Third-party reproduction

For over 50 years, our team of researchers, scientists, and clinicians has worked toward supporting every person’s dream of becoming a parent. With our robust third-party reproduction services, we offer every option to build the family you want. Whether you want to have a child without a partner or need alternative methods to create a family, we have a solution.

No matter which option you choose, with Penn Medicine fertility and reproductive care, you can expect:

• Compassionate, personalized care: We listen to you, understand your goals, and create a customized care plan to help you achieve them.
• Specialty-trained experts: Our care team includes board-certified and fellowship-trained reproductive endocrinology and fertility specialists. We have a depth of knowledge and experience to address the most complex fertility challenges.
• State-of-the-art facilities: Our on-site embryology lab safely stores donor eggs, sperm, and embryos with the latest technology and 24/7 security.

Donor eggs offer people with female infertility, same-sex male couples, and people using a gestational carrier an opportunity to have a child. You can choose eggs from a friend, family member, or anonymous donor. We fertilize the eggs with sperm (from you, your partner, or a donor) and create embryos through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in our lab.

Our IVF and assisted reproduction specialists guide you through the process of selecting a donor, pretreatment evaluations, embryo transfer, and IVF.

We offer two choices for donor eggs:

• Fresh egg donation: The egg donor undergoes ovulation induction, which stimulates their ovaries to produce several eggs at one time. Our team retrieves the eggs and creates embryos for IVF.
• Frozen egg bank: We can provide frozen eggs for embryo creation through our own egg bank or MyEggBank, a national network of donor egg banks.

Donor sperm helps couples facing male infertility, same-sex female couples and female individuals build their families. You have two options for obtaining donor sperm: anonymous and known sperm donors.

If you choose anonymous sperm donation, we’ll connect you with a reputable, certified sperm bank that will walk you through the sperm selection process. For sperm donation by known donors (family members or friends), we can help you obtain a legal donor contract before completing the donation.

All sperm donors go through an extensive screening process that includes:

• Medical history review
• Screening for genetic and infectious diseases and mental health conditions
• Testing for drug and alcohol abuse

Before using donated sperm to create embryos, we analyze it to ensure its health and quality. We can freeze and store sperm after donation, and you can use frozen sperm from the same donor in multiple IVF or intrauterine insemination (IUI) treatments.

Donor embryos

We offer donor embryos as a third-party reproductive service for females who are unsuccessful in getting pregnant with their own eggs. Donor embryos can also help females who have had multiple pregnancy losses.

Embryos are donated by people who have gone through the IVF process at Penn Medicine. After they complete their families, they have the option to anonymously donate unused embryos to others for their own IVF treatments.

We provide you with the profiles and medical history of the donating couple to help you choose the embryo(s) you will use. Because we feel embryo selection is an important and personal decision, we do not match you to an embryo.

Gestational carriers

Gestational carriers are females who carry a pregnancy for another person or couple, like same-sex male couples using donor eggs. Females may choose a gestational carrier if conditions like infertility or pre-existing heart or other health issues make carrying a pregnancy difficult.

We use IVF to facilitate pregnancy, using your eggs, your partner’s sperm, donor eggs, or donor sperm. We don’t use eggs donated from the gestational carrier, and she doesn’t have a genetic link to the child. Alternatively, you may choose to use donor embryos.

Penn Medicine doesn’t match you to a gestational carrier, but we can help connect you to a qualified agency and legal experts to help you find a match.