Recognizing Reproductive Donors on National Donor Day
February 14th is best known for Valentine’s Day, but it’s also a day that marks another act of love. It’s National Donor Day—a time to celebrate those who are living organ donors and to remember those who donated organs in death so that others could live.
RMA Long Island IVF recognizes the extreme sacrifice and generosity of all donors in traditional, life-saving organ transplantation-- and their often grief-ridden families. In addition, we’d like to recognize those generous reproductive donors whose gifts, while not life-saving, are absolutely spirit-saving— the egg donors, embryo donors, and sperm donors.
Through the RMA Long Island IVF Donor Egg Program, we witness on a daily basis the life-changing impact the selfless donation of healthy eggs, sperm, and embryos has on the lives of those suffering from the devastating physical and psychological pain of infertility.
While not technically “donors”, this is a good time to also recognize gestational carriers and surrogates. These women generously agree to carry a pregnancy for someone else who is unable to do so due to lack of uterus, uterine abnormalities, or other factors that make carrying a pregnancy impossible or inadvisable. Upon birth, they give the baby to its intended parents. Because of them, many gay male couples and many other straight and LGBT couples or individuals have become parents.
We also look forward with hope to the developing field of uterus transplantation. This is traditional organ donation—by living or deceased donors—that’s being used to combat uterine factor infertility. Uterus transplants give women who are missing a uterus or have uterine issues where attempting to carry a pregnancy would be contraindicated the chance to carry a pregnancy themselves after undergoing a successful uterine transplant.
Recently, the second baby born in America from transplantation of a deceased donor’s uterus was delivered through the Penn Medicine program’s ongoing uterus transplant trial₁. It may become more common in the future for women who have finished building their own families to donate their uterus so another woman could experience childbirth.
So many RMA Long Island IVF patients have become parents as a result of the selflessness of donors. If you are interested in learning more about becoming an egg donor yourself, including the $10,000 compensation for your time, please contact us.
If you think you may need to build your family using egg donation, sperm donation, or embryo donation, or if you have any other fertility-related concerns, please contact RMA Long Island IVF to schedule a consultation with one of our physicians.
₁ cnn.com/2020/01/09/health/uterus-transplant-second-birth-us-bn/index.html