Embryo Adoption

The Office of Population Affairs (OPA), within the Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) is responsible for administering the embryo adoption public awareness campaign grants and cooperative agreements, which have the shared goal of increasing public awareness of embryo donation and/or adoption. The increasing success of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has resulted in a situation in which an infertile couple typically creates several embryos through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). There are an estimated 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States. During IVF treatments, couples may produce many embryos for attempt at becoming pregnant with several being cryopreserved (frozen) for future use. If a couple becomes pregnant without using all of the stored embryos, they may choose to release the remaining unused embryos for donation and adoption allowing other infertile couples the experience of pregnancy and birth. Embryo donation and/or adoption is a relatively new process in which individuals who have extra frozen embryos agree to release the embryos for transfer to the uterus of another woman, either known or anonymous to the donor(s) for the purpose of the recipient(s) attempting to bear a child and be that child's parent. The purpose of the grant program is to increase awareness of embryo donation/adoption as a family building option.