How Clinics Match Recipients and Donors: 3 Models

HOW CLINICS MATCH RECIPIENTS TO ANONYMOUS EGG DONORS:  THREE MODELS

             Clinics match you with a donor in three basic ways.  Sometimes it's hard to know before the fact which one you prefer, but it helps to think about the three types of matching.  As you read the three scenarios below, picture yourself involved in each situation.  Each model is based on a different philosophy.      

Clinic Donor List:  The Sperm Bank Model

             The first model, Clinic Donor List,  lets you choose an egg donor from a list the same way you would select a sperm donor from a sperm bank list.  Clinics using this model completely screen a donor before they even put her on the list. The advertisement "100 donors screened and ready" is in fact true.  In the same manner as they do for a sperm donor list,  a clinic using this model fully screens the donors  because they assume that the donors will be used in up to ten matches, so the cost of this screening will be absorbed by ten couples.  The clinic publishes a list with information such as height, weight, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, number of years of college, and number of children.  You can request longer forms with more information.  Typically, then, you match yourself and select one or many donors that you would like to match with.  You can put yourself on the "waiting" list for that donor.  The whole process can occur without much human intervention, although the clinic may have a nurse coordinator who can provide her opinion of the looks or intelligence of the donor.

Pro's:  You are in charge of the matching.  You keep control.  You can select as many potential donor candidates as you wish.  You don't have to allow anyone else to make the match for you.

Con's:  You may pass up a donor who is perfect for you because on paper she doesn't sound like a match.  The human touch is missing from the process.  The donor you select may be already selected and has six matches before you.  The donor may be into another phase of her life.  Although previously she was ready, now she's pregnant.    

A Person or a Committee Does the Matching:  The Matchmaker Model. 

             The Matchmaker model is loosely based on the dating service model.  When you come to visit a clinic using this model, a person screens you and that same person screens the donors.   The interview is the critical piece in this model. Prior to this important interview, The clinic asks that you complete a form listing both of your characteristics, as well as your expectations about your donor’s characteristics.  During this interview, the donor coordinator uses this form as a starting-off point.  From that list, the donor coordinator informs you what expectations are realistic and how long the wait for that particular donor might be.  During the interview, the coordinator spends several hours observing you and your partner. Then all of you together draw up a working list of essential characteristics that are possessed by your donor-to-be. When an appropriate donor is recruited, the coordinator presents this match to you.  Important to the success of this model is a donor coordinator who is able to listen and observe well, help you figure out what is really important to you, and can carefully screen donors in an equally significant donor interview.  

            When we do our work, we use the Dating Service Model.  (Maybe we like this model because the two of us met through a Personal Ad in New York Review of Books.).  After matching donors and recipients for almost ten years, we can say that this model is our favored modus operandi.  Before we meet with our potential recipients, we ask them to summarize their physical characteristics, education, and interests on a form we provide.  We also ask them to think about the "wish-list" characteristics and fill in a similarly detailed form.  Filling out the form is an exercise in and of itself.  We include the form on the next page.  Even if your clinic has its own form or has no form at all, we encourage you and your partner to complete the form separately and then use your responses to stimulate discussion between the two of you. 

Donor Matching Form

Assign a weight from 1 (not important) to 10 (extremely important) to each of the following donor characteristics. Please add comments when applicable.

            Many recipients tell us that they fill out the form separately from their partner and then come together and find out that they are shocked and surprised at the responses of their partner.  They also say that the form made them take stock of what really matters in a donor. We truly use the form as a starting point for a long and intensive discussion during which time may recipients are made aware of what really matters in their quest for parenting.  We review their ideas concerning ethnic and religious prejudices, the notion of heredity versus environment,  what life skills they value, what constitutes intelligence, what they consider beautiful, for example.  Then, we share with them our own personal experiences and the experiences of other recipients with views similar to theirs.

Pro's:  A trained person who knows both you and the donors does the matching.  You can have a realistic assessment of the time the process might take, based on your lists of essential characteristics.  The donor coordinator can help your figure out what really matters to you.  There is a person who has met all three of you and can talk about why the match is a good one.   

Con's.  Your coordinator may not match you with someone you find suitable.  The matching process is controlled by someone else.  The coordinator may have not correctly estimated the waiting time and you remain unmatched for months.  You may be presented with a donor who has yet to be medically screened.  You must accept the word and the judgement of the coordinator or others at the practice in terms of beauty of face and figure because the procedure is always anonymous.

Next in Line:  The Medical Model

            The Medical Model is based on the notion that egg donation is merely a medical procedure--the next step in your quest to have a baby.  As recipients, you provide the clinic using this model with a short list of essential characteristics, yours and the potential donor's.   The list of waiting recipients is dealt with fairly chronologically.  If you are the next person on the list, you get the next available donor who often may not match you physically or intellectually.  If you refuse the donor, the clinic may present you with another donor, but frowns on your refusing.  If you refuse, you go to the bottom of  the list or at least further down the line.  Implicit in this matching is that an egg is an egg is an egg.   

            At the clinic, you are encouraged to view your donor in much the same way that adoption agencies ask you to think about your birth mother--someone who facilitates the creation of a baby.  If you adopt a baby, you may not know much about the characteristics of your birth mother.  Physicians at the clinic view the donor as someone who will provide eggs to enable you to become pregnant and that environment plays a critical role in how the child turns out.  And, of course, you do get to use your husband's sperm to provide half of your child's gene pool.  And, you get to provide the uterine environment in which your baby is nurtured. 

Pro's.  Shorter wait, less complicated matching process. 

Con's. You may be presented with a donor whom you feel is a less than ideal match; you may have to balance your desire to be matched soon, with your feelings that the donor presented is less than ideal.   You may develop a reputation as "difficult" if you reject a donor.  Also implicit in this model is that, because the staff believes that the donor is merely facilitating the procedure, they may treat the donor as if she were not particularly important. 

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This page was last modified 06/03/03