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?

You do realise that the demand for eggs outstrips the the left over eggs donated hence NHS scotland with SNP backing started targeting women ages 18-25 with Facebook and Instagram adverts trying to guilt them into donating their eggs with no mention of the known risks to health, life or future fertility and no mention of the fact that all the long-term risks are unknown as nobody has bothered to properly study them

Is it very possible?

I knew a couple of single mothers at university but no married parents in their 20s.

I’d think now that it would be even harder to achieve a degree, first steps on career ladder, a home and reasonable financial security in your early 20s or much before 30 actually. Most young women who attend university aspire to a stable long term relationship and a measure of financial security before having children. Most young men have no desire whatsoever to marry or have kids until their thirties.

I've said this before but anyway, I think it's worth saying again- my adopted children are nothing like me. If they had been brought up by another family, including their birth family, they would be largely the same people, only having lived very different lives.

The idea that you get "your child" from a donor egg is crazy imo. Same with sperm donation. You get to act as parents. You can even carry the baby with egg donation. You can love the child, give it a veneer of your family's interests and values, but if it were born to and raised by the egg donor, it would be basically the same child.

I just feel that people are being misinformed if they use egg donor eggs and think the baby is "theirs". It would imo be much more helpful to everyone involved to be open about the facts around the lack of genetic connection and arrange for the genetic connection which does exist to be honoured.

Re the idea that donors may not want to be involved in the child's life, imo that is not ok. You shouldn't be able to cast your dna to the wind then just ignore the consequences ie a real life child.

I should add that I'm not against eggvor sperm donation per se. What I am against is this idea that it doesn't matter, that it's just a sort of basic ingredient which is irrelevant compared with the nurture of the child.

It IS nature over nurture and imo we should accept that, drop the pretence that it doesn't matter, set things up from the beginning that the child is told about the donor and not at 18, expect donors to be at least minimally involved through letterbox arrangements like in adoption, and get parents to understand that there are complex issues going on here which need careful handling, not just the "you are our child" message they often get.

Btw, as with surrogacy, donor conception has always been driven by the adults, with medics and organised groups advocating for what they want. There has been no one sticking up for the children - but now some of these children are adults and are themselves grouping and saying it's not ok.

We saw this with adoption. Up until the 70s, children's rights and needs were very much not considered - it was all about the adults wanting children. This has successfully been turned round. The focus is always on the needs of the child. This happened partly because adoptees grouped and demanded change, but also because there was a framework involving the courts, social workers etc to withstand the demands being made by the adults trying to adopt.

With surrogacy and egg donation ti's framework is much, much less solid, and what does exist is so tilted in favour of the adults.

Re the comments about people doing what they want with their bodies, well, it is different here, we have to be careful because a child is involved.

I know several women who 10 to 20 years ago had children with men either their age, or 5 to 8 years older, and ended up in decent careers. It was an important priority for them, and so they prioritised it.

As for owning a home, that's out of reach for many people in my country, career or not, and isn't a prerequisite for having children. Never mind the fact that many women (and men) don't have high flying careers ahead of them, and don't have to worry about ascending a steep career ladder.

While obviously some people who are seriously looking for a life partner have difficulty finding the right person prior to thirty, I think that it's often a matter of priority.

But just in that regard, all other concerns aside (which @Arran2024 covers well), I don't think it's ethically right to put off having children until your life is perfectly set up, and then just pay to use another (potentially very young, childless) woman's eggs, and gestate and raise her biological children as your own.

Fair enough on ethics of donor eggs.

But I also think it’s ethically dubious to bring a child into the world that you cannot personally support without handouts from others or where it will not have two parents devoted to its welfare.

I feel using a doner egg is very different ethically to surrogacy. Surrogacy carries a risk of death and permanent damage to the carrier - pregnancy is about the most dangerous thing you can do. Then there is the psychological damage when the mother is full of post-pregnancy bonding hormones with no baby. Then there is the risk of harm to the baby of being taken away from their birth mother. Doner eggs don't involve any of those problems.

I wouldn't disagree entirely - although I do think that it's interesting to denigrate parents who might qualify for government assistance as needing 'handouts from others', and women whose partners have left them (or who they left due to abuse, or who died) as being ethically dubious.

I think there's a difference between an accidental pregnancy or a change in situation (whether financial or parental), and the commercialisation and commodification of women's bodies and genetic material.

Although to be fair, as I've said, I don't know that egg donation is always ethically dubious - I'm just wary of it and the possible impacts, based on what little we know.

Actually the drugs and procedures used to harvest doner eggs come with huge risks to health, future fertility and the life of the doner including fatal ovarian cancer.
Also any pregnancy that involves gestation of a non biological child ie surrogacy or doner egg conception is 4 times as likely to result in complications including both maternal and infant mortality

Just to add, when I donated my eggs, I was told about the risk of hyperstimulation but told nothing about future risks to my own health.
I thought I was doing a 'good thing' but I wouldn't have done it if I'd had more information.
You cannot compare it with sperm donation, that is a simple act whereas egg donation is a risky medical procedure.

And to think that I even considered being a surrogate. Am totally against surrogacy now. Baby trafficking; expolitative and morally wrong.

I think that, just because donor eggs don't tick all the boxes that surrogacy does, you can't say it's therefore ok. In both, dna is being handed over to strangers to create a child, with no one putting the child's needs first.

I said nothing to denigrate those who find themselves needing help due to a change in circumstances which is outside their control - on the contrary I’ve always felt that that is where most help should be directed at eg parents of severely disabled children or who become sick themselves.

I remain of the view that irresponsible reproduction where at the outset there is no prospect of supporting your own child either practically or financially is ethically dubious. Having a child - undertaking a lifelong commitment- is a serious matter. I’m also staggered at how few people take out life insurance and make wills on having children.

Alright, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic?

We all take risks every day. Every time you get into a car you risk being in an accident. People eat and drink unhealthily and risk their health every day. There is no such thing as a risk-free choice. Women who donate eggs and/or receive donor eggs are informed of the risks and choose them because they want the results of donating or receiving. I agree that very young women who are not having fertility treatment should not be guilt-tripped into being donors. It is of no benefit to them. But I see no wrong in women who are having fertility treatment donating surplus eggs. I think the hand-wringing over giving your dna to a stranger to raise ignores the epigenetic changes brought about during pregnancy. If that embryo was carried by its biological donor it would in fact be quite a different child.

As for looking like or not looking like a parent - sometimes children do and sometimes they don’t. My two donor-conceived DGC resemble their dad in face-shape and colouring. My three genetic DGC have one that resembles her mum, one that looks like neither parent nor grandparents and one who has his dad’s colouring but little else about him. Nobody in the family is concerned about any of this.

When the five DGC got together for the first time this summer, they had a blast as a family. Nobody even thought about how they were all conceived because it wasn’t relevant to the fact that they are all part of our family.

Hand wringing? I'm not sure that concerns can be called that.

As far as I know, all epigenetic changes during pregnancy do is turn genes in the DNA on and off, usually relating to physical and mental health risks, and so on? It's not like the pregnant woman actually alters the genes themselves, or adds their own DNA, as far as I know. But I may be wrong.

I know extended family adoptees, and one thing they found hard as their child grew was that they knew her mum, being distantly related, and so they knew that their child had her laugh, her looks, her personality traits, her mannerisms even – they were so alike despite having spent almost no time together. Obviously, someone who didnt know their child's biological parent wouldn't know where some of those things came from, but their child would be different to them in a way a biological child wouldn’t. I think it's important to be aware of that, as it can affect some children, who feel like cuckoos.

It's not quite the same with an egg donor, but the genetics are all the same, and nature does have a far bigger impact than nurture, ime.

@Chickadeeinme for obvious reasons, you’re grossly exaggerating the impact that a gestational carrier has, genetically speaking, on the children. Women who give birth to children via donor eggs are in the same position as most surrogates. I wonder what your views on surrogacy are?

The (positive) difference between egg donation and surrogacy is, imo, that the baby is not taken away from what they believe is their mother at birth with an egg donor. But later on, all the same issues arise for the child re having been created in the knowledge that their biological link will be severed, that they have no genetic connection to their family, that somewhere out there they have a whole different biological family. It can be profoundly unsettling. Your DGC are kids so tbh you have no idea how this will impact them as adults.

As for risk, you would accept, I assume, that there are various things where we do not legally allow humans to make choices that risk their life, and certainly not for money. If you accept that, then you should appreciate that your view that it’s perfectly ok for women to risk their life in situations as long as it directly benefits you might be a little biased.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t just adopt or foster. As the baby isn’t genetically yours. Why insist you carry it inside you for 9 months? That doesn’t change that.

Because there's a bit of a fairy tale going round that due to interactions in the womb it means the woman carrying the donor egg baby actually is genetically related to the baby. I think it's marketing from the clinics.

Ok if you ideally know the donor and are open about it with the child. If I had a sister I would give her an egg or a very close friend. But its a wierd thing to do really. Why would you want a baby so much that you'd have any baby not your own.

What a load of tosh. Anything to sell a dream hey. Surely there’s also higher risk of complications like preeclampsia too with bringing in more foreign dna. I get adoption is a hard process but surely better than the risks and ethical dilemmas of egg donation.

I'm probably unusual in that I'm against all surrogacy and IVF. Adoption can be very challenging and you need to be very strong. I don't know anyone adopted/ adopting who hasn't found it hard. But the alternative for children is much worse so I'm in favour of it if people are aware of the likelihood of issues. If a child is having a hard time, better to have it in a supportive family than in the care system.i know four families who have adopted babies in the UK, but three have been as subsequent siblings.

Adopters tend to think nurture will matter most when they start out and by the end I think most people can see it's nature. My adopted children are who they would be regardless. Obviously they have had life experiences and opportunities specific to us but they are in themselves who they are, which is based on their genes. One has epilepsy and a learning disability - that for sure is part of who she is. There is only so much you can do with nurture.

You still don’t seem to understand the very basics of IVF: There is no such thing as surplus eggs.!

I did two rounds of the egg harvesting part of IVF.

Round 1: 17 eggs; 12 fertilized successfully; 3 embryos made it to day 5; 2 implanted - both failed.

Round 2: 15 eggs harvested; 10 fertilized successfully; 7 made it to day 5; 1 implanted - success!

I was lucky and successful fairly early, and I do have “surplus” embryos that I would consider donating to a very close friend. But before actually having a baby, there is zero guarantee of that working. Even nowadays, the cumulative success rate after 3 full cycles is about 65%. And impossible to know before fertilization which of those eggs will even make it to the embryo stage.

So no, your daughter didn’t receive “surplus” eggs. In fact she probably significantly lowered someone else’s chance of having a child.

Because it’s really bloody hard to “just” adopt or foster. Also, foster children don’t need parents who are likely somewhat traumatised by infertility and going for Plan B.

I didn’t use donor eggs and will not but given you spend all of your pregnancy encouraged to bond with the baby, plus you’re hormonally hard wired during pregnancy and post partum
to (usually) be very attached to a baby that you’ve birthed - you can see why people quite rightly consider it their baby. Same sex female couples quite often do reciprocal IVF (one partner provides eggs the other carries) for this reason.

The research shows that if a woman grows/carries a baby for 9 months the baby does have some of her DNA. From memory it’s well below 1% but it’s factually correct

Do you have a link to that research?