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?

OP have you seen the Jennifer Lahl documentary Eggsploitation?

I think embryo adoption is more ethical . The embryo has been created and religious parents want the baby to be born rather than discarded. I would have been open to this if I had been unable to conceive as it would still have been my baby.

You are basically saying it's all about your daughter - exactly my point.

You could equally say that a child removed at birth from a birth mother deemed to be dangerous to the child, placed immediately with foster carers who then go on to adopt that child doesn't need to know either. But that's not what happens.

Imo the difference is largely down to the fact that adoption is child centered and everything is based on what is best for the child, not for the adopters. Meanwhile with donation, it is all about the adults.

Why would it be so hard for your daughter to talk about the donor from day 1? Why not have them swap letters?

The alternative is a pretence - the importance of the genetic dna is reduced to a mere foot note.

But on another mumsnet thread last week, a woman told us of her daughter's extreme mental health problems and the possibility of neuro divergence. The child was conceived using donor sperm from a mathematician. They had not considered this relevant but were now wondering....

You just can't ignore the genes imo.

I’m aware that “Gender Critical” encompasses a lot of different perspectives, but for GC feminists (normally radical feminists) the basis of GC belief is that “woman” refers to the female sex, and that the female sex is subjugated by/to the male sex class in order to exploit us sexually and reproductively. Surrogacy is the exploitation and objectification of women’s reproductive capacity.

Also both surrogacy and gender ideology (the colonization of the definition of “female” and the feminist movement by males) are materially damaging to women.

Radical feminists are critical of the gender narrative for the same reason they are opposed to surrogacy (among other reasons).

I did not say it was "all about my daughter" - I have said repeatedly that the children were told from very early that they were able to be born because of the donation of egg and sperm, and so far they have not asked to know further than that. You are suggesting this should be forced on them willy nilly? You're assuming that somebody who donates eggs and sperm actually wants a relationship with a small child being brought up in another family? That's all about the adults if anything is.

You keep equating this with children born to one mother and removed at birth or later and given to another, but this is not an equivalent situation.

It's up to the child as and when they want to know more at an age where they understand the importance of knowing your genetic heritage. Neurodivergence comes in many families - my two sons are neurodivergent, and one of my DS2's children is AuDHD. As it happens, one of my daughter's DDs is also high-functioning autistic, but she could have been like that if she had been born from one of her mother's eggs if genetics is all there is to it. As it is, my DD is a psychotherapist with a lot of experience in dealing with adolescent girls (though DGD is not quite ten now) and her DH is a primary school teacher so my autistic DGD is actually in a more fortunate position than many autistic children in being brought up by people who understand her condition and know how to help her best.

One of my relatives has had 2 DC via donor eggs (they are full siblings) and it was done in a clinic in Spain.
She had an amazing experience and her 2 DC are extremely happy, balanced and well looked after. She’s always been very open with them from a young age (in an age appropriate way).

i had never considered the negative points highlighted on this thread although I def would with surrogacy

Arguments against egg donation here (under surrogacy but some areas apply to egg donation), including the following: ‘The harms of egg ‘donation’ are poorly researched. According to a report by The Centre For Bioethics and Culture Network (2011), there is “little to no peer-reviewed medical research on the long-term safety effects of egg procurement on the health of the young women who provide their eggs.” However, the health risks of egg retrieval are known to include “Ovarian Hyper Stimulation syndrome (OHSS) due to superovulation, loss of fertility, ovarian torsion, blood clots, kidney disease, premature menopause, ovarian cysts, chronic pelvic pain, stroke, reproductive cancers, and in some cases, death.” (ibid.)’

https://objectnow.org/surrogacy/

Much of the opposition on this thread has been about the supposed evil effects of egg donation on the outcome for the children with much agonising about depriving them of contact with their donors before they are 18. I'm not seeing any research that focuses on that, and I think any equivalence to surrogacy or adoption is completely misplaced.

The long-term safety effects of egg procurement are known by those people who go through fertility treatment. It is explained to them. My daughter did this twice to retrieve her own eggs and had to have further treatment to receive donor eggs once it was clear that the use of their own genetic material was never going to work for them.

