Perspectives of Canadian Oocyte Donors and Recipients on Donor Compensation and the Establishment of a Personal Health Information Registry

We report the views of 33 women who were involved in an altruistic
oocyte donation program about provisions under Canada’s Assisted
Human Reproduction Act 2004 to prohibit donor compensation and
to establish a Personal Health Information Registry. The participants
had been either donors of oocytes to a recipient known to them (15)
or recipients of such donation (18) through services provided by a
clinic in a large Canadian city, and they each participated in a semistructured
face-to-face or telephone interview. Among the 15 donor
participants, seven were friends of the recipient, six were sisters, one
was a niece of the recipient, and one donor donated twice, once to
her sister and once to a friend. In eight cases the donor and recipient
participated in interviews independently. At the time of interview, 11
of the 25 separate cases had resulted in a live birth and one in an
ongoing pregnancy, so that “successful” and “unsuccessful” donations
were equally represented among participants. While divergent
views were reported among and between donors and recipients on
an altruistic model versus a compensated model of donation, most
participants largely endorsed the establishment of a personal health
information registry.