What's the difference between donation and adoption?

Embryo donation and embryo adoption programs specifically differentiate themselves by the label of either donation or adoption.

Donation programs are generally managed by fertility clinics and receive donated embryos to be given anonymously to whomever the clinic chooses. Adoption programs give the donating family the option of choosing the receiving family and mutually determining the level of future interaction between families.

However, the clients of both programs use the terms in a different and more generic way. Typically, placing or donating parents tend to use the term 'donation', while receiving or adopting couples tend to use the term 'adoption'. The basis for this is largely psychological.

Donation is used in the sense of 'giving a gift' and offers an emotional separation from the embryos that the phrase 'placing for adoption' does not. Yet for the family wanting to parent the children born from such a gift, the term 'adoption' makes more emotional sense. It is the term that both legally and socially explains the transfer of parental rights associated with traditional adoption. Adoption also helps to describe and explain to their child the way in which they became a family, since children are 'adopted' rather than 'donated'. Donation programs generally recieve anonymous donated embryos to be given to whomever the clinic chooses. Adoption programs give the donating family the option of choosing the receiving family and self-determining the level of future interaction between families.

Most of the time the terms are used interchangably like the words lawyer and attorney.