To tell you the Scottish Govt are targeting 18 year old girls for egg harvesting

[VestaTilley]

Yes, really.

Surrogacy Concern broke the news on Friday night. I can’t actually believe it.

Over a month to come, the Scottish Govt are asking for egg and sperm donors as young as 18 to come forward in a series of targeted ads on social media and the radio. They’ve expanded IVF provision and - in their own words - have a supply and demand issue.

I’d heard of fertility clinics advertising (bad enough in my view) but for a national Govt to do this to women is staggering. Women can die from complications arising from OHSS, which can be caused by egg donation. A British woman died in 2006 as a result.

The ads don’t mention these risks; it’s all “be kind” “do something amazing”. I cannot actually believe a Govt could be this stupid. They’ve only just apologised for forced adoption!

AIBU?

Oh, aye. Another 'review' and another 'consultation'.

I've done so many of them. They ask for us to donate our time and energy and then they fucking ignore what everyone says in order to do what they always intended to do anyway. But they've ticked the 'consultation' box.

I honestly don't even know what to do anymore.

It's this lot or it's Labour, and they're no better.

And Jenny Minto. Aye. Good luck with that.

She has the common SNP problem of being absolutely unable to hear anything that doesn't chime with her world view.

Absolutely.

There is no way on this planet I personally would donate an egg, or a kidney, or a slice of my liver to a complete stranger, but that is my choice and I am willing to accept that others may wish to do this and as long as they are fully informed that is their choice.

If you take away that this is so very obviously just a SNP haters thread and they all are looking a bit silly with their "untruths" and exaggerations, I really do not understand the hysteria of women being informed of this choice and support to consider this if it is something they want to.

'hysteria'

Indeed. Seen all we need to see from @NoTouch we're all just a bunch of silly hysterical women 😏🙄 Visible from space.

women shouldn’t be eligible to do this until you have completed your family because of the fertility risks

Agree

No matter how in depth the counselling,I don't think it prepares you fully unless you've already completed your own family.

Women shouldn't go anywhere near this if they have their own family because of the potential side effects of severe illness and death.

Personally I don't think you should be allowed to advertise or promote something that has these kind of side effects.

I also very much doubt that the full risks are properly explained. The people promoting this want donors to agree they are not going to give them the full picture.

I certainly wasn't given therapy and a full explanation of the risks before I did it.

Lots of people on this thread who’ve never experienced infertility and it shows.

Once more for the hard of thinking:

NO ONE has the right to a baby.

They are low on donations for people wanting IVF

Perhaps if they stopped giving away free IVF and raised prices for those that pay then demand would decrease and they wouldn't need to do an advertising campaign.

But no - most people will say everyone should get free IVF till they get their baby - so recruitment shall continue

NO ONE has the right to a baby.

Being gay or infertile does not change that.

Yes. So women who haven't had children shouldn't do it in case it damages their fertility.

And women who have had children shouldn't do it because of the risk of leaving their own children motherless.

I'm really sorry to hear you were treated like that, Sillydoggy. It goes beyond medical malpractice, imo.

How do we know that their advertising doesn’t mostly target 17-25 yo women?
Therefore “enticing” much more a certain demographic?

Perhaps they explain the risks at some point, but they should be doing it clearly up front - some women may get emotionally drawn into the process before realising what's entailed.

A bland front page which doesn't make it clear that sperm and egg donation are massively different undertakings seems to me to have been written by wankers.

There was a radio ad this afternoon promoting it; the first I’ve heard

i had the same experience as @Sillydoggy my counselling consisted of what we would disclose to other people and that was that

Advertising for egg donors.

To be fair, I never said hysteria by women I said there was hysteria of women being given the choice. For all I know half of you could be blokes.

What you and/or pps are promoting is women being denied a choice. That women are not capable of making that personal choice. So blinded by the SNP hate and feebly trying to find fault with a health campaign that has been run by more than just Scotland that you are suggesting Scottish women are too thick to weigh up the pros and cons for themselves and have a free choice.

There are risks associated with every medical procedure - people have died donating stem cells, kidneys, etc - as long as these risks are clearly explained to the VOLUNTEER no one should dictate to them what they can and cannot choose to do.

Anyway I am done with this thread as it is getting repetitive, but would just like to thank all those that gave my posts "thanks", it is good to know there are people out there that support informed choice and not women being dictated to. I have never had so many thanks before on a single thread! 🤣

denied a choice

The choice to freely pursue potentially very harmful medication and procedures, for no benefit for themselves, at the age of eighteen upwards?

Okay.

suggesting Scottish women are too thick to weigh up the pros and cons

That's spectacularly weak.

(I got about 1,500 secret 'thanks' and loads of pms, too. 😘)

Tell me how the donor benefits from making this choice?

To me, advertising for egg donors is as exploitive of women as advertising for prostitutes is, possibly more so because it's literally part of her body that she is giving away forever. It's not comparable to a kidney donation because, and this is really important, no one will die because they don't have children. And it's also not comparable to kidney donation because men can donate kidneys too but only women can donate eggs.

Under patriarchy, women's reproductive capacity is exploited by men and the State. Dressing women's participation in their own exploitation up as choosy-choice does not alter that fact.

And consider a young woman who donated eggs aged 19 - seven years before her brain has mostly finished developing.
Years later - aged 29, say - she has her first baby. And as she carries that baby, holds the child in her arms, she realizes that this baby has possibly quite a few half siblings out there, who she hasn't been able to protect and nurture, and who might be meeting, unaware, this new baby in the future.

Tell me how the donor benefits from making this choice?

A warm glow?

There's also the matter that pregnancies with donated eggs are much riskier for the woman than a pregnancy with her own would be.

I am against all surrogacy these days. Used to be okay with altruistic ones, but in the end it's all making women commodities, and it amounts to child trafficking. As PP have said, nobody has the right to a child.

It's that risk of meeting, falling for, and having sex with a half- or even full sibling that is part of why people are entitled to know the name of their birth parents if adopted and their gamete donors if conceived through assisted reproduction. And if you are adopted, the registrar must check to make sure that you are not closely related to your intended spouse.

The more gamete donation there is, the more risk there is of unwitting incest.

Given that we're being told in Scotland that young men shouldn't suffer severe consequences for rape when they're under 25 and - apparently - not sufficiently developed enough to be blamed for their actions, I struggle to see why it's deemed all right to include women under the age of 25 in these adverts.

Surely they also are too young to understand the consequences of their actions?