What’s the general MN verdict on donor eggs?

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The general critical re-examination of surrogacy is quite evident, and I have my own views on that, which I’ll keep quiet for the purposes of this thread.

Now I find myself chewing over other fertility treatment. I’ve had fertility treatment myself and so have family members. So I have a sense of how private clinics put you on a conveyor belt and normalise things.

What is the general view on donor eggs & embryos (implanted into the birth mother and gestated by her)?

Im trying really hard not to bias the result so have tossed a coin to assign YABU/YANBU to viewpoints. Don’t read into that.

YANBU = Donor gametes are ethically fine.
YABU = Donor gametes are problematic.

any opinion different to yours is uneducated, sure.

I am totally for altruistic egg donation.

I recently donated eggs to a friend who suffers from premature ovarian failure. It was not an easy ride and I absolutely wouldn’t do it for a stranger. the physical strain it put on my body was tough, and logistically it was very difficult fitting appointments etc in around work.
I don’t feel comfortable with incentivising egg donation; I feel it treats womens bodies as a commodity and it makes me uncomfortable.
But for a friend who was going through the agony of infertility, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Who are we to judge others? If a woman is happy and willing to give another woman the chance of motherhood then I'm all for it. As long as they are not coerced into doing it

Depends really. I was adopted as a newborn Baby. Believe me I do not feel a loss from being separated from my biological mother. Neither does my Sister and she was just under a year when we adopted her. For a child who was taken off their parents at a much older age, fostered and then adopted then they might feel some sort of loss I suppose

I understand why a thread like this is hard for the parents of donor conceived children, but I don’t think that means people shouldn’t be able to discuss it. However hard this is for parents of donor conceived children, the rights of the children conceived matter more. There should be constant research done to improve wherever possible the situation and outcomes for children born from donor gametes and/or surrogacy.

Pretending there aren’t ethical considerations because it’s painful to the parents does a huge disservice to the children. Acknowledging this has led to changes in ensuring that the donors are available for children to contact should they wish, shared learning in the best way to discuss children’s conception with them and will lead to more discoveries in the future, which will make each generation of donor conceived children have a better experience than the last.

I don’t agree with the emotive “well you’ve obviously never experienced infertility” line which is often used to shut down discussion.

Where do we draw that line? Plenty of people have never experienced liver/kidney/heart failure, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for people who have to buy organs in less ethical countries? Just because someone hasn’t experienced it doesn’t mean they’re not entitled to an opinion on it.

In fact having experienced infertility for instance, it could be argued that the person is too close to the situation and their opinion is emotional rather than objective.

I’m in heart failure. Should my desire to live, which let’s face it is a primal thing, be a valid reason to travel to a country where a heart could be bought for the right price?

Or let’s make it simpler.

Someone’ has to die to get a heart, so let’s say someone in kidney failure could travel abroad to buy a kidney from someone who has sold one. Is that ok?

Because donor children are the sae, in fact I’d say it’s worse, because there is another human. Being in this mix who hasn’t consented to growing up in what is essentially a step family.

Sorry but it’s utterly outrageous to say that people are only allowed an opinion on something that they have personally done. People who have done this will of course all agree it’s ok - what about the many people who have researched it and decided against it, are they not allowed an opinion because it disagrees with yours?

There are a few very defensive posters on this thread - understandable to a degree if you feel your child’s existence is being questioned. But to take that view is to say that only bringing babies into the world, at any cost, is what matters. That’s awful. The women donating eggs matter. The women who may have been coerced, like when vulnerable women undergoing fertility treatment are offered a discount if they donate eggs…that sort of thing is hideous and it’s disgusting it’s allowed. It’s an uncomfortable truth that people shouldn’t be allowed to go to any lengths to have a baby, that they’re not entitled to one at any cost.

There are significant ethical questions around this issue and it’s absolutely unfair to shriek at posters debating those points that they can’t have an opinion or that they wish your child didn’t exist (see another PP).

Infertility is awful, but the answer isn’t to engage in ethically questionable (at best) activities which take advantage of vulnerable women’s bodies.

I am personally not fully against egg donation in the same way as surrogacy as I don’t believe it’s as harmful to the babies born, but I do believe it should be far more regulated and the predators offering discounts to vulnerable women going through ivf if they hand over eggs, should absolutely be banned. Children should also, I think, have absolute transparency over their genetic origins and have full access to their genetic mother’s medical records.

