For Immediate Release:
Monday, October 16, 2023 11:56 AM CT

Highlights From the American Society For Reproductive Medicine’s 2023 Scientific Congress

New Orleans, LA – Research presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s (ASRM) Scientific Congress Researchers from the University of California, seeking to shed light on the experience of donor-conceived adults (DCAs) who were raised in openness, have studied the impact of DCA experiences post-donor identification in the cases where open-identity donation was utilized. The motivation, researchers claim, was to promote the fact that understanding DCA experiences can help gamete donation programs and mental health professionals support DC people, donors, and other stakeholders through this new experience. Through structured, anonymous interviews, researchers found that participants were “positive about the experience of learning the donor’s identity and contacting them. Most considered the relationship somewhat distant while some developed closer friend or family relationships.”

Researchers across the US collaborated in this longitudinal study utilizing a randomized-control style to understand gamete and embryo donation recipient parents’ decisions when they co-create a TELLING plan within the digital TELL Tool intervention to inform their children, 1-16 years, about their birth origins. The compiled data suggests that insight into parents’ underlying decisions provides a “foundational understanding about parents’ preferences and the types of decision support that parents need to facilitate disclosure to their children.” Researchers claim future research with a larger sample size that explores correlations between disclosure and parents’ decisions is their next step.

• O-39 Scheib et al “Now What? Donor-Conceived Adult Feelings And Choices A􀅌er Learning TheDonor’s Identity Through An Open-Identity Program”
• O-41 Hershberger et al “A First Look At Parents Sequential Decisions When Co-Creating A TellingPlan To Inform Their Donor Conceived Children About Their Birth Origins: Results From The TellTool Intervention Trial”

“Empirical, data-driven research like this serves to reinforce the value of early disclosure to offspring of the circumstances of their conception,” said Paula Amato, MD, incoming President of ASRM.

To view these abstracts and more in full, please visit: https://www.fertstert.org/issue/S0015-0282(23)X0012-0