How to Avoid a Nightmare: The Benefits of Egg Donor Agreements

In this video, Award Winning Surrogacy Lawyer, Stephen Page discusses how to avoid a nightmare by having a well-constructed egg donor agreement in place.

Transcript

Good day. I’m Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers. And I’m speaking today about the benefits of having an egg donor agreement. Now, I’ve done a recent video about sperm donor agreements. If you’ve got a known egg donor, can I suggest to you that go and have a read of that? Or, sorry, and go and listen to that, go and watch that, because it’s in a podcast and video format. But all the reasons that I’ve said there about having– When you’ve got a known sperm donor, about having a written agreement in place and having fertility counselling and going off to the clinic, also apply with an egg donor. There’s less risk, however, with an egg donor than there is with a sperm donor. And this may– I’m amazed when I discuss this with clients and colleagues, that there’s less risk. They look at me like stunned mullets. It’s an Australian saying, like that someone slapped them about the head, sometimes with their mouths open, about how come there’s a difference in risk? And it’s quite simple. men who are sperm donors do something to provide the sperm that men do all the time. As sometimes said, this comes naturally to them.

Egg donors, however, have a different journey entirely. Recently, this was driven home to me because of my own medical experience. It was something I was always aware of, something I was always empathetic about. But boy, oh, boy, when it happens to you, it’s something that you know even more so. Recently, I was in hospital for a few days. I had a medical emergency, and I got stuck in hospital. These days, the treatment for DVT, to avoid DVT, deep vein thrombosis, isn’t those incredibly sexy-looking, bulky pantyhose or stockings, whatever they’re called, to stop your vein swelling up, they give you an injection in the stomach, an anticoagulant, which the nurses healthily brought out just in time for dinner. And I’m getting these injections in my stomach every day, and I’m thinking, this is what happens to women who engage in an egg pickup. So, a woman who is an egg donor, of course, she’s doing that maybe twice a day. She’s doing it for 14 days, often self-administering, and then engaging in a minor operation for the egg pickup, at which she will have thought there is always the risk of death.

Sperm donor doesn’t have that risk. Back in 2011, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said that the time commitment difference between a sperm donor and egg donor was, well, for sperm donor, including counselling, one hour. But for an egg donor, 50 plus hours. Now, the ASRM subsequently walked back that number and said, Oh, we don’t say those numbers are right. But it didn’t come up with other numbers. I think they’re probably about right. The time difference is extraordinary. And so what you see with an egg donor is that you have a much higher psychological commitment. I think there’s a lot less risk with an egg donor than there is with a sperm donor. But if you have a known donor, you may well want to consider having an egg donor agreement in place, get the legal advice at the beginning, have the medical test done, have the fertility counselling, reduce risk. You can’t eliminate risk, but reduce risk.

Thank you for watching and listening. I’m Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers.