updates
Progress on the study
In August 2023 we finished our interviews with 53 participants.
By April 2024, we finished all of our transcriptions and contacted participants with copies of narrative summaries to make sure we got their stories right.
Throughout the spring and summer of 2024, we coded and analyzed the interviews and began to analyze the findings. We also started to present some of the preliminary results at conferences and workshops across Canada (see the list of publications and presentations below).
As of December 2024, we are writing up the findings and developing tools for clinics, counsellors, lawyers, and most importantly, egg donors to improve their experiences.
Other updates!
We have also developed a few other outputs that might be of interest to you!
One is from sociology students at York University who created a video story called “My Eggsperience” about what it is like to donate your eggs.
We also developed an interactive story/game that you can play about donating your eggs that draws from some of the stories we heard in the interviews. It is still a work in progress, but you can play it here.
publications and presentations
Alana Cattapan. "The Receipts: Reimbursing Egg Donors in Canada." Governing Reproduction: Exploring Law and Policy. Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics, University of Ottawa. Ottawa, ON. 22 November 2024
Alana Cattapan (w/ Anya Johson Poon). "Reconfiguring Kin: Egg Donation and Reproductive Autonomy." Assisted Reproduction in Canada: Research Notes from the Field. Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University. 10 October, 2024.
Alana Cattapan. "Reconfiguring Kin: Egg Donation as Family Making." Atlantic Provinces Political Studies Association Annual Conference 2024. Mount Allison University. Sackville, NB. 28 September, 2024.
Alana Cattapan (w/ Kathleen Hammond and Vanessa Gruben). Exploring Canadians' Experiences of Assisted Reproduction: A Snapshot of Current Empirical Research Studies. Centre for Feminist Legal Studies, University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. 15 May 2024. (virtual)
Alana Cattapan. Considérations juridiques pour les donneuses d’ovules. Aux marges de la procréation médicalement assistée : nouvelles populations, techniques et normes. Acfas, Ottawa, ON. 14 Mai 2024.
Alana Cattapan (w/ Kathleen Hammond and Vanessa Gruben). “Ova Obscura: Egg Donors in Canada” (initial analysis on legal agreements). Feminist Law and the Family. Osgoode Law School, Toronto, ON, Canada. 10 May 2024.
Alana Cattapan. “Lab-Made Gametes in the Clinic: Who Would Benefit? Who Should Decide?” Biopolitical Times. 19 June 2023.
Alana Cattapan. “Ova Obscura: Egg Donors in Canada.” Conception and Its Discontents. Motherhood and Technology Group, Columbia Centre for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University, New York, New York, US. 8 May 2023.
Alana Cattapan (panellist). In Vitro Derived Human Gametes as a Reproductive Technology. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, Washington DC, US. 20 April 2023.
Vanessa Gruben, Kathleen Hammond, and Alana Cattapan. “Empirical Research on Assisted Reproduction in Canada.” Politics of Reproduction Speakers’ Series, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada.13 January 2023.