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?

100% this. People do not have a right to a child, however rich or nice they are.

I take my heritage really seriously. I wouldn't want to give my dna to strangers to be brought up by them. I accept that some people don't care about this. But genese are important. I have two adopted children and they are nothing like me or my husband. They have a superficial veneer which comes from living with us but honestly it is minimal. They would be largely the same people if they had stayed with their birth parents (though their circumstances would be very different). Nature is the predominant issue, not nurture.

Yes, in Ireland, where I live (moved from the UK) domestic adoption is very rare and it tends to be only step-parents and relatives who can do it. Long-term foster care is far more common, but again, this is not for everyone.

Do egg donors get paid?

And yet many women have successful pregnancies with donations

So people shouldn't adopt then?

At what cost to the donating woman her future fertility and risk of death?
Also how many women die or suffer life changing consequences?
Carrying a doner egg pregnancy whether for yourself or as a surrogate comes with 4 times the risk of serious complications including both maternal and infant mortality.
Egg donation and surrogacy should be illegal

Adoption is not a right.
Adoption is about the needs of the child not the wants of the potential adoptive parents.
Adopting parents are screened for suitability.
Surrogacy is all about the wants of the buyers and nobody checks that they are suitable parents and nobody considers the needs of the child.
Surrogacy is the opposite of adoption and is immoral

They’re completely different, but even then, no - adoptive parents do not have a right to a child either. They can’t just rock up at social services and say they want one and can pay for it so hand me a baby now. Wanting something doesn’t mean you’re entitled to have it.

People adopt a child because they want to be a parent. People have IVF because they want to be a parent. Altruistic surrogate does not involve buying anything and women who go to a 'sperm bank' are also screened before they are allowed to use it.

The point is that simply wanting something does not justify the means of getting it.

Adoptive parents and people undergoing IVF are not exploiting the bodies of other humans to satisfy their own desires.

I agree with you on commercial surrogacy if it involves poorer women in developing contries, but altruistic surrogacy in UK is not exploitative or buying anything. We all have babies because we want them, if there is something wrong with your body that stops it happening you are going to pursue other options.

What about the effects on the baby of growing in the womb of a woman for 9 months then being separated from them at birth? Have you read up on the effects of that?

I am adopted and comparing adoption with surrogacy is an odd thing to do. Adoption is a solution to an existing issue - a child exists that needs parents and is placed with parents who want to take care of a child. Surrogacy creates a child specifically with the intent of the child being removed from the mother who carried it at birth. Can you see the key point of difference?

Yes it is exploitative.
Most so called "altruistic" surrogates are family members who are coerced by their family and family friends.
And then you have the egg doner who has been forced to "donate" eggs just so she can afford to store her own eggs/embryos or even afford the retrieval costs.
The whole system is based around exploiting womens bodies for profit (the fertility companies) and the wants of the "commissioning" ie buying "parents"
And women buying sperm from a sperm bank is completely different from buying multiple womens bodies to create a child that will suffer lifelong trauma for the selfish wants of the buying customers

I’m a big no to egg donation, sperm donation an surrogacy,
If you use donor eggs or sperm, you may be able to tell your child who there biological parent is, you would not be able to tell them how many siblings they had or in fact who they are related to.
i realise the same can be said for adoption, the difference is, one is making the best of a situation that cannot be changed for the sake of a child that already exists the second is deliberately causing the situation.

In adoption in the UK adopted children are given a life story book which gives them details of their birth family, including siblings. We had letter box contact three times a year with two half siblings when we adopted.

I’m not agents adoption, I know the process.
but you can only give information that is given to you.
my point was deliberately causing a situation where a child will never know the extent of their family.

Egg donation feels very unethical, it's like the older richer generation is strip mining the bodies of younger poorer women, exploiting them as a resource for their dna, putting them through a medical process with potentially serious immediate effects and unknown long-term consequences on their future health and fertility.

The only way I could see it as ethical would be for a woman who had undergone her own ivf treatment, completed her family but had stored eggs remaining, who chose to donate them to other women undergoing IVF

My understanding was that the situation in your last paragraph was what my DD encountered when she received a donor egg for her IVF treatment. In that situation I don't see why the donor shouldn't receive a discount for her own IVF treatment. It's not coercion if the donor makes the choice and people with the "but it's my dna" reservation could just refuse.

Many people don't have the concern about their dna that posters here have expressed, and they donate in the full knowledge that their identity will be known to the resulting child (if there is one, which isn't guaranteed of course) at the age of 18. There is no reason now why a child born of sperm and/or egg donation shouldn't get to know as adults other people related to them. Also it isn't even the case that people who know they are related to others choose to or are able to form any kind of extended relationship.

My DGC are separated by the Atlantic Ocean - three in the USA and two in the UK. They met for the first time this summer, all five being between the ages of 6 and 14. They may meet again as children and as adults they may choose to meet or not meet. I have cousins in the UK that I have seen maybe twice in the last fifty years. I'm pleased to see them on the rare occasions we meet, but I can't say I miss them when we don't. I don't see why unknown half-siblings wouldn't be in that bracket.

If you can’t have a child yourself, then the “other options”
should be limited to adoption imo, because - once again- someone wanting a child doesn’t give them the right to have one, certainly not at the expense of another woman’s body and health.

A friend has terminal ovarian cancer, a side effect of the drugs she was given to produce multiple eggs while undergoing IVF. This is a known risk and applies whether the process is altruistic or not. And whether it’s altruistic or not, a child is still being created to be removed from their mother. It’s immoral.

I can understand why you’re trying to rationalise the fact that your grandchildren are genetically unrelated to you and the product of a (no doubt poorer) woman’s desperation. But no, cousins that you choose not to see is completely different from someone growing up without a relationship with their half siblings.

And their mother or father. I'm astounded how little people seem to care. Please take note; not having a biological parent in your life when you are growing up is a profound loss. People seem to treat it like buying a new lamp or a mochaccino.

I had a half sibling ten years older than me. I didn't live with him for most of my life and had almost no relationship with him. It wouldn't have been problematic to me if I hadn't known of his existence.

FWIW, I work in that area and anyone who merrily shouts about adoption as if it’s the obvious and simple first route if you’re unable to have your own child, doesn’t have the faintest idea about the adoption process (and the shockingly high percentage of adopted children who come back into care when the adoption breaks down).

My DGC have a mother and father who are giving them a wonderful childhood. They are happy children and likely to grow up to be happy adults. I think your concerns are deeply misplaced. They are aware of their origins - this is one of the things emphasised by fertility clinics, and they will be able to contact their bio donors (who are not in any but the most technical sense of the word their parents) at the age of eighteen. I think your description of it as a "profound loss" is a gross exaggeration of the actual significance, which is undoubtedly there but pretty minor. You have no way of knowing what the financial significance to the egg donor was of having the cost of her fertility treatment reduced, but given that it was undoubtedly several thousand pounds I doubt whether that seems insignificant to most people so your characterisation of it as exploiting the poor is overblown.