To become pregnant, a woman must first produce a healthy egg using the procedure of egg donation. But some women have poor quality eggs or no eggs at all. It's difficult for these women to become pregnant or carry their pregnancies to term. While adoption has long been a viable option, some women consider other reproductive options, including the use of donor eggs.

Each year, approximately 100,000 women go through the process of egg donation having their eggs harvested. Of those 100,000 women, about 10 percent do so to become egg donors. The other 90 percent go through egg donation for their own treatments.

egg donation is the process of egg donation by which a woman provides one or several (usually 10-15) eggs (ova, oocytes) for purposes of assisted reproduction or biomedical research. For assisted reproduction purposes, egg donation involves the process of in vitro fertilization as the eggs are fertilized in the laboratory. After the eggs have been obtained, the role of the egg donor is complete. egg donation is part of the process of third party reproduction as part of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology). The ASRM (American Society of Reproductive Medicine) has issued guidelines for these procedures including egg donation, and the FDA has a number of guidelines as well. There are boards in countries outside of the US who have the same regulations for egg donation.

The first transfer of a fertilized egg from one human to another resulting in pregnancy was reported in July 1983 and subsequently led to the announcement of the first egg-donation-produced human birth on February 3, 1984. This procedure and the egg donation itself was performed at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center under the direction of Dr. John Buster and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine.

In the procedure, a fertilized egg (egg donation) that was just beginning to develop was transferred from one woman in whom it had been conceived by artificial insemination to another woman who gave birth to the infant 38 weeks later. The sperm used in the artificial insemination came from the husband of the woman who bore the baby.

This scientific breakthrough established standards and changed the outlook for those who were unable to have children due to infertility or were at high risk for passing on genetic disorders. Donor oocytes and embryo transfer (egg donation) has given women a mechanism to become pregnant and give birth to a child that will be their biological child, but not their genetic child (assuming that the recipient woman carries the baby.) In many cases, a gestational surrogate (+egg donation) is used, and the embryos are implanted into her, per an agreement with the recipients. Oocyte and egg donation as practiced today now accounts for approximately 5% of in vitro fertilization recorded births.

Another beneficiary of egg donation and this technology is the gay parent community. Surrogacy has enabled gay men to have biological children.

Prior to the possibility of egg donation, thousands of women who were infertile, single men and gay couples had adoption as the only path to parenthood. This set the stage to allow open and candid discussion of oocyte and egg donation as a common practice. This breakthrough has given way to egg donation-the donation of human oocytes and embryos as a common practice similar to other donations such as blood and major organ donations. At the time of this announcement the event was captured by major news carriers and fueled healthy debate and discussion on this practice which impacted the future of reproductive medicine by creating a platform for further advancements in woman's health.

This work established the technical foundation and legal-ethical framework surrounding the clinical use of human oocyte and egg donation, a mainstream clinical practice, which has evolved over the past 25 years. Building upon this groundbreaking research and since the initial birth announcement in 1984, well over 47,000 live births resulting from donor oocyte embryo transfer have been and continue to be recorded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States to infertile women, who otherwise would not have had children by any other existing method but egg donation.

The process of egg donation is done today in other countries as well, but many couples come to the U.S. due to laws in many other countries which severely limit or prohibit compensation given to an egg donor during egg donation. Since this process is so invasive (much more so than its counterpart, sperm donation), the lack of compensation results in an extreme dearth of young women willing to go through this procedure (egg donation).