The sort of feminism where rich women walk over poor women. Times article on egg 'donation'

That's only helpful in egg sharing. In other forms of egg donation there are no benefits to the donor to outweigh the risks

Is the issue though about the balance of benefits and risks for donors, rather than absolute risks of the procedures?

Obviously the NHS conducts egg collection many times every day. Young women are able to harvest their own eggs through the same procedures for the purposes of freezing.

My main concern is are the women who donate eggs fully informed of the possible medical complications?

Can anyone provide insight because the information I've seen is that egg harvesting can have many detrimental effects to the woman and her fertility.

I dont think anyone is saying it does. Rather the point is about exploitation. Why are you suggesting otherwise?

Which part of 'It's illegal to pay for egg donation in the UK' are you struggling with?

No matter how grievous one's losses and pain it can never justify exploitation or coercion or pressure to get what you want. It just can't.

@PencilsInSpace - Exploiting a loophole is not the same as having a right.

If something is not illegal, you pretty much have the right to do it. What you would describe as a loophole I would describe as women having the right to make legal choices over their own bodies.

I think you are right to be cautious about protecting womens agency.

But I also suspect lots of people on both sides who come to this without lived experience of infertility or pregnancy loss cannot really comprehend the primal forces at play, and the strength of the biological imperatives that arise in some situations, together with the long term and profound suffering that can accompany infertility and miscarriage. (I would have denounced this as offensive essentialism until experiencing it).

I think if there are non-exploitative forms of assisted reproduction involving gamete donation these are a social good. I am not commenting on surrogacy.

I think the arguments about what might constitute non-exploitative relations for donation are really nuanced and am grateful to you and the other thoughtful posters who are teasing out the complexity.

Obviously this debate takes place in the shadow of a massive infertility industry proiteering from the misery of infertility, pregnancy loss and poverty and I think the original post is out of line in pitting individual women against each other and in taking a cheap shot with the rich vs poor tag line. Plenty of recipients are poor too, hence the phenomenon of egg sharing.

The other thing that needs calling out is the wooly thinking about children. Kinship ties in the context of social care and fostering and adoption are not at all comparable to donation conception. I find lots of people, including some professionals, struggle to grip what donor conception is and isn't, and confuse it with surrogacy.

Assumptions made by evolutionary psychologists about the significance of genetics in family relations are being debunked in family research. Longtitudinal research is now available on child experiences of assisted conception from families who 'told' from an early age. Whilst not wanting to minimise anyone's indiviudal experiences of distress as a donor conceived person, the evidence from these does not point to adverse child outcomes.

I'm in the USA where it isn't illegal.

Oh right. That seems like it's going well.

However, if you prefer, call it 'claiming compensation to cover expenses'.

That wording is from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. They're the regulatory body for the fertility industry in the UK. They very specifically do not mean selling eggs or donating for financial incentive because as they point out at the start of the same paragraph, 'It's illegal to pay for egg donation in the UK.'

Whatever you call it, and wherever it happens, it's removing existing rights from people

Exploiting a loophole is not the same as having a right.

I'm in the USA where it isn't illegal. However, if you prefer, call it 'claiming compensation to cover expenses'. Whatever you call it, and wherever it happens, it's removing existing rights from people and you need a much stronger argument than has appeared so far.

And women who donate their eggs as part of their own IVF treatment and getting a discount on their own treatment is why I used the word 'incentives'.

Currently it is not illegal to donate eggs (whether for financial or other incentives

Selling eggs, or 'donating eggs for financial incentives' if you prefer, is currently illegal in the UK.

Compensation to cover costs - i.e. expenses - can be claimed but that is not the same thing, or at least it's not supposed to be.

It is already illegal to sell people. Currently it is not illegal to donate eggs (whether for financial or other incentives, and from your argument it seems that you would like to ban altruistic donations too). When you seek to remove currently-existing rights from people, in my opinion you need a stronger argument than "we sometimes decide some things should not be asked of people" even if there is a large group of people who oppose that thing. Again, that is an anti-choice argument. Who is 'we'? Doesn't include me and presumably doesn't include the people who donate and receive eggs. There need to be considerably stronger reasons than "they might regret it".

I agree and that's at the heart of the matter for me

A woman choosing an abortion is not the same as any woman being exploited, even voluntarily, for surrogacy while a child who cannot consent is also being exploited.

It's not the same argument at all, regarding abortion.

And it's not that women are uniquely vulnerable and susceptible to making "bad" decisions. It's that they are human beings, and as a society we sometimes decide that some things should not be asked of people. Eg that they should sell their body parts. Or that babies, children and adults should not be sold. Or that you can't consent to GBH.

I think @JustanotherMNSlapperTwat 's call for better counselling for both the donor and recipient of eggs is entirely reasonable - I have no idea to what degree (if at all) that happens now. Where I don't go along is the assumption that all women in this situation are uniquely vulnerable and susceptible to making bad decisions they will later regret. This is the same argument that is used to ban abortions. I don't think it applies universally to women and I think it pushes women towards lacking agency over their own lives, including the right to make decisions other people think they might regret.

I’d like to point out that painful or not, this is a stimulating thread. Thank you all for contributing.

I have no direct experience and my own opinions, but I’m interested in learning from you all. My opinions are being moulded!

One of my earliest objections to IVF was the creation of excess blastocysts (fertilised eggs if I’ve spelled it correctly- the pre embryo stage). Robert Winston pointed out that nature is extremely wasteful and that similar numbers of fertilised eggs fail to implant. I found that reassuring.

I want to legislate against vulnerable people having undue influence be used (money) into making a decision that they may later regret

In the same way that financial services can't just prey on vulnerable people to miss sell policies like they used to

I think the FCA definition of a vulnerable customer fits very well here

"A vulnerable customer is someone who, due to their personal circumstances, is especially susceptible to harm, particularly when a firm is not acting with appropriate levels of care."

I would personally like it to be banned altogether but if its not I would like there to be far tighter regulations around money, counselling, psychological assessments, cooling off periods etc.

I would also like to see the receiver of the donor eggs better protected. They should also recieve counselling, psychological assessments etc and I believe there should be a more thorough vetting process

I also think more generally there should be greater signposting within the IVF process to the fact that counselling is needed to decide whether to continue, rather than being treated as a medical problem that requires an escalating set of solutions until it is fixed.

And I think it's important that both the donor and the receiver are treated as vulnerable customers who are potentially more susceptible to making decisions they might regret if the fertility clinic is not acting with appropriate levels of care. Both men and women.

Personally though I would prefer it if embryos or genetic material with the potential to be a baby could not be given, bartered or bought because I don't think anyone has the right to a baby and I think the risks of exploitation are too large, and it's not a child centered approach it's an adult centred approach.

One of the arguments anti-choicers put forward for restricting abortions is that women having abortions might later regret it, or have risks to their mental health. Personally, that wasn't my experience of abortion.

You seem to be wanting to legislate against people making decisions they might later regret. The women on this thread made their clear choices and I respect them for it. Other women might make different choices and might or might not regret it. That shouldn't, in my opinion, make that choice illegal.

By the way, you can also claim expenses as a live organ donor in the UK. The law as written would seem roughly equivalent for donating a kidney and donating eggs.

The current UK law:

It's illegal to pay for egg donation in the UK. Egg donors can receive compensation of up to £750 per donation ‘cycle’ to cover their costs (a donation cycle is one complete round of treatment, at the end of which the eggs are collected and donated). However, you can claim more if your expenses for things like travel, accommodation and childcare are higher than this.

https://www.hfea.gov.uk/donation/donors/donating-your-eggs/

This incentive of paid 'expenses' is being used as a loophole in the law against paid egg donation, just as surrogacy 'expenses' are used as a loophole in the law against paid surrogacy. What additional expenses does a woman have if she is already undergoing a cycle for her own IVF? How is offering money off IVF if a woman donates eggs at the same time anything other than paying her for her eggs?

You speak as if at that point, a woman's egg donation carries no further risk, but there are women on this thread who have considered or gone through egg donation, who have clearly outlined the risk: if her own IVF fails she might be left coping not only with the pain of infertility but also with the knowledge that someone else has her genetic child while she is left childless.

Offering financial incentives is unethical because it encourages women to make choices they otherwise wouldn't and which go against their own welfare.

@PencilsInSpace - I was very careful to use the phrase "within the law" so arguments about donating other organs are irrelevant because those are already illegal.

You are arguing for the removal of an existing right. Is your argument based solely on the risks to women involved in egg donation or (if based on what you see as the ethics of gamete donation) do you include sperm donation in that? If it's based on the risks of egg donation, then you're also arguing that women shouldn't have the right to IVF treatment since most existing egg donation is a by-product of women having their own IVF treatment.

I agree that encouraging women who are not in the process of IVF already is undesirable because they are then exposing themselves to the risks involved in egg donation for no other reason than financial (although having said that there are examples of altruistic egg donation, often from siblings and I wonder if you think that is somehow different). However I don't agree that legislating against what women can do with their own eggs obtained under a legal procedure that they are doing anyway for their own benefit should be possible.

@Britinme There is no right to a child and there is no right to use other people's bodies without their consent. This seems to be arguing that people should not have the right to consent to the use of their bodies where that is legal, which is about as anti-choice as it gets.

This is a different argument again and reminds me of when people use 'pro-choice' in arguments about prostitution. So we have:

1. The right to bodily integrity (preventing or ending a pregnancy)

1. The right to a baby, or to use others' bodies in pursuit of one

1. The right to do whatever you want with your body / the right to 'consent' to anything*

You are arguing for 1 and 3 to be actual rights, but not 2.

I would argue that 3 is not and should not be a right either. You cannot consent to selling your organs, for example. It could be argued that most kidney transplants are successful and most live kidney donors continue to live normal, healthy lives and can greatly benefit from the money, so as long as the donor consents then what's the problem?

Is it 'anti-choice' to have laws against this? Or can we recognise that allowing people to consent to selling their organs results in a huge international trade that harms poor and vulnerable people, mostly women?

This whole focus on 'choice' and 'consent', to the exclusion of other considerations, is how we ended up with totally useless third-wave choicy-choicy feminism, with the idea that you cannot criticise anything a woman does if it's her 'choice', that as long as a woman 'consents' to [insert horrific practice] then all is fine and dandy and empowerfulising so we shouldn't criticise it.

*I know you said 'the right to consent to the use of their bodies where that is legal' but surely the issue is what should be legal in the first place.