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(sz) Women in Chicago hoping to have an Asian baby through in vitro fertilization may find the road to motherhood longer than they expected. Some local egg donor agencies advertise for donors of Asian heritage, but finding those donors proves to be difficult.
“There is much more demand for Asian donors than there is availability of Asian donors,” said Dr. Richard Sherbahn, founder of the Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago. “Our list of available egg donors will generally include many Caucasian and Hispanic women, a few African American women, and sometimes one Asian.”
Asian couples, like every other ethnic group, typically seek an ethnic match when considering in vitro fertilization. This makes it even more difficult for a couple to find a donor agency that can provide them with eggs.
“Quite often the Asian couples have a strong preference to use an Asian donor of the same ethnicity as their own,” Sherbahn said. “For example, when we had both a Japanese and a Korean woman on our egg donor list we had a Chinese couple that ended up using an egg donor agency in Los Angeles to find a Chinese donor for them.”
“We look for donors [by] nationalities,” said Mary Fowler, in vitro fertilization coordinator at the Center for Human Reproduction in Oakbrook Terrace. “We don’t have as many Asian egg donors, so when they come along we try to grab them as we can. We have a lot of Asian recipients who have been waiting a long time.” more…

From: »Medill Reports«

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 08:00 by Stephan Zapf and is filed under General, Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.