Gamete donation offers a unique opportunity to compare men and women's relationships to reproductive decision-making, unlike other reproductive processes, which typically involve women's bodies much more asymmetrically. I address medical and reproductive decision-making by examining how a gamete donor's partner may be involved in the donation process. Some countries explicitly involve a donor's partner by legally requiring spousal consent for donation, but this is not the case for the U.S. In the absence of any formal regulation, what are the expectations for involving a donor's partner? Through a content analysis of materials from donation programs across the U.S., I examine how donation programs configure the partner's role. Overall, I find that there are quite different expectations for partner involvement in egg versus sperm donation. Such differences, I argue, both stem from and reinforce existing issues navigating boundaries between intimate relationships and women's medical and reproductive autonomy.
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It is worth commenting here on the possibility that the egg donor’s husband might be declared the father of the donor-conceived child via the marital presumption of paternity. This is a slim possibility that would require at minimum the following: 1) the egg donor would have to be found the legal mother, thereby extending the possibility of the marital presumption of paternity to her husband, given that he was not biologically related to the child, and 2) the sperm provider (whether donor or the recipient’s spouse/partner) would need to be declared a non-parent in order to allow another man to be declared the legal father. Case law precedent suggests that it is highly unlikely an egg donor will attain legal maternity, thereby closing off the possibility of her spouse’s paternity. In two separate cases involving egg donation (In re C.K.G., [173 S.W. 3d 714 (Tn 2005)]; McDonald v. McDonald, [196 A.D. 2d 7, 608 N.Y.S.2d 477 (1994)]) two different couples dissolved their relationships and the legal fathers attempted to declare that their ex-partners were not the legal mothers of the children in question. Both decisions found that the gestational mothers who intended to parent were the legal mothers. In another case, a woman attempted to reduce her former partner’s parental status to egg donor. In KM v. EG, [117 P. 3d 673 - Cal: Supreme Court 2005], a lesbian couple dissolved their relationship and E.G. attempted to declare that K.M. was an egg donor, not a parent to their 5-year old twins that were born using K.M.’s eggs and E.G. gestating. Because both women had a biological tie to the children the Court examined the intentions of the parties and the de facto relationships among all involved and found that K.M. was a legal parent of the twins. This represents a case where a purported egg donor did achieve parental status, but only because they were not truly a donor to begin with—their ex-partner was simply trying to deny this status.
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