproduction Information System – in charge of the Ministry of Health, Consumption and Social Welfare. It serves to manage and collect donor information as well as to support the traceability of these reproductive cells, guaranteeing the confidentiality and security of the data.
What if the legislation changes in a few years?
Does not matter. It would never be retroactive. Recently it is the subject of debate whether to reveal their origin to children born using this technique and whether they have the right to know the person who donated their cells.
Advocates argue that it would be healthy from a psychological point of view for these children to satisfy their curiosity about the type of person their donor was, without seeking any other type of emotional bond or responsibility for you.
If at any time the legislation in Spain were to change, it would in no case be retrospective, which means that donations made as anonymous will never cease to be.
Dra. Laura Fernández Olmedilla
Gynecologist of IVI Murcia
–
