Those opposed to surrogacy, what are your views on egg donation?

[wholeeverything]

I'm a gender critical woman with a high degree of skepticism about commercial surrogacy. I'm also facing the possibility of never having my own child.

Thinking hard about egg donation, I am conflicted about my own views about the ethics of it, from the point of view of the egg donor. What are your views? I am particularly interested in the views of those opposed to surrogacy. Do you see it as the same issue?

I feel like I cannot think objectively because of my own fertility issues. I am personally fine with the ethics of the child's rights, in that I would view it as similar to adoption with a child having the right to know their biological origins, and that then being something for me to decide if I am OK with at a personal level. Where there is full transparency, I don't see it as violating the child's rights.

But what about the young women selling eggs? Is it invasive, dangerous? Should it be viewed like surrogacy or selling an organ? Is it only considered by women in financial hardship, i.e. effectively coerced?

I have huge sympathy with anyone struggling to conceive, I can’t imagine. But the older I get the more uncomfortable I get with fertility treatment that isn’t simply using the bodies of the man and woman trying to become parents together. I don’t understand how you can know there is a biological child out there of yours. I’m also increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of bringing a child into the world knowingly without a mother and father, which I worry makes me sound very bigoted and out of date but I really value the roles both parents bring to a child. I don’t understand the mental separation. The complications we are seeing legally as well. I just can’t help but feel morally it’s all very uncomfortable.

But realistically, if I couldn’t have had my children would I have taken any route possible to become a mother? Yes most likely.

Yes, the woman is bringing up her husband's child. He gets all the genetic similarities but she gets none. That's something the woman might be ok with, but who knows til you actually experience it. But the bigger issue imo is that this loss is glossed over as women are encouraged to see using a donor egg as not much of a big deal. They are sold the idea that being pregnant, giving birth, caring for the child from birth will compensate for the lack of genetic connection, but imo that's a real stretch.

No, I am not in the UK. In many countries, domestic adoption by strangers basically no longer exists. Foster placements, with ongoing efforts to reunite a child with either their birth parent or extended family members, is far preferred. Even where a parent is never able to become able to be the main carer of a child, maintaining the birth parent-child relationship is considered in the best interests of the child. Honestly I'm very surprised how simple people think adoption is. It was when I was a child myself, but no longer - either domestic or international.

I have a daughter conceived using a donor egg. She is no less mine than my husband's. When she was first born I saw her as only mine and it wasn't until she e became a more independent being around 6 months old I truly saw her as ours.

She has the same interests as me, she has a similar personality to me with lots of my husbands mixed in and she is the image of my husband but I am regularly told she looks like me.

The fact you think I can't feel like she's mine and I'm raising my husband's child as if she's a step child or something is ridiculous. I honestly forget she's not genetically related to me and occasionally remember "oh yeah, she hasn't got my genes" when thinking about some weird thing I might have passed on to her. Around 3 times a year, other than that it is irrelevant to me and never crosses my mind. I grew her in my body, I gave birth to her, I breast fed her and didn't put her down for the first 6 months of her life. She is my daughter. That's it. What strange person really thinks genetics outweighs that?

Well, anyone who understands how biology works. Of course she is less yours than your husband’s - she has none of your genes and 50% of his. It takes a bizarre kind of mental gymnastics to pretend that that doesn’t matter.

When he can make a baby on his own, then it will be solely his. He couldn't make her without me, so she's mine too.

Just because she is she isn't genetically related to me doesn't make her not my daughter. Growing, giving birth to and raising a child makes them yours.

Genetics don't matter to me, they don't matter to a lot of people or donor conceived children wouldn't exist. To think that parents of donor conceived children view them as not really theirs and raising somebody else's child is stupid. If they felt they way they wouldn't have had their child in the first place.

What do you think of the donor? If your daughter was to ask about her? I can’t help but think if I was a donor child I would be very drawn to my biological mother and want to know about her and feel a connection.

@SerenaCat93have you told her she is conceived from a donor egg? If not why not? I suggest you read the Reddit forums by children of ED and SD.

If biology didn't matter then no adopted child would be bothered that they had been given up.

I don't think of the donor as my daughter's mother if that's what you're asking.

All the whimsical thoughts of people who aren't donor conceived have no bearing on how actual donor conceived people feel. There's a mix of people who don't care and aren't interested and people who want to know more about who their donors are and want to contact them and everything in-between. It's really not a thing that donor conceived children think their donors are their real parents and see their birth parents as unrelated strangers as some PPS are trying to suggest.

Of all the long term studies done on donor conceived people there is no negative effect on their well-being or relationships with their parents as long as they know from a young age what their origins are. When raised with this knowledge from birth its simply part of their story and see their birth parents as their real parents. My daughter is so far completely uninterested. The donor conceived adults I know we're briefly interested in things like ethnic heritage, found that information out, said 'that's cool I've got some Italian in me' and moved on. They were interested in actually meeting their donors or having relationships with them. They don't see the donors family history as their family history or the donors as their family.

If someone finds out they were donor conceived as an adult it can blow up their sense of self which is why parents are counselled to tell them from birth now so they never remembered finding out they just always know. It's not the massive harm some people are trying to make out. Knowing from birth mitigates that.

Of course I've told her she's always known. That's what is recommended.

That's completely different. Egg donor's aren't giving a baby they didn't want away, they are donating an egg so that somebody else can have a child. An egg is not a child.

Children given up for adoption were literally born and then given away by their parents because they didn't want them. Donor conceived children have never been abandoned.

It's the being abandoned that traumatizes adopted children.

Ridiculous comparison.

Interesting thank you, I do wonder how biased the studies are though, it’s a money making business after all, it’s in their interests to reassure people.

I just know I couldn’t ever donate my eggs, I would feel like I had children out in the world and I’m
just really not sure I believe that such levels of disconnect are as widespread as those studies are making out. I would be curious. But maybe I’m the oddity.

She’s not solely his of course, she’s his and the egg donor’s. She’s not biologically yours. You have the same biological relationship as an adoptive mother or stepmother. 50% of her genetic material is not nothing - it’s huge. It will make her who she is.

Also egg donation is only widespread recently, no proper studies have yet been done on the impact of the kids as they’re not old enough. There’s a huge money-making industry that depends on desperate vulnerable women giving up their eggs and other desperate vulnerable women seeing this as their path to a child, and all of those vested interests will want to minimise any perception of harm to the children to keep the money rolling in. You believe what you want to believe because it suits you.

I can’t imagine donating my eggs and knowing that my biological children are out there somewhere, and not knowing them – heartbreaking. I completely disagree with commercial surrogacy. It feels like human trafficking.

If I couldn’t have kids, I would rather adopt. I know a few couples who have adopted young toddlers and they all seem to be doing quite well. The kids are hugely loved.

"Genetics don't matter to me".....what a strange concept. And you will presumably be giving your daughter this very message, encouraging her to see you as the legitimate mother. I wonder if she feels she can reuse any questions with you given how strongly you feel.

I adopted. I love my adopted daughters and, like I said before, they have a thin veneer of me from having been brought by me. But it's thin! They are who they would have been if they had stayed with their birth parents, only with much worse life outcomes and without the experiences we have given them.

@SerenaCat93is her daughter’s legitimate mother. She carried her, gave birth to her, breast fed her and nurtured her. Even if her child had pre-birth memories, they would all be of having developed surrounded by @SerenaCat93’s body and her smell and taste. Are you seriously suggesting an egg has some awareness of the womb it is implanted in? This is absolutely not the same as a baby carried and birthed by one woman and then given away to another, possibly after some period of time. That sets up a completely different dynamic.

It seems like you've told yourself a fairy tale.

@Chickadeeinme …no, once again, going through pregnancy does not make you the biological mother if the egg isn’t yours. It does let you pretend that it’s yours, as many people want to do.

It is for this precise reason that those who use surrogates or “gestational carriers” justify taking the babies away from the people who give birth to them, on the basis that they have no link to the child and are just a vessel. No one is saying that the egg has an awareness, but the child certainly will. They will grow up knowing they were bought and made to order, no doubt encouraged to believe a lie that “genetics don’t matter”.

I very much agree with this. You gave birth to a child, you’re their mother.

These are clearly your beliefs. But they are not correct.

In medical definition I am her biological mother. I am not her genetic mother. They are separate terms. The biological mother is the woman who grew the baby in her body and gave birth to the baby. There are traces of me in her in body and her in mine. I will carry her DNA in my blood until the day I die. She is not simply a stranger I adopted what an odd view.

My grandfather isn't my biological grandfather, he's been my mother's step dad since she was 10, I've never met my biological grandfather and I'm not remotely interested in his family history. My grandad is my grandad and his family is mine. I actually love him more than any other family member and he is the one I'm most like out of all of them, I spent the most time with him. So genetics really don't matter to me, the people who raise and love a child from birth are family. What do some genes matter in comparison to the bond I have with my grandad that has built up since the day I was born? I couldn't care less about the history of a family I've never met even if I do have their genes.

The baby viewing the surrogate as their mother and being separated from the woman who carried her being traumatic despite not being generically related to her is the whole reason most posters wang on about surrogacy being awful. If it didn't matter who carried a baby and genetics trumped everything it wouldn't be harped on about so much. You can't have it both ways.

By this definition doesn’t that make surrogates biological mothers?

But don’t you think it’s going to be weird when your daughter asks you about when your periods started, how your birth was, menopause etc looking for some answers for herself. You say biological mother, but she’d need to ask the egg donor (I feel so horrible even writing that, it feels so reductive) to understand her own genetic history? And things like family trees, I wouldn’t feel a genetic connection to a line I wasn’t genetically connected to.

It is equally bizarre to my mind that you think that gestating, birthing and feeding a child with your own body doesn’t matter.

There’s nothing healthy or compassionate about seeking to question and destroy the link between a birthing mother and her child who is already here, however you feel personally about the means of conception and genetic elements.

I don’t think and haven’t said it doesn’t matter. But it’s certainly a lot less important to who the child ultimately is than their genetic makeup, which is what the pp said “didn’t matter”.

You seem to be saying we should ignore facts just because it’s not nice for people to hear them, and brcause they’ve gone through a difficult fertility experience we should all collude in their fantasy in the name of compassion. I believe egg donation is wrong, mainly because of the harm that it causes the donor, who, let’s be honest the donee’s don’t give a sh1t about and are actively trying to erase. Who is being compassionate towards them?