Melissa Lafsky has an interesting post on egg “donors.” It was informative to be sure, I didn’t know that it was considered illegal to sell ova, though there are established legal work-arounds. I also didn’t know just how elaborate a process donation was. I obviously understood that it took a bit more difficulty than sperm donation (shit, we do have it easy don’t we), but it seems truly undesirable, and makes one somewhat uncomfortable that usually a donor submits to this for financial reasons, though I’m not one to consider such choices exploitative or outlaw them.
Discussing the shortcomings of a panel discussion on this topic, she notices what isn’t said:
But when it came to the messy internal aspects — whether or not it felt exploitative to sell a piece of their genetic material, whether or not it was humiliating, frightening, or painful to manipulate their bodies with constant drugs and surgeries, whether or not it bothered them to produce genetic offspring that they’d never know or raise — there was nary a word.
On one hand, the aspect of selling one’s genetic material and not knowing or raising offspring, is something that would equally be faced by sperm donors. On the other hand, that these aspects are not unique to egg donors, unlike the toll on the body, does not reduce their importance to the discussion. Certainly the thought that “my” children might be out there if I were a donor is one reason I’m not likely to donate, though inertia is probably just as responsible.
However, there is another thing that may not have been said that seems at least as relevant to me. My impression that much of the demand for egg donations would come from women who want children but no longer can have a child themselves (due to age or illness). The demand would increase as a result of more women putting off starting a family. The use of surrogate mothers (potentially adding not wanting the inconvenience of a pregnancy to the earlier list of reasons) would similarly seem to be increased due to more women putting work priorities over family desires.
I don’t suggest this to say women should stop working and focus on family, but it is important to realize that as a result of this social shift, more young women are making financial decisions to be surrogates or donate ova, despite the discomfort or risk. Considering that, especially in the case of surrogates, this would seem to jeopardize their own pursuit of career or select among the otherwise disadvantaged, pushing off physical reproduction costs from successful women to less successful women is somewhat exploitative, though the compensation would in theory be structured to make it beneficial for the donor/surrogate and resolve the exploitation the same way we deal with other tough physical labor.
I don’t suggest any legal changes (except I suppose removing the legal shadow over egg donation), but this ramification of social changes, with women working more as well as marrying and starting families later, would certainly suggest more focus on adoption while there are still individuals that are in need of being adopted. This way the desire for children is resolved by effort already borne by society rather than creating new effort.