We used a clinic in another European country to find an egg donor. The law there is that gamete donation must be anonymous. I can't speak for all parents who had their children this way, but I thought long and hard about the ethical issues - more so, I suspect, than friends and family members who did it "the natural way". Our daughter knows all about how she was conceived. I heard her explaining it to a classmate on a Teams chat once! (She's 9).

The barriers erected in the way of infertile people in the UK accessing treatment are largely to blame for "fertility tourism".

Donor children are the same

Indeed.

I really think this is a topic that is incredibly hard to relate to or understand unless you have been through infertility yourself.

If you are not infertile, you really can't imagine how that feels and the impact of it.

I've seen this from both sides and personally I would have answered this question differently before experiencing infertility than after.

Did you consider the impact on the donor woman though, and not just the baby? Did you have 100% cast iron certainty that she wasn’t in any way vulnerable and was donating for altruistic reasons with no financial benefit? Did she come from a poorer background/country?

Yes, no, don't know. Anonymous!

But people seem to only be thinking of the baby stage.

What about the child, the teenager, the adult who has questions around where they come from, who they’re related to, whether the girl down the road could be biologically related to them.

The laws surrounding anonymity of donation were changed for very valid, reasons, because these children want to know where they’ve come from.

Even if they’ve grown up in a loving family that’s not enough for many of them, and they want to know where they’ve really come from.

Which is why the law changed in the U.K. in 2005. It seems to me to be a good compromise - to ensure that children born via donated gametes know where they are from and who their parents are. I think that is a fundamental human right.

@TiddleyWink I suppose the point is, if you haven't had personal experience, it is very hard for you to relate to just how desperate infertility can feel for those who ultimately go on to use an egg donor. You can't truly understand their motivations if you haven't been in their shoes. My views would probably have been similar to yours before I experienced infertility myself. I'm not in a position where I need an egg donor, but I can understand. In and of itself, it is no more wrong than blood donation or anything else, it just needs careful regulation.

Oh sorry I think we're agreeing @AlternativePerspective!

I can understand the desire for a child. But I don't think anyone has the right to be a parent

i agree @Beamur I think we should be sterilising any women or men who are drug addicts or any parents who have a child taken into care to stop them having further children to abuse.

I know women who have donated eggs for free once they decided they wouldn't have more children (or any). 'Commodity' seems to be the buzzfword on these threads now but I don't think it's applicable in that situation.

I think this thread was always going to upset people as there are many mothers on the site who have used donor eggs or sperm and there are posts essentially saying they were morally wrong to do so.

I’m sure if people were judging how your baby was created and said you were morally wrong to have them then you would be upset too. It’s like posting a thread asking for opinions on teenage mothers then being shocked that people think it’s goady and insensitive. It’s hardly surprising some people are upset.

I agree with this

I suppose this comes down to whose rights matter more? For me, the rights of the children born are the most important. If the research in the next ten years tells us that overall, being born from donor gametes is a net negative to the children then the process should be stopped. If it turns out that egg donation is more exploitative than it is altruistic on behalf of those donating then that should be stopped as well. In a case of competing rights, these come above the right to have a baby through donor conception, despite how painful and desperate that might be for the couple experiencing infertility.

Its a very different situation than blood donation, as the direct result of blood donation isn’t a child being born, half of whose genetic background is unknown to them in childhood, and may have come from a woman who only donated her eggs in a desperate attempt to find her own IVF, rather than altruism.

I think a child should have the right to know they were conceived this way.

They should know who their genetic mother is.

My best friend used donor eggs and donor sperm to get pregnant with both her children.
Ethically... It's not that great perhaps? When there's so many children in the world that need a home. But then... you'd perhaps argue the same thing about anyone having biological children of their own... when they could just as easily foster or adopt. When you think about the other side of the argument like that, it becomes a lot less problematic - to me at least.

BUT, these 2 children were the most wanted children ever, and it's irrelevant that they're not biologically related to either parent (but are full siblings to each other). Maybe it will become an issue in the future, but at the moment, it's not in the slightest.

It's perhaps not something I'd have chosen for myself, but who am I to judge someone elses decision? A mile in someone else's shoes, and all that.

What changed your mind @Franca123 ?

The world doesn't revolve around you.