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Egg donation opens new doors to parenthood for those facing fertility challenges and LGBTQ+ families. Our dedicated team at PCRM is committed to guiding you through this transformative process with utmost care and expertise. Our egg donation program provides a beacon of hope, offering a pathway to parenthood by connecting intended parents with generous and compassionate egg donors.
Donor eggs are an increasingly common fertility treatment option. The most common reasons why patients choose donor eggs are:
Anonymous Egg Donation
Donor eggs can come from an ‘anonymous’ donor or a ‘known’ donor. Anonymous donor eggs are the most common route. This process involves using an egg bank to purchase frozen eggs, which are then shipped to PCRM for fertilization with sperm. Because it is illegal to pay donors for their eggs in Canada, donor eggs come from banks in the United States, where women are allowed to be financially compensated.
Our third-party coordinators will help you create a profile with which you’ll be able to browse online to search for potential donors. The egg banks provide a wealth of information about donors such as photos, medical history, genetic testing, and infectious disease screening results. Once you order your eggs, they usually take 1 – 3 weeks to ship to PCRM. The eggs can be fertilized with your partner’s or a donor’s sperm to create embryos. After the embryo has grown for 5 days in our laboratory, a blastocyst embryo is transferred into the uterus and extra embryos are frozen for future use.
Known Egg Donation
A ‘Known’ egg donor is when a friend or family member chooses to give you eggs. This is legal in Canada provided that the rules laid out in the Assisted Human Reproduction Act and by Health Canada are strictly adhered to. The biggest difference between donor eggs in Canada and the USA is that Canada does not permit payment for eggs, sperm, or surrogacy services. That means your donor must be altruistic and only receipt-able expenses can be paid (e.g. fertility treatment, medications).
Your donor would have to undergo a standard IVF cycle, including injections of ovarian stimulation medications and an egg retrieval procedure. The eggs would then be fertilized with the intended father’s sperm or with donor sperm, and the resulting embryos transferred into the intended mother’s uterus.
Anyone undergoing third-party reproduction is required to see a counselor with expertise in assisted reproduction before starting a cycle. Our coordinators can help you arrange this visit.
PCRM works with the following validated egg banks:
My Egg Bank
Donor Egg Bank USA
Asian Egg Bank (access through CAN-AM Cryo)
Fairfax Egg Bank (access through
Note: Some banks may require additional information from PCRM before viewing donor profiles. Please contact one of our third-party coordinators for more information.
“PCRM Burnaby was recognized as one of the highest-performing fertility centres in North America by Donor Egg Bank USA!”
Check out the following links for articles about donor eggs, written by our doctors:
Babies born through egg donation get their DNA from the egg donor who provides the egg as well as whoever provides the sperm. As such, the baby may share physical characteristics with the egg donor, the sperm provider, or both. In many cases, aspiring parents choose egg donors who share similar characteristics to themselves, so it is still possible for a baby born through egg donation to look like the intended mother.
Some egg donor agencies and banks provide pictures of their egg donors as part of the egg donor profile. In some cases, this may include adult pictures, in other cases, only baby or childhood pictures.
The process of choosing an egg donor is very personal and specific to each and every intended parent. In general, most aspiring parents seeking donor eggs choose their egg donors based on a combination of physical characteristics and personality traits, details of which are included in the egg donor’s profile.
Conceiving with donor eggs is made possible through in vitro fertilization (IVF). If using frozen donor eggs from an egg bank (the most common route), the eggs will be thawed and fertilized with the intended parent’s chosen sperm. The resulting embryo is allowed to develop for about five days before being transferred into the uterus of the intended mother or a gestational carrier.
Our team welcomes the opportunity to discuss possible treatment paths with you, including egg donation.
