Meet the owner of an agency that matches Jewish women in America who need eggs with Israeli women willing to donate them.

by Rebecca Honig Friedman

Ruth Tavor has a knack for finding one of New York City’s hottest commodities–-Jewish egg donors-which is why she started NY LifeSpring, an agency specializing in matching Jewish women in America who need eggs with Israeli women who are willing to donate them. But Tavor works hard not to treat the donors she recruits, or their eggs, as commodities or products. “For me, it’s still all about people,” she says.

It is no wonder that Tavor, an Israeli, decided to start the agency for personal reasons. She and her husband, David Fogle, conceived their second child while living in New York with the help of a donated egg. She knows what it feels like to be in her clients’ situation, and what it feels like to be at the mercy of busy professionals who “forget why they do what they do.”

Having conceived her first child at age 35 without a problem, Tavor was shocked to find, just several months later, that having a second child was not so easy. “I must have used my last viable egg,” she says. After trying infertility treatments with no success, Tavor decided to look for an egg donor. But waiting lists were long and the pool of Jewish donors small. Frustrated and impatient, Tavor took matters into her own hands and went straight to the source: Israel. She placed ads in Israeli newspapers and soon had about 25 Israeli women eager to be her donor.

After finally getting pregnant, she wondered why hospitals had not thought of looking to Israel for donors. But they had tried, her doctors told her, without success. Ruth had tapped into the personal element –- one Israeli woman asking for help from other Israeli women –- and it had worked. Her doctors encouraged her to start an agency to help other women in her situation. But knowing nothing about the business or legal aspects of the process, Tavor needed help.

An idea is hatched

Enter Melissa Brisman, a New Jersey-based lawyer in private practice, specializing in reproductive law. Like Tavor, Brisman had come to the industry via personal experience, having had twin boys using a surrogate. She helped Tavor through the lengthy process of obtaining a license for NY LifeSpring, which was officially incorporated in 2002. Brisman still works with Tavor, particularly on cases involving gestational carriers, which is a much more involved process and is illegal in New York City. Tavor relies on Brisman, who is based in New Jersey, for her familiarity with the process and with the local institutions in the state.

But most of Tavor’s business involves recruiting Israeli women to donate eggs for mostly American women who cannot conceive with their own. No one is sure why Israeli women are more willing to donate their eggs than American Jewish women seem to be, but Tavor has her theories. Young Israeli women have been through the army (many of Tavor’s recruits are recent army graduates who are traveling in America before beginning University), which she thinks makes them more adventurous and more mature. “They can make a decision,” she says, as opposed to the few American women she’s worked with, who she found to be less committed to the process. Though Brisman says American women tend to be busier, which might explain why they would be more distracted from the process. Israeli donors come to the States specifically to donate; if they are already in the States, they are usually unattached to a job or school, so their time is more their own.

The truth is Tavor prefers working with Israeli donors because, as an Israeli herself, she understands them better. “I have no idea about Americans,” she admits. Since she connects better with Israelis, she can trust them and earn their trust, which she says is the most important part of the process. In fact, Tavor screens her donors particularly for their “emotional intelligence,” recently turning away one otherwise qualified candidate because “she was too cold.”

Finding the right partner

Tavor’s partner in the emotional/psychological screening process is Dr. Patricia Mendell, a psychologist who serves on the board of the American Fertility Association and specializes in working with patients on reproductive issues. Keeping with what is clearly a trend, Mendell also got into the field as a result of her personal experiences using reproductive technologies to have children…twice! The second time around was a lot easier, she explains, because she was already educated about her options and knew the right questions to ask.

Asking the right questions is something she stresses with her clients. In addition to standard psychological evaluation tests like the Minnesota Personality Inventory—which screens for major pathology –- Mendell asks potential donors probing questions to get them to understand and consider the broader implications that donating may have for their lives later on and to think through whether egg donation is right for them. “It’s not about luring donors,” she says, the process “has to be comfortable for both donor and recipient.” For example, she asks each potential donor to consider how she would feel if a stranger knocked on her door in twenty years claiming to be her child.

Tavor likes to work with Mendell in particular because she is fluent in Hebrew and can administer the involved psychological testing to her donors in their native language. But, Mendell says, she sometimes serves as a liaison between Tavor and her American clients, acting as an interpreter of cultural differences and an advocate for the needs of the recipients.

Dealing with cultural conflicts

These cultural differences, particularly between recipients and donors, have been an issue. The Israeli donors tend to be put off by the lawyers and contracts that many American couples insist on having as part of the egg donation process. Tavor found that some matches were falling through because the donor was scared off or offended by legalese that they felt treated them as if they were taking part in a cold business transaction, more akin to selling a car than to the human affair of making babies. “You can’t treat the donor like she’s the enemy, as if she’s up to something,” Tavor says, “because she’s not.” To assuage her donors’ sensitivities, she asked Brisman to write a more friendly contract, which is shorter and states in simple language that the donor does not have any claim to—or any obligation for—the baby that might be produced from her eggs; and, most importantly for Tavor, the contract says the donor is doing a good deed and “makes her feel she’s doing it from the heart.” Tavor insists that her clients who require a contract use Brisman’s, and so far no one has had a problem with it.

Tavor has learned that she must be particularly protective of her donors—who are more likely than recipients to be neglected by clinic staff—in order for the process to succeed. It is crucial to the cycle “that women feel cared for and at ease,” she says, because their emotional state can affect their physical cycle, and this is equally true for the recipient and the donor. So she tries to minimize stress on all her clients and to keep their spirits up.

Toward that end, she is “delighted with the combination” she has formed with Mendell and Brisman. “You have to have faith and trust in the whole process,” she says, and together they can provide that for their clients.

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