Are we now saying that people can't choose to do things with their own bodies that might be harmful to them? That's a slippery slope if ever there was one. I imagine that those who agonize over potential psychological risks to babies born of egg donation are not going to be happy with abortion rights.

Many egg donors, however, will be very young women who may not be capable of fully understanding the magnitude of what they're doing, and aren't doing it as part of fertility treatment.

If you look on reddit, there's a small r/donorconceived subreddit that has many contributors who have been affected negatively by not being raised by biological parents, or are wounded by the donor rejecting them if they find out who they are and reach out, as well as other issues. So it's clear it can affect people in a similar way to surrogacy or adoption.

I'm not sure how abortion rights are relevant. Personally, I just think there are too many ethical issues for something that isn't life saving, especially when it comes to women who would've been fertile mining younger, poorer women's bodies for their genetic material.

Egg donation in the UK is not done for money and is generally done with eggs that are surplus to requirements. Most donors except in the rare case of altruistic donation are women who are undergoing fertility treatments themselves, so in fact unlikely to be very young, unless you know some statistics to the contrary. If they end up with more eggs than they can personally use I think the choice to donate is as valid as the choice to discard. Since treatment is also available on the NHS there isn’t automatically the discount incentive either.

i am sure there are Reddit groups with individuals who believe themselves to have been negatively affected by being donor conceived, just as there are Reddit groups for people who hate and are alienated from their natural parents. The expression of grievance is part of the human condition. Abortion rights are relevant because this objection to egg donation is just another way of dictating to women what they can do with their bodies, so if you think it objectionable for a baby to have potential psychological issues from their mode of conception you’re sure as hell going to object to one being aborted because the mother doesn’t want to have it.

I'm talking globally, not about the UK specifically. I still think it's potentially unethical to deliberately create children who won't be raised by their biological parents.

I find your phrasing really telling there, in just how dismissive you are of the childrens' experiences – "who believe themselves to have been negatively affected by being donor conceived"
Do you think they are just deeply confused and not actually negatively affected? Do you believe their experiences are invalid for some reason? If so, why?

Your argument regarding abortion makes no sense. Abortion results in no child at all – it's just a woman choosing to terminate a pregnancy – ergo there are no ethical issues around any potential impact on a child. Besides, there are already limits around what anyone can do with their body.

What percentage of donor conceived children do you think post on a subreddit? And do you think their grievances are more significant or less significant than those of people on the subreddits complaining about their grievances with their natural parents? Do you think those complaints are sufficient to justify banning the procedure? Personally I think people complaining on the internet and airing their grievances isn’t exactly a reasonable basis for that.

I think women have the right not to proceed with an unwanted pregnancy but many people (and you can find them on Reddit too) would call it murder and regard it as far more serious than a potential psychological problem in an adult for that reason. I note that nobody has yet cited any studies beyond “what I saw on a self-selected subreddit” enumerating what these apparent problems are and the depth of their significance in either children or adults. I think the objections are wildly overblown and they just don’t match what I’m seeing or what previous posters who have direct experience of the issue are seeing.

I'm not sure there are many studies on the issue – I haven't looked deeply into the impact on the children, but it makes sense that some of the issues that surrogate and adopted children have would be the same for DC children, such as not looking like/feeling like their legal parents due to a lack of shared genetics.

All the subreddit shows is that there are people who struggle with being donor conceived, and I thought people might find it interesting to look through. I'm not sure what people complaining about their biological parents has to do with the topic? Any child could have a grievance with a parent for some reason, but on top of those issues, donor conceived children can also struggle with being donor conceived.

There are also concerns about women being paid or incentivised to give up their genetic material and biological children, globally speaking. If someone can barely afford IVF, and can get a discount by donating eggs, they may feel pressured to do so despite feeling discomfort with it.

I'm not sure why you keep going on about abortion either. How is it relevant on this thread? It is entirely ethically consistent to support abortion and be concerned about the impact of commercialising reproduction.

As I said, it just seems like there are a lot of ethical issues to navigate for something that isn't life saving.

To go through non NHS IVF, there has to be money there whether this is achieved by overtime/loan. The discount is like getting 10% off something you were going to pay for but then don't have to pay as much but It doesn't make that much difference to the overall cost and taking it up doesn't make you 'poor'.
The infertility business is another topic but there isn't pressure to give up eggs as the money would have been there, otherwise the clinic won't accept you.

There is a conversation around egg sharing if you are under 35 it’s quite frequently offered as an option as the cycle is then free but you only get half the eggs received. The recipient pays a higher price for their cycle.

Thats not really the point. This society favours education and so should women stop going to university?. Also where are women meant to find men who want to settle down in their early 20's and have children. What about travel and work.

Coercion and financial exploitation are real.

It's would be a slippery slope to ignore this and pretend it didn't happen.

You are trying to make bullshit emotive appeals by a false equivalence with abortion to scare and coerce women into accepting egg donation.

No.

The fact that you are so dismissive about there being possible issues is telling. I think you're right. There may be children who are DC who don't care and have good happy lives but there are also be children who are profoundly badly affected by being essentially purchased like a new tote. I know people who did this, their children look nothing like them and have very different personalities to them. Imagine what impact it might have on someone when they find out they are not biologically related to their family, especially when they have been lied to about it. There are countless stories of adopted adults who speak about the profound hurt they live with knowing they were given up. As others have said, there are also DC adults who feel the same.

I know several women who went to uni with babies and young children, and started their careers when their eldest was going off to school and they were 25. And I managed to find a wonderful man to settle down with, who was in his twenties. I'm not sure why travel is important, or why it outweighs having children? But with a supportive DH it's very possible to have both children and a good career, or to focus on kids and have a decent job, or stay at home even, when they're young. If children are important, then why put them off until it's possible you might not be able to have a biological child, and will be predisposed to more issues (both yourself, and the foetus)?

People can't always have everything, and they need to weigh up their priorities.

Regardless it's still not patriarchy that makes women's fertility fall off in their mid-late thirties. It's just biology.

If we're going to be anecdotal, I never met a single man i wanted to settle with until my mid 30's and neither did my social circle . We all went on to have children. Women are not just here to have children and other life enhancing experiences matter.

This has made me think – what if your IVF cycle fails, but the person you donate your eggs to conceives your biological child? Do they have safeguards to prevent that kind of situation?

I know somebody that this happened to. It was very, very hard on her psychologically. Thankfully she did go on to have DC following further treatment.

There’s nothing to prevent this scenario from materialising - it’s a risk that comes with sharing your eggs.

You seem to be arguing against something I didn't say?

"Women are not just here to have children"
Well, no, which is why I didn't say that! All I said was that it's perfectly possible to have children and a career in your twenties, and that if having children is very important to people then they should prioritise it.

Although it's interesting that you think parents can't have a variety of life enhancing experiences?

No what we are saying is if you want to risk your life and health in the attempt to have a baby fair enough, but you shouldn't have the right to risk another woman's life, health and future fertility in your attempt to have a baby.
Basically you want to have ivf fine as long as it uses only your own eggs. Ivf with doner eggs no.
Oh and btw most of us have a huge problem with the exploitation of younger women (the young women targeted by the snp were 18+) and the risks to their future health, fertility and life because another woman wants a baby.
So no to egg donation and surrogacy whether thats commercial or "altruistic". I am btw absolutely fine with abortion and im almost certain that most of us on this board are fine with abortion just not using women as incubators (surrogacy) or as a resource to be harvested (egg donation).
Also we already have laws preventing people doing things with their bodies which are harmful especially around medical procedures and organ/tissue donation and if they were in place for fertility treatment no woman would be allowed to be a surrogate and the only eggs allowed to be donated would be left over eggs after a woman's own treatment had ended and she didn't want more children so no more targeting of women for their eggs or retrieving eggs from a woman who isn't having ivf herself

I’m sorry but this is absolutely ridiculous. A friend of mine remortgaged her house to afford IVF. She would have donated eggs to reduce the price if she’d had any to give. People undergoing fertility treatment are usually absolutely desperate, it costs a fortune, and of course the financial incentives are there to pressure women into doing something they would never otherwise do, when they’re at their most vulnerable. Yes the risks are explained but no one ever thinks it will happen to them. Another friend has terminal cancer as a direct result of IVF treatment, the same treatment undergone by egg donors